Second Life Batteries for Grid Decarbonization: a Data Analysis for Their Future Availability

The achievement of sustainable goals promoted by United Nations, and the reduction target of CO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> gas emissions are tied to the progress towards the decarbonization of energy and transport sectors. Battery-based energy storage systems represent an enabling technology for both sectors and even more the second life of Lithium-ion batteries (SLB) represents a sustainable solution. However, second life batteries availability in the next future is strictly related to the automotive market growth. Thus, historical data regarding sales volume of electric vehicles in different countries and for different years were collected and analyzed. Moreover, a methodology for estimating the capacity potentially available from SLB is described in the paper. Finally, case studies based on the European, Chinese and U.S. automotive sales data show a SLB availability of 716 GWh in 2030.