Total collapse: Why have Western battery industries failed to compete with China?

In agony, Ascend Elements finally waited for its last straw—the U.S. presidential election. Trump’s stance was essentially: ‘You took money from Sleepy Joe—what does that have to do with me, the Truthful One?’ In October 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy unilaterally canceled $316 million in subsidies yet to be disbursed, completely severing Ascend’s funding lifeline and extinguishing its final glimmer of hope. This unicorn—once hailed as a beacon of hope—ultimately became a casualty of America’s hard landing in its ‘de-China-ification’ campaign. CANARY MEDIA, a prominent U.S. clean-energy publication, penned Ascend’s epitaph: “Venture capitalists funded a cohort of modern alchemists who boasted they could process spent batteries faster and cheaper—recovering nearly 100% of valuable materials to resell back into the supply chain… But when it came time for commercial deployment, these alchemists couldn’t deliver. Instead, they kept scaling back their ambitions—until they collapsed entirely.” II. “The Battery Graveyard” Ascend Elements’ failure appears sudden—but it was, in fact, cursed by a grim axiom: “Whoever tries to outcompete China in batteries will die.” Consider Li-Cycle—the former so-called “first battery-recycling IPO.” Leveraging hydrometallurgical processing, it claimed theoretical lithium-ion battery material recovery rates exceeding 95%. It also pioneered a “hub-and-spoke” production model: building small, decentralized facilities across the country to dismantle and crush old batteries into non-hazardous “black mass,” then shipping that material to centralized hydrometallurgical refineries—slashing transport costs significantly. Under President Biden (“Sleepy Joe”), Li-Cycle was a flagship beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), entrusted with building a North American battery-materials circular economy independent of Chinese smelting capacity. At its peak, its valuation exceeded $2 billion; it raised $1.1 billion in total funding and secured a $475 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. Yet Li-Cycle’s demise mirrored Ascend Elements’—pixel-perfect replication. First, core plant construction costs ballooned far beyond budget and timelines dragged on interminably: originally slated to cost $1 billion, the project required an additional $480 million just to reach commissioning. Compounding this, plummeting lithium prices erased any cost advantage for recycling—rendering its business model untenable. As performance deteriorated, the Department of Energy—sensing trouble—pulled the plug on its loan commitment, leaving Li-Cycle cashless. Li-Cycle died in May 2025. Then there’s Powin Energy—the former third-largest U.S. energy storage system integrator. It offered both grid-scale and residential storage solutions, widely viewed as a benchmark for U.S. energy storage independence from China. At its zenith, it held a robust pipeline of domestic U.S. storage orders, was deeply aligned with U.S. clean-energy policy—and even announced global expansion, signing major projects across Australia, Europe, and Latin America. But when the U.S. government imposed a 145% tariff on imported battery cells, Powin Energy immediately plunged into crisis—because it only integrated systems; it didn’t manufacture cells. Over 90% of its cells were sourced from Chinese suppliers including CATL and EVE Energy.

Lithium-ion battery recycling: Market dynamics and innovation trends toward a green future

1. Addressing cost and safety challenges through recycling innovation Battery recycling faces a host of complex challenges—including operational efficiency, safety risks, regulatory compliance, and environmental impact. A primary challenge lies in the vast diversity—and constant evolution—of battery formats, designs, compositions, and chemistries, rendering recycling processes highly intricate and necessitating specialized technologies. Moreover, because batteries contain toxic and flammable substances, recycling operations tend to be energy-intensive and require costly safety measures. To tackle these challenges, governments have begun allocating funding for battery recycling. In 2022, the U.S. enacted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars to support research, development, and demonstration projects for electric vehicle battery recycling and second-life applications. In 2021, the European Commission approved a €2.9 billion ($3.5 billion) funding initiative to advance pan-European battery value-chain research and innovation. Venture investment in battery recycling startups is also surging: in 2023, such startups raised $4.5 billion—double the amount raised the previous year. Investors include battery manufacturers, refiners, mining giants, and automakers. Innovation efforts and emerging technologies focus on boosting metal recovery rates while enhancing the economic viability and sustainability of recycling processes. According to the International Energy Agency, maturity levels vary significantly across recycling technologies (Figure 19)[46]. For instance, direct recycling preserves functional material structures and chemical compositions—reducing both energy and environmental costs. Ascend Elements pioneered a novel battery recycling process that abandons traditional crushing and smelting in favor of dissolving battery minerals using acidic reagents to recover high-value metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium. Ascend operates facilities in Georgia and Massachusetts and plans a $1 billion new plant in Kentucky. Deep eutectic solvents (DES) and bioleaching represent promising new approaches still in early development stages. Although hydrometallurgy consumes less energy than pyrometallurgy, its acidic leaching agents are typically toxic and corrosive. By contrast, DES offers a greener alternative to conventional acids in hydrometallurgy—characterized by low toxicity, tunable composition, redox activity, and reusability[47]. Studies show that adding only trace amounts of reagents enables selective metal precipitation from leachates—and that DES can be reused across multiple leaching cycles, drastically reducing solvent waste. However, despite its promising prospects, DES faces practical limitations—including relatively high cost, compositional complexity, and unresolved questions about long-term reusability[48]. Bioleaching (or biomining) represents another emerging alternative. Though currently lagging behind pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy in published research volume, bioleaching leverages microorganisms to extract high-value metals—offering substantial potential for both application scalability and environmental benefits[49]. This method could reduce dependence on energy-intensive pyro- and hydrometallurgical processes.

R3 Lithium acquires, restarts Ascend Elements lithium recycling facility in Georgia

2 days ago

R3 Lithium restarted an acquired Ascend Elements lithium recycling facility in Georgia following a $15 million Series A funding round. The company projects the site will account for over 50% of US lithium carbonate production by 2027.

chemweek

2026-09-18

R3 Lithium acquires, restarts Ascend Elements lithium recycling facility in Georgia

R3 Lithium acquires, restarts Ascend Elements lithium recycling facility in Georgia

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