The circularity curve on this dashboard illustrates the share of battery-material demand that could be met by recycled (secondary) material over time. It is an indicative projection built on three anchor points, with the years in between interpolated for illustration.

Start point (2025, ~5%). Recycling currently supplies a low single-digit share of global battery-metal demand. Fastmarkets estimated that in 2023, recycling provided around 5% of cobalt, 6% of lithium (LCE) and 1% of nickel supplied to the market, with less than 5% of total battery-metal production coming from recycled sources.¹ We take ~5% as a blended starting level.

End point (2050, ~20–30%). The International Energy Agency projects that battery recycling could meet 20–30% of lithium, nickel and cobalt demand by 2050 under its Announced Pledges Scenario, depending on collection rates.²

Curve shape. Recycled supply grows slowly through the 2020s and accelerates after 2030, as the first large wave of EV and storage batteries reaches end of life and overtakes manufacturing scrap as the dominant recycling feedstock.²

The year-by-year percentages between these anchors are interpolated by this page for illustration and are not published figures. Recycled-supply shares vary significantly by metal; cobalt runs well ahead of lithium and nickel.