Building a Sustainable Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain

The Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance (opens in a new tab)(CEVA), led by Ceres, is a collaborative group of companies focused on accelerating the transition to EVs. Our new report for CEVA, in partnership with Ceres, offers recommendations for major corporate EV fleet purchasers for how they can help ensure EV supply chain sustainability. It summarizes the market status of the batteries, U.S. policy context, and key initiatives for improvement.

Access the full report here: Electric Vehicle Batteries: A Guidebook for Responsible Corporate Engagement Throughout the Supply Chain

Throughout 2022, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE), along with ClimateWorks, has conducted outreach to a variety of organizations active in EV battery supply chain sustainability efforts—including human rights and transportation electrification advocates—about recent successes and ongoing challenges. CLEE’s March 2023 issue brief, “Global State of Sustainable Electric Vehicle Batteries: Key Recent Accomplishments and Priority Actions for 2023,” summarizes key themes from the 2022 conversations, including pivotal developments that shaped the global EV battery conversation in 2022, and provides a glimpse of key 2023 decision points. 

Check out the March 2023 brief here.

In April 2022, CLEE released an issue brief identifying new strategies for advocates and industry leaders to improve international coordination, advocacy efforts, community engagement, and circular economy practices. These findings are based on a December 2021 stakeholder convening.

No Time to Waste: Governing Cobalt Amid the Energy Transition (March 2022) Cobalt is critical for manufacturers of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). Yet EV buyers, battery manufacturers and miners fear high prices and disrupted supply, as well as human right abuses, environmental destruction, corruption, and political risk. Given this dynamic, this report aims to help governments and their advisors in mining countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), derive value from mining cobalt, develop industry along the battery-supply chains and address a host of problems from human rights abuses to corruption. The report is also for policy-makers working to ensure that the world delivers enough cobalt in time for the global energy transition.

CLEE’s report “Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain” identifies the following key challenges to ensuring battery supply chain sustainability through a multi-stakeholder approach, based on our outreach to experts in the field:

• Lack of coordinated action, accountability, and access to information across the supply chain hinder sustainability efforts
• Inadequate coordination and data sharing across multiple supply chain standards limit adherence
• Regulatory and logistical barriers inhibit battery life extension, reuse, and recycling

The report recommends the following priority responses that industry, government and nonprofit leaders could take to address these challenges:

• Industry leaders could strengthen mechanisms to improve data transparency and promote neutral and reliable information-sharing to level the playing field between actors across the supply chain and between governments and companies

• Industry leaders and third-party observers could ensure greater application of supply chain sustainability best practices by defining and categorizing existing standards and initiatives to develop essential criteria, facilitate comparison and equivalency, and streamline adherence for each segment of the supply chain

• Governments and industry leaders could create new incentives for supply chain actors to participate in and adhere to existing standards and initiatives, which may include sustainability labeling and certification initiatives

• Industry leaders could design batteries proactively for disassembly (enabling recycling and reuse), and industry leaders and governments could collaborate to build regional infrastructure for battery recycling and transportation and create regulatory certainty for recycling

The responses to the supply chain challenges outlined in this report seek to provide guidance on the initial actions stakeholders can take to make this broader vision of implementation a reality, ensuring a more robust future for communities around the globe as well as for all-important electric vehicle adoption to meet climate change goals.

Download the PDF here.