Keywords

1 Battery Industry Vulnerabilities

Professor Stanley Whittingham, the Nobel Prize laureate, states in his article [1], ‘our efforts have emphasized better and better batteries, higher energy, higher power, longer life, and lower cost. We have neglected to investigate the afterlife of batteries and the devices they are in’. In the meanwhile, these and similar thoughts have leaked into strategic documents, such as the Vision for a Sustainable Battery Value Chain by the World Economic Forum and Global and Battery Alliance [2].

Based on the Paris Agreement target 2 °C scenario, ‘a circular battery value chain’ should create 10 million safe, fair and good-quality jobs globally by 2030. In addition, the battery industry should envisage safeguarding human rights, foster just energy transition and economic development and be in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Last, but not least, the battery industry is estimated to provide 600 million people with access to electricity, reducing the gap of households without electricity by 70% before 2030.

Energy storage represents key enabling technology in the energy transition, especially with batteries being promising technology for the zero pollution ambitions of the European Green Deal. The Strategic Action Plan on Batteries was adopted in 2018 and is a comprehensive set of measures to develop an innovative, sustainable and competitive battery ‘ecosystem’ in Europe. Batteries are considered key components in mobile and stationary energy storage systems. They enable the transition to smart energy systems by compensating for the variability of supply and demand.

Although there are relevant energy and environmental benefits in the battery operation phase, the exploitation of critical raw materials, such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, nickel and graphite, needed to produce batteries, involves not negligible impacts. Recently, the European Commission put forth a new battery regulation that includes compulsory sustainability requirements, requiring supply chain due diligence for minerals utilised in batteries.

Battery-driven low-carbon transition bears impacts and risks in several directions. What the authors call ‘decarbonisation divide’, the battery industry vulnerabilities might be divided into (i) environmental risks, (ii) gender discrimination, (iii) child labour and (iv) geopolitics and ethnics [3].

The environmental and public health risks concern the resource depletion, human toxicity and ecotoxicity, mainly associated with copper, cobalt, nickel, thallium and silver, with partial results for lithium and aluminium [4]. As an example, raw material mining is connected with environmental pollution, but serious health impacts could be identified along the whole battery supply chains and life cycles [5].

Gender discrimination and the marginalisation of women relate to the diversity-specific issues. Some examples of gender-specific acceptance research include lab-on-skin or telemedicine platforms for wearable biosensors [6, 7]. Another research study found significant differences in attitudes, perceptions and values regarding BEVs between males and females, which could be potentially useful for designing more effective policy measures [8]. The integration of gender analysis into materials research and engineering is crucial to address the gender-related implications of wearable electronics with bio-related applications. Yet another gender perspective offered by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) is that women account for only 32% of the overall renewable energy workforce [9].

It is often the case that no existing labour regulations restricting child labour and exploitation are present in the originating countries [10]. An estimated 23% of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of whom are orphans, work within cobalt mining where they are exposed to physical, physiological and sexual abuse in order to provide food for themselves and their families. Despite moving towards less cobalt content in batteries, Fig. 16.1 shows cobalt content of the NMC811 cathode battery (6.6 kg for 75 kWh battery pack), assuming production of 26 million BEVs by 2030, which will result in 25,000 children working 10 hours per day [11].

Fig. 16.1
An illustration of a car with a plug at the rear and an electric symbol points to a block with text 6.6 kilograms of cobalt per E V with N M C 811 cathode followed by 4 sets of human illustrations with the text 25,000 children mining by hand for 10 hours per day in the Democratic Republic of Congo below.

The consequences of a cobalt-containing cathode production. (Used with permission of Royal Society of Chemistry from [11]; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.)

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Subjugation of ethnic groups and geographical issues point out the situation of dominance and control of raw material (cobalt) mining and e-waste treatment leading to lock-in of ethnic group inequalities, ethnic discrimination and refugees/migratory workers. The vulnerabilities are highly geographically concentrated with a lot of focus on China, which claims most of the energy sector employment growth, predicted to target in total 122 million in 2050 under the 1.5 °C pathway, compared to 114 million under present policies [9]. Speaking of the geographical spread, several countries, such as the USA, Japan or the Netherlands, were more successful in BEV adoption than others, e.g. South Korea or China [12].

The successful achievement of the renewable energy sources (RES) targets and other energy-related ambitions amplifies therefore the importance of questions related to the social aspects of the energy technology transitions [3]. Nevertheless, the energy transitions seem to suffer from a vicious cycle syndrome – consumers are not interested in less developed technologies, which are then priced higher, and investors are less interested to invest in a product with low demand. The clean energy transition technologies, including battery electric vehicles (BEVs), are still seen as somewhat innovative and therefore might be perceived as immature or risky [13].

As demand for the critical resources, such as metals, minerals, land and water, continues to lever up, just transitions, and specifically just energy transition, span throughout different disciplines including critical resource geography, a subfield of human-environment geography transitions [14]. According to [15], the emerging landscapes of energy storage consider site-specific environmental justice concerns, such as mineral mining, extraction and toxicity during production and disposal of devices. Moreover, increased use of key strategic minerals and metals imposes spatial consequences and political and justice dilemmas. As a consequence, concepts such as resource nexus thinking [16] and social engineering of extraction [17] are being brought into discussions.

In the context of environmental, social and governance (ESG) development of sustainable energy materials, priority has been recently given to nickel-rich cathode materials, and efforts continue for the development of organic/green batteries [18]. To sum up, the key sustainability challenges of the battery sector might be summarised as follows:

  1. 1.

    Battery production has non-negligible GHG emissions.

  2. 2.

    The battery value chain bears also significant social risks.

  3. 3.

    The viability of battery-supported applications is uncertain [9].

Balance needs to be found between the needs of modern society, social aspects and environmental conservation [5]. Advanced battery technologies need to be assessed via a combination of techno-economic simulation tools, cost-benefit analysis and business model innovation, including the social and socio-economic impacts on workers, local community and the society.

The following Sect. 16.2 addresses these issues with the technology acceptance lenses concentrating on battery applications in e-mobility, grid storage and in the context of social innovations. The same issues are addressed also in the next Chap. 17 focused on the social impact assessment method s-LCA, which gained a lot of attention with scholars recently due to the need for more sustainable battery life cycle from ‘cradle to grave’. Both approaches, type I s-LCA and type II s-LCA, are explained and compared in Chap. 17.

2 Acceptance Issues

The technology adoption and diffusion are associated not only with the performance and cost, but there are social factors entering the adoption process as well. Several theories might be useful to explain these inter-relations; however, the theory of social acceptance and diffusion of new technologies play a central role. The technology acceptance studies on users’ adoption of specific technologies and products are built, among others, on the technology acceptance model, which emphasises the primary role of the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of technology use as predictors of an individual’s attitude towards using and behavioural intention to use a technology [19].

In broad terms, acceptance refers to the passive or active approval of socio-political and community stakeholders towards large-scale energy technologies or related policy strategies, encompassing their willingness to embrace or support such initiatives [20]. According to the seminal work introduced by [21], there are three dimensions of social acceptance in the field of renewable energy innovations: socio-political, market and community acceptance (Fig. 16.2). The socio-political acceptance relates to the governmental decision-making processes and adoption of energy policies. NIMBY (not in my backyard) effects and people’s motives are attributed to the second dimension – community acceptance. Finally, the market dimension, being a consequence of market adoption of technologies, is helping to overcome barriers to larger diffusion.

Fig. 16.2
An illustration of a triangle with labeled vertices. Socio-political acceptance with technologies and policies, public acceptance, key stakeholders, and policymakers. Community acceptance with procedural justice, distributional justice, and trust. Market acceptance with subpoints, consumers, and investors.

The triangle of social acceptance of renewable energy innovation. (Reprinted from Wüstenhagen et al. [21], with permission from Elsevier)

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When speaking about the social acceptance of energy storage technologies specifically, the clustering across applications and sectors is helpful. These clusters include especially RES for stationary applications, e-mobility and portable/wearable electronics to a certain extent, which will be elaborated in the following sections.

2.1 E-Mobility and the Range Anxiety Phenomenon

The IRENA and ILO (2021) indicated that about 11% of GHGs were generated globally by the road transportation sector, with 5.8 Gt CO2eq in total. Furthermore, sales predictions suggest that more than 50% of new passenger cars sold by 2035 will be electric [22]. BEVs are thus considered to be important element in the clean energy transition, whereby battery represents key technology affecting technical performance and cost factors.

Despite the urgent need for the transportation sector decarbonisation, several studies have indicated barriers to the EV diffusion. The BEV cost, limitations in the battery capacity and vehicle weight represent just a few of the obstacles to full BEV commercialisation [23, 24]. On the other hand, higher driving range, more frequent charging infrastructure, lower prices and pro-environmental attitudes represent factors facilitating the BEV adoption based on the scientific studies (see Fig. 16.3).

Fig. 16.3
An illustration of 2 arrows. Up arrow for electric mobility benefits independence from oil, resource conservation, and environmental friendliness, high efficiency, and effective energy use. Down arrow for expensive energy storage, high acquisition costs, limited range, long charging times, and underdeveloped charging infrastructure.

Electric mobility’s benefits and barriers [25], distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license

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Although the environmental perspective is crucial with respect to the low-carbon transport systems, the social perspective started to gain attention among scholars as well. Consequently, hand in hand with the technical improvements, the users’ experience (satisfaction, usefulness and attitude) has attracted scholarly interest including the phenomenon of range anxiety [25]. In addition to that, there are determinants of acceptance identified, such as contextual (charging availability), cost (purchase, operation), attitudinal and behavioural (travel habits), BEV experience (familiarity), sociodemographic (income, education) and social (norms).

The charging limitations (both the infrastructure network and charging time) are the main barriers of electric mobility nowadays. Based on some studies, the consumers are willing to wait more than 6 hours when the BEV is charged at home, while charging outside should be done in less than 30 minutes. Furthermore, based on a Flemish acceptance study of various charging infrastructure systems, consumers expressed interest in inductive charging as long as the cost of the system does not exceed that of conventional charging methods [26].

Nevertheless, certain studies have revealed that the negative association between battery electric vehicle (BEV) acceptance and cost-related drawbacks, such as high purchasing costs or limited driving range, is influenced by social identity variables, which carry significant weight [27, 28]. These findings emphasise the need to consider factors beyond individual cost/benefit considerations and focus on social identity elements like social norms and collective efficacy [29].

To conclude, most consumers concerned about the driving range have had no user experience with BEVs. One of the solutions could be the smart charging systems for BEVs, once technical reliability is improved and access to smart charging from other devices is provided, as well as improvements of technical performance of BEV are done [30].

2.2 Social Aspects of Grid Storage

Although energy mix is shifting towards intermittent renewables across most markets, the power sector accounted still for considerable 23% of global GHG emissions in 2017 totalling 11.9 Gt CO2eq [9].

The definition of social acceptance of energy infrastructure elucidates what factors contribute to the social acceptance of the three types of infrastructure (wind, transmission lines and pump hydro-storage as examples), i.e. ‘social acceptance of new infrastructure occurs when the welfare decreasing aspects of the project are balanced by welfare increasing aspects of the project to leave each agent at worst welfare neutral and indifferent to the completion of the project, or better off and supportive of the project’ [31].

[32] works with four factors in their assessment: general vs. local acceptance, public concerns, trust in stakeholders and attitudes towards financial support/funding. Although social acceptance of RES has been assessed as relatively high across Europe, differences exist between general social acceptance and local social acceptance. The factors include trust in public authorities, distribution of quality information, public involvement and economic benefits [33]. In the latter case, the challenge is that the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of smart batteries overlooks usually nonfinancial drivers. Some consumers are dissatisfied with the technology even with a favourable CBA [34].

In nations where there is generally high public acceptance of various energy technologies, the lack of local community acceptance, particularly in areas directly affected by the construction of renewable energy plants, can lead to the failure of otherwise promising renewable energy projects. This highlights the importance of considering local community attitudes as both drivers and barriers to acceptance in the successful implementation of renewable energy initiatives [35, 36].

Although research results on the acceptance of grid-scale stationary battery storage systems, which are likely to play an increased role in smoothing the supply-demand curves, are scarce, the majority of respondents point to the overall positive attitudes [37,38,39]. Some examples of battery storage local barriers to acceptance include some landscapes, loss of living space, the risk of fire and explosion as safety concerns [39].

Another perspective to the social role of grid-level storage has its background in a price suppressing effect, decreasing the probability of remaining in the high price regime during peak hours and the probability increase of remaining in the standard regime during off-peak hours [40]. Yet a different social perspective is represented by the so-called platformisation, enabling new ways of energy provisioning and consumption [41]. The worldwide increase in using digital platforms for energy exchange raises, namely, new questions such as how the interactions of people with energy infrastructures will look like in the future.

2.3 Social Innovation and Neighbourhood Batteries

Social innovation in energy is linked to a variety of concepts ranging from community energy, business models, energy self-sufficiency and savings to energy nudging. Avelino et al. [42] characterise social innovations as concepts, objects and/or actions that bring about changes in social relationships, encompassing novel approaches to energy utilisation, thinking and organisation. Examples include social practices of charging and managing the power of portable electronics (mobile phones) [43], connection of PV and batteries [40] and also adoption of home batteries [44].

Neighbourhood batteries represent new dimension of energy storage (alternatively community energy storage) building on the collaboration between a network operator and renewable energy initiatives. Neighbourhood batteries have the potential to reflect societal values responsibly, in line with principles of energy justice and in the context of responsible research and innovation [45]. The idea of a neighbourhood battery entails making strategic decisions, and potentially strategic innovations, whose transformative impact largely relies on the perceptions and actions of the individuals involved [46]. To tackle these challenges, it is imperative to integrate social aspects into materials research and engineering, promoting technology advancements that are inclusive and equitable [47].

3 Conclusions

In conclusion, this chapter presents insights into vulnerabilities and sustainability challenges within the battery industry, emphasising the crucial role of social issues. It highlights the historical emphasis on battery performance and cost, neglecting the afterlife of batteries and the social implications of their production and usage. The adoption of a circular battery value chain aligned with the Paris Agreement 2 °C scenario holds significant promise for creating safe, fair and quality job opportunities while driving economic development and promoting just energy transitions. However, the exploitation of critical raw materials raises environmental concerns and poses risks such as resource depletion, human toxicity and child labour.

Addressing these challenges necessitates incorporating social aspects into materials research and engineering to ensure inclusive and equitable technological developments. Gender-specific research has shed light on differences in attitudes and perceptions towards battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and wearable biosensors, calling for more effective policy measures that consider diverse perspectives. Furthermore, social acceptance plays a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies and energy storage systems. Understanding factors that influence the acceptance of battery technologies, such as charging infrastructure limitations, range anxiety and economic considerations, is essential for driving successful energy transitions.

The discussion on grid storage underscores the need to strike a balance between general and local acceptance, considering the impact of renewable energy projects on communities. Smart battery solutions, local collaboration and responsible research and innovation are potential pathways to enhance social acceptance and advance energy justice. Overall, the pursuit of advanced battery technologies should go hand in hand with a thorough assessment of their social and socio-economic impacts. Efforts must be made to align the needs of modern society with environmental conservation, enabling a sustainable and equitable energy future. By fostering an inclusive approach and embracing social innovation, the battery industry can become a powerful driver of positive change, leading us towards a greener, more resilient and socially responsible energy landscape.