Nissan and Stena Recycling to give old Leaf batteries a second life

The Japanese carmaker and Stena Recycling have signed a strategic partnership for Norway to use the batteries from old electric cars for stationary storage. The potential is huge: there are over 80,000 Nissan Leafs on the road in Norway.

The agreement gives Stena Recycling “access to a steady supply of used batteries, which is crucial in a market where competition for resources is increasing,” the company says. These are batteries from cars that have been taken off the road due to age or written off by insurance companies as total losses, but the batteries can still be reused for several years.

Although Stena Recycling has ‘recycling’ in its name, the partnership is not about the immediate recovery of raw materials. Each battery is analysed at the plant in Ausenfjellet, near Oslo, to determine which parts can be reused and which need to be recycled. The two partners say their goal is that “a significant portion of battery components get a new lease on life” – either as components in batteries that require maintenance and repair (i.e. reused in vehicles) or in energy storage systems for a further ten to 15 years.

According to Jon Emil Furuseth, Country Manager High Energy Batteries at Stena Recycling, this approach allows significantly more value to be extracted than simply breaking down the batteries into new materials and minerals. While the sustainability aspect of reuse is indisputable, it is still unclear whether the effort is economically viable at this stage. Both companies want to use their respective expertise to explore the possibilities for commercialising a process.

Stena Recycling is already able to map many steps in the battery reuse process. The company has its own subsidiary, Batteryloop, which specialises in the repurposing of used electric vehicle batteries and uses batteries from Mercedes-Benz, for example. Stena Recycling can also produce black mass from defective used batteries and production waste. One customer for this is BASF. With the plant in Ausenfjellet, which will be opened in 2024, Stena Recycling has significantly expanded its capacity for diagnosing and repairing used battery systems.

“Since launching the Nissan LEAF in 2011, we have developed unique expertise in EV technology. Now we want to take a leading role in the sustainable treatment of used EV batteries,” says Alan Low, EV Battery Circular Economy Manager for Nissan Energy “Through this partnership, we can offer second-life products while helping to reduce the environmental footprint in line with our ambitions for carbon neutrality by 2050.”

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