Open Collections

Kathuria, Pulkit; Tran, Martino, 1975-

Many countries including Canada are pursuing rapid electric vehicle (EV) adoption as a climate mitigation strategy. However, many uncertainties exist over waste management of EV components at the End-of-Life (EoL) phase, especially battery disposal. Discarded batteries can be processed using different strategies, which can have benefits including saving the resource costs of producing new batteries, and delaying the production of new waste streams. These strategies can reduce the economic and environmental impacts over the entire life-cycle of the battery. However, given ambitious EV deployment policies around the world, an important consideration is the timing and scale required to build additional waste management infrastructure capacity. Based on Canada’s current EV policy targets, our scenarios estimate that by 2050, there could be 0.5 to 1 million tonnes of EV batteries being disposed per year. Assuming that the current waste management capacity remains constant, Canada’s recycling capacity will be exhausted between 2034 and 2038 indicating a major shortfall. Our analysis shows that Canada requires significant and rapid investment in waste infrastructure including collection, transportation, processing and disposal of battery waste to prevent environmental pollution and potential human health impacts, which would offset the decarbonization benefits of mass EV adoption.

Canada

Text

2024-04-26

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88003

UBCV

Graduate

DSpace