Okay so nobody talks about what happens to bess batteries after they stop working and it's kind of a big deal
india is building out battery energy storage at a genuinely impressive scale. 30 gwh by 2030 is the projection and honestly that kind of ambition is exactly what the clean energy transition needs.
but here's the thing that's been sitting in the back of my mind.
lithium ion batteries last about 8 to 10 years. after that, their capacity drops to a point where they can't really do their job anymore. so at the scale india is building toward, there are eventually going to be a lot of retired batteries that need to go somewhere.
and where they go matters a lot.
the materials inside these batteries — lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese — are not things you want sitting in a landfill. they cause real environmental damage when disposed of carelessly. and mining fresh versions of these materials to replace them has its own heavy cost, both environmentally and for the communities near mining sites.
recycling is the answer that makes sense. and the good news is the technology is actually there.
hydrometallurgical recycling can recover up to 95 percent of key battery materials using water based chemical processes. direct recycling, which is the newer development, goes even further by preserving battery components in their original form, which cuts processing costs by up to 40 percent and reduces the carbon footprint of recycling itself.
the economics work out too. recycled cobalt and nickel cost up to 30 percent less than newly mined material. battery recycling could create up to 10,000 skilled jobs in india by 2030. this is not a niche environmental cause. it's a real industry with real economic upside.
india's battery waste management rules from 2022 created a regulatory foundation for all of this. bis standards for recycling facilities added more structure. the groundwork is there.
and when you factor proper recycling into the full lifecycle of a bess deployment, the total carbon footprint can drop by up to 50 percent. which means the sustainability case for battery energy storage gets significantly stronger when you manage the end of life properly.
companies like waaree tech limited are already doing this — building certified recycling partnerships and take back programs into their bess offerings from the start.
the clean energy transition isn't just about what we build. it's about what we do with it when it's done.