Looming mismatch between retired EV battery waste generation and treatment across Chinese cities

Abstract

The rapid deployment of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in China is shifting pressure toward end-of-life battery waste, raising concerns regarding the regional adaptability of waste treatment capacities. Given that retired LIBs enter either repurposing or recycling pathways, assessing their spatiotemporal evolution, spatial heterogeneity, and the geographic distribution of treatment capacities is essential for evaluating system performance and guiding effective facility planning. This study develops an integrated framework combining material flow analysis, spatial modeling, and cost evaluation to assess retired LIB dynamics, and explore the spatial distribution of repurposing and recycling enterprises across 335 Chinese cities from 2010 to 2023. These results reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity and persistent mismatches between where LIBs retire and where treatment capacities are geographically accessible. This mismatch is substantially more pronounced for recycling than for repurposing. Nationally, China faces severe overcapacity, with repurposing capacities exceeding retired LIB weight by 10.7 times and recycling capacities by 7.6 times. At the city level, only 66.9% of retired LIBs can be repurposed locally and 23.9% can be recycled within the city of origin. Even when including capacity in adjacent cities, accessibility remains highly uneven, with repurposing accessibility rising to nearly 91.1% while recycling increases only to 66.7%. These findings indicate that prioritizing the deployment of repurposing and recycling capacity in cities with high retirement weight and high transport costs will be essential for improving accessibility, reducing long-distance transfers, and enhancing the overall efficiency of end-of-life LIB management.