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Effects of demand and recycling on the when and where of lithium extraction

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 773–783 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Achieving electric mobility targets is crucial for global decarbonization goals and the transition to electric vehicles depends on the availability of lithium-ion batteries, the preferred traction battery for electric vehicles. Demand and supply models for lithium, a critical energy material in batteries, largely ignore time, geography and mining dynamics when evaluating mineral sufficiency. We developed a resource dispatch model with data at the mineral deposit level and found that, if trends towards larger battery packs in electric vehicles continue, >85 new deposit openings may be needed by 2050. Moderating battery size and achieving robust battery recycling at global scales can substantially decrease new lithium deposit openings, with the very best case leading to just 15 openings by 2050. Ambitious recycling and recovery targets for lithium require global policy intervention, but will reduce supply concentration and the creation of new frontline communities by reducing mine openings.

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Fig. 1: Primary lithium demand by scenario and cumulative demand by sector.
Fig. 2: Global lithium resource distribution, deposit extraction costs and country ease-of-doing-business trade-off, and the resource cumulative availability curve.
Fig. 3: Lithium cumulative extraction by resource type and country of extraction.
Fig. 4: Required opening of lithium deposits by 2050.
Fig. 5: Additional lithium deposits that will need to open under different deposit parameter scenarios or by N-1 country analysis.

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Data availability

Data used in the present study were extracted from the following sources: ICCT Roadmap v.2.2 for on-road vehicle sales forecast, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence for battery chemistry forecast and battery requirements for stationary power storage, EV Volumes for battery capacity estimates for cars, multiple model catalogues for truck, buses and 2–3 wheelers (documented in Supplementary Data 1). Lithium intensity was obtained as default results from BatPaC 5.1 and SolidPac. All lithium deposit characteristics were obtained from public company reports, documented in Supplementary Data 2. Corporate tax and royalty rates were obtained from current legislation for each country, documented in Supplementary Data 3. All data required to reproduce the model results are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14532951 (ref. 69). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All codes required to reproduce model results are available in the Supplementary Information and via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14532951 (ref. 69).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by grants from the Heising-Simons Foundation (grant no. 2023-4360 to A.K.) and ClimateWorks Foundation (grant no. G-2308-802319017 to A.K.). We would like to acknowledge A. DePew’s assistance in collecting data on battery size for buses, trucks and 2–3 wheelers. We also thank A. Perez for his helpful advice about optimization, R. Hwang for his insightful feedback on scenarios and interpretation and the ICCT for sharing detailed information on their Roadmap.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: P. Busch, A. Kendall.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Efficiency Institute, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    P. Busch & Y. Chen

  2. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    P. Ogbonna

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    A. Kendall

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  1. P. Busch
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  2. Y. Chen
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Contributions

A.K. and P.B. designed the research, conceptualization and methodology. P.B., Y.C. and P.O. collected the data. P.B. and A.K. performed the research, analysed the data and created the figures. P.B. and A.K. wrote the paper. All the authors reviewed and approved the final version of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Kendall.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Karan Bhuwalka, Romain Billy and I. Daniel Posen for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–19 and Tables 1–6.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data

Supplementary Data 1: List of manufacturers for battery capacity for full BEV: 2 wheelers, 3 wheelers, bus and trucks. Supplementary Data 2: Lithium deposit database. Supplementary Data 3: Royalty rate, royalty base and corporate tax rate by country.

Source data

Source Data Figs. 1–5

Source Data Fig. 1: Results to re-create figure (see sheet ‘Fig1a’ and ‘Fig1b’). Source Data Fig. 2: Results to re-create figure (see sheet ‘Fig2a’, ‘Fig2b’ and ‘Fig2c’). Source Data Fig. 3: Results to re-create figure (see sheet ‘Fig3’). Source Data Fig. 4: Results to re-create figure (see sheet ‘Fig4’). Source Data Fig. 5: Results to re-create figure (see sheet ‘Fig5a’ and ‘Fig5b’).

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Busch, P., Chen, Y., Ogbonna, P. et al. Effects of demand and recycling on the when and where of lithium extraction. Nat Sustain 8, 773–783 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01561-5

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