BIL will invest more than $7 billion in the batteries supply chain over the five-year period encompassing fiscal years (FYs) 2022 through 2026. This includes sustainable sourcing of critical minerals from secondary and unconventional sources, reducing the need for new extraction and mining; sustainable processing of critical minerals; and the end-of-life battery collection and recycling.

This FOA provides approximately $37 million to reduce the costs associated with transportation, dismantling, and preprocessing of end-of-life electric drive vehicle batteries for recycling, as well as recycling of plastic and polymer electric drive vehicle battery accessory components through research, development, and demonstration. Currently, EV battery recycling is subject to inflated costs due to difficulties associated with handling and safety concerns, and improvements to these areas will have cascading benefits for the recycling ecosystem. This FOA supports innovative technologies and processes that reduce the cost of battery recycling to achieve scale-up and profitability. Future FOAs will subsequently aim to address gaps in EV battery recycling and second-life applications that become apparent through execution of the first and current FOAs.

Technology Space and Strategic Goals

Critical materials are a strategic resource necessary for the electric drive vehicles and stationary storage needed for a clean energy economy. Battery recycling is a vital pathway towards bolstering the domestic supply chain of battery critical materials while reducing the environmental impacts of extracting new critical materials through mining and will allow the U.S. to better meet the increasing demand for EVs. This FOA seeks applications to address the recycling of EV batteries to support the establishment of a robust domestic critical materials supply chain. The activities funded under this FOA include projects that reduce the costs associated with the transport, disassembly, and preprocessing of EOL EV batteries for battery recycling and that demonstrate the recycling of plastic EV battery accessory components. These Topic Areas will support the development of a domestic critical materials supply chain by ensuring that EV battery recycling is a financially viable endeavor.

There are two topic areas in this FOA:

• Topic Area 1: Improving the economics of transportation, dismantling, and preprocessing of electric drive vehicle batteries
• Topic Area 2: 2 Recycling of electric drive vehicle battery accessory component