Environmental feasibility of second-life battery applications in Belgium

The growing electric vehicle and stationary storage markets raise the potential of second-life batteries (SLB) and question their environmental feasibility. Based on the life cycle assessment methodology, this study evaluates the impacts on climate change of three use cases (residential, industrial, and utility) for SLBs in Belgium. The residential use case is a domestic 4 kWp photovoltaic installation. The industrial use case is a 1500 kWh installation providing behind-the-meter services. The utility use case contains SLBs with a total capacity of 20000 kWh for in-front-of-the-meter services. Based on the delivered energy, the manufacturing and recycling impacts are allocated between first and second life. As a result, the impact on climate change of the residential use case, the industrial use case, and the utility use case is 130.8 gCO2eq/kWh, 146.6 gCO2eq/kWh, and 168.3 gCO2eq/kWh, respectively. The residential use case performance is due to the total energy delivered by the use case. Both the residential and the industrial use stage are close to the impacts of first-life batteries used as a benchmark in this study, while the utility use case impacts are 40% higher than the benchmark battery.