German state teams up with Belgian and Dutch partners to boost circular battery production
Clean Energy Wire / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has agreed to strengthen its circular economy efforts together with the neighbouring Netherlands and Belgium’s Flanders region, with a strong focus on battery value chains. Germany’s most populous state aims to launch several innovative projects for circular supply chains with its neighbours, said North Rhine-Westphalia’s environment minister Oliver Krischer. “With a circular economy we can increase our resource independence, protect resources and the climate, and create new jobs – all at once,” Krischer argued. The Green Party politician signed a cooperation agreement with Dutch and Belgian officials at an event in the western German city of Wuppertal.
In a separate article in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Krischer said that coordination between state institutions in the three countries remains inadequate. “We have to exchange knowledge,” the minister argued. The three signatories agreed to intensify cooperation particularly in the areas of recycling and circularity in the construction sector, in the chemical industry, and battery production. Brigitte Mouligneau from the Flamish waste agency OVAM told the newspaper that the aim is to cover the entire battery production value chain with an integrated circular economy scheme.
Krischer said North Rhine-Westphalia will open one of Europe’s first recycling factories for so-called ‘black mass’ from battery production in December. The material, produced from shredded batteries, contains valuable elements such as lithium and cobalt but is difficult to treat efficiently and requires high environmental standards that have made the creation of international supply chains a challenge. “If three countries cooperate, we can have a different degree of influence on standard-setting,” Krischer argued.
Circular economy concepts have increasingly shifted into focus amid energy transition efforts in recent years to increase supply security, reduce costs and make processes in the economy truly sustainable. Besides technologies, such as renewable power installations or electric vehicles, the construction sector holds a vast potential for better reusing and recycling raw materials.
