Groupe Renault, a major car maker of France is known to have adopted the concept of circular economy in its automotive business. In 1995, it started integrating recycled plastics into vehicles and since 2008, the company has implemented a circular economy business model into its business activities, engaging R&D projects together with the Ellen McArthur Foundation, and turning waste into resources.
The company is also well-recognized for constructing a closed loop system with a new business model by joint ventures or partnerships with recyclers. Renault Group has been a leader in turning automotive activities more “sustainable”.
MIRU and MIRU Plus had a chance to interview Mr. Jean-Denis CURT, Head of the Circular Economy Division at Groupe Renault to discuss the company’s strategy for end-of-life batteries for EVs from the circular economy’s point of view, EU legislative impacts on the industry, and its new business concept adopted by the company’s current CEO.
Q: Could you tell us your latest recycling and reuse strategy for EV batteries and other materials?
A: Regarding recycling, we still have limited volumes of batteries to recycle, but this will be increasing in the future. So, our objective in the mid-term is to be able to recover active materials such as nickel, cobalt or lithium, and reuse them in our new batteries. However, I am not able to tell you more details regarding our plans on this matter as they are still confidential….
Regarding reuse, we already have a series of applications and partnerships, ranging from large systems to smaller systems such as mobile storage systems, mobile systems in the marine sector, special vehicles and so on.
We have a wide range of applications and collaborations. Same as recycling, we still have a limited number of second-life batteries available and more demand than volumes of available batteries, but the prospects are very promising for the coming years as thousands of batteries will be retired from our first generation electric vehicles. To respond to the growth, we are developing multiple applications and partnerships. For the time being, we make a measurement of the state of health (SOH) of batteries, then to determine if they can go to second life and what kind of application are suitable for them.
We currently sell these second life EV batteries to our partners who design and assemble energy storage systems based on our batteries, but we are considering much deeper collaborations (including at an industrial scale) with some of our partners within the framework of our Flins Re-Factory project.
It is a reconversion of the factory which is currently producing the Renault Zoé [in Flins]. The electric vehicle production will be concentrated in another plant and this plant will stop making new vehicles, it is a plant near Paris. It will be converted into a circular economy platform with different clusters of activities. One of them is called ‘Re-Nergy” and could include the assembly of full second life systems and the development of hydrogen related activities.
Q: Your company will become again a pioneer in this business model, then?
A: I think Renault and our Alliance partner Nissan are already pioneers among major carmakers in developing second life EV battery projects and businesses. I don’t know all the plans of our competitors on EV battery second life, but Renault has been among the leaders on the European EV market for 10 years and actually owns a fleet of 250 000 EV batteries in Europe thanks to our battery leasing offer (although it was recently discontinued for reasons of commercial strategy), so I believe Renault could be the first major carmaker to implement second life battery activities at an industrial scale within our Re-Factory project.
Q: Are there further development/expansion/innovation in your closed loop system?
A: Yes, we want to scale up our existing closed recycling loops on copper, platinum group metals (from catalytic convertors) and polypropylene and we are also considering other materials such as flat aluminum or various polymers. These materials still present smaller volumes from end-of-life vehicles. For instance, flat aluminum was not widely used in cars 20 years ago. End-of-life vehicles today were produced 20 years ago. So, we are considering implementing such new closed recycling loops in the future but not immediately.
Q: For a new closed loop system, how would you approach this? By an acquisition or a partnership?
A: By partnerships. We are not a recycler, even though we want to have some recycling activities, it could be only a part of the full recycling process. So we will need some recycling partners for further steps of recycling and we also want to collaborate more with our suppliers. If we collect and recycle more, we need to put more recycled materials into cars. We produce a few parts internally, but we buy most of the parts from suppliers. So we need our suppliers to use recycled materials. For this reason, we need to collaborate for both aspects, to collect materials and use recycled materials into new cars, into parts.
Also, we are using waste safety belts to produce a recycled textile for some or our vehicles. This is currently our only closed recycling loop involving recycled fibers, for the rest apart from copper and platinum group metals we currently mainly focus on injected plastics and most particularly polypropylene which is the most widely used polymer in the automotive industry.
Q: How do you tackle the vehicle design to increase its recyclability (in relation to the ELV recycling target in the ELV Directive)?
The recyclability of current vehicles is already good. What we need is to keep the recycling rate high even though we start using new materials for the car production, for instance, light-weight materials. Some of them could be more difficult to recycle. We must reconcile materials innovation for light-weight while maintaining high recyclability and increasing the use of recycled materials. It is not easy because innovative materials are new by definition, so they are different from the materials that we can find now in ELVs. It is a challenge to use this kind of light-weight materials without reducing recyclability as well as recycled materials. Weight, recycled materials and recyclability… sometimes it is a difficult choice, sometimes we have to choose, so we try to innovate with our suppliers to have solutions that combine everything.
Q: In the face of EU legislations, what would be a priority if you must choose for example, either light weight or recycling rate?
A: Regarding the arbitration between light-weight and recycled content, light-weight has the highest impact on the global environmental footprint of a conventional vehicle, whereas for electric vehicles the environmental benefits are more balanced between light-weight and recycled content. But we have to find ways to progress on both aspects in parallel on all types of vehicles.
Q: Do you foresee any impact of the up-coming new Battery Regulation on your sector?
(e.g., second life of EV batteries, recycling)
A: Yes. There are ambitious recycling targets for global recycling efficiency of 65%, 70%, and a specific material recovery rate of 90% in 2025 and 95% in 2030, for cobalt, nickel, and copper, and 30% then 70% for lithium. These targets are very ambitious. They could be difficult to reach for some battery chemistries. Because for some battery chemistries that do not have valuable materials, it is difficult to reach 65% or 70% of recycling efficiency. This is also very expensive. It is a challenge for all chemistries, but especially for low cobalt or nickel chemistries. Actually, for specific recycling rates like 90% or 95% for cobalt, nickel, and copper, we are not even sure if it’s possible. 90% may be possible, but 95%, we are not sure. The requirements of recycled content in new batteries from 2030, that state the minimum rate for cobalt, nickel, lithium, is also very challenging, especially as we do not know yet the volumes of recycled battery materials that will be available by that time since it will highly depend on the battery lifespan and second life rates. We will see.
For second-life, there are some positive things, the improvements from the current Battery Directive to make it easier to give batteries to second-life. But, probably, it may not be sufficient to solve some of the issues, especially, in transportation. When batteries are classified as waste, even if they can be reused, we then need to have a notification to transport from one country to another even inside Europe. So, this is a very long procedure, it can take 6 months. There is an improvement to try to solve this issue in the new Battery regulation project, but probably not sufficient, some additional measures involving other regulations such as the waste shipment and waste framework directives will be needed. There are other issues about the objectives of carbon footprint reduction of batteries, due diligence, eco-design…many things in this legislation. Many good things but also a few points of concern in the 130 pages of this very extensive and ambitious legislation proposal ! Some things need to be improved. It is a huge challenge for our industry but it can bring a positive evolution to battery recycling and second-life use. Hopefully, this will help to move even further towards the sustainability of battery supply chains and the circular economy.
Q: How do you see the impact of COVID-19 on your sector?
A: The sales volumes have significantly decreased, and we don’t know when they will rise again. It is a challenge because we have a big structure, many plants, many employees. The change was very brutal and global. Usually, the market is collapsing in one country but increasing in another country. But this happened everywhere at the same time. It is hard to tell what will come out of this. Also hard to tell how long it will affect the habit, for instance, of homeworking. This is a change of habit in terms of mobility of people and we don’t know how long this would last.
However, we feel that this crisis surprisingly contributed to raising awareness about environmental issues. I don’t know how it is in Japan, but here in Europe, you feel it though there is no direct connection between the COVID crisis and global warming or pollution. Maybe people have more time to think… .There was a growing awareness about the environmental state, recycling or reducing the environmental impact before the crisis, but it has really accelerated.
I have been working for environmental issues in the automotive industry for 20 years. Even though we have done many things, for a long time it has been a side issue and not the core of business. Along with increasing regulations, awareness is also growing.
We have a new CEO, Luca de Meo. He would like to give a very strong impulse for sustainability and circular economy. He put them right at the core of the business model. He started a transformation of our business model as a car maker from producing and selling cars toward providing mobility services, making vehicles, but also providing mobility, transportation for people and goods, as well as developing new areas of service such as energy storage or circular economy. The focus is expanding and evolving towards a broader and different business model, a really sustainable one, using fewer natural resources and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. This is a strong impulse that we have at Renault.
Apart from that, more generally, in the society and probably among car makers, since the start of the crisis, the last 12 months, I strongly felt the changing of attitude toward environmental issues, especially, for circular economy and recycled materials. I feel much more interest and motivation to progress towards more sustainability and more circularity.
This has been accelerating in Europe and hopefully it will accelerate in the rest of the world.
Q: Under the new concept adopted by your new CEO, Groupe Renault will be again a pioneer of a new business model, won’t it ?
A: I hope so, we have our project “Re-Factory”, I hope we will deliver our ambitious goals and transformation. And I hope we will inspire all the car makers.
（Y.SCHANZ）
