Europe To Become World’s Second Largest Li-ion Battery Manufacturer By 2025

Europe is all set to become the world’s second-largest manufacturer of lithium-ion battery cell by 2025, said a European Commission (EC) vice-president, although some key challenges need to be addressed.

In a high-level ministerial meeting of the European Battery Alliance (EBA), to support the continent’s multinational drive for a huge domestic production base and supply chain. The EC vice-president for inter-institutional relations and foresight, Maroš Šefčovič, announced that almost 70 industrial projects are being supported by the Alliance, expected to create as many as four million jobs by 2025.

“EC had met with ‘Ministers from leading Member States’ as well as with the European Investment Bank to assess how much progress has been made through the multi-billion Euro alliance but more significantly, to discuss the way forward,” said Maroš in a speech.

Šefčovič has been leading The European Battery Alliance’s mission since 2017, to create a battery value chain that is innovative, competitive, resilient, and sustainable.

Speaking on those 70 industrial projects, Maroš Šefčovič said, “While many of those 70 or so projects have advanced of expected schedules and decided to raise their scheduled output capacities beyond initial plans, covering areas from raw materials supply to digital technologies to support batteries in the field, the most progress has been made in the production of lithium-ion cell batteries.”

He further added, “Despite the pandemic, Europe continues to be a battery hotspot, closing the investment gap to our major Asian competitors, and in moving fast towards its open strategic autonomy in this critical sector.”

“Many of the battery investments have recently advanced their timelines and raised their expected output capacity. The production of lithium-ion cell batteries has shown the most progress – and by 2025, we are now set to become the second-largest battery cell producer in the world, behind China,” Šefčovič spoke about their goals.

As we are talking about Europe’s battery storage systems, we must highlight one of Europe’s largest energy storage factories to be established with Northvolt’s investment of USD 200 million. Entering into production in 2022, a new factory will have an initial annual output of 5 GWh, and a potential future capacity of 12 GWh.

According to the EC, The Ministerial Meeting’s participants embraced several policy initiatives adopted by the EC including;
Regulations for the battery supply chain proposed in 2020 including sustainability-focused standards on carbon footprint and recycling mandates.

The Critical Raw Materials Action plan, which added lithium to a list of materials deemed necessary for Europe to secure supply of in September.

Cooperation between the Member States has also been strong, with France and Germany and others working together to progress Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs) related to batteries worth more than EUR 20 billion over the past year.

However, there will be some key challenges as mentioned by Maroš Šefčovič and Europe has to overcome those.

Also, in January this year, European Commission announced a new Green Deal worth EUR 1 trillion to achieve the target of becoming the first climate-neutral bloc in the world by 2050. The European Green Deal’s Investment Plan – the Sustainable Europe Investment Plan – presented recently will mobilize public investment and help to unlock private funds through EU financial instruments, notably InvestEU, which would lead to at least EUR 1 trillion of investments.