Battery use in Scotland now and in the future

Scotland’s world-leading targets to help end the climate crisis include fuelling half of Scotland’s heat, transport and electricity demand from renewable sources by 2030. Achieving this rapid transition from fossil fuel producer and consumer to global pioneer of green power will involve a huge transformation of our energy systems.

As we transition to a low carbon economy, batteries will play an increasingly important and welcome role in our transport and energy sectors. 

This research is the result of an important new collaboration between Zero Waste Scotland, Transport Scotland and Scottish Enterprise to assess the issues and opportunities for Scotland which batteries present. It recognises that future policy decisions will affect the growth in battery use and production in Scotland, and their wider environmental and economic impact.

• Provide a detailed picture of current battery use in Scotland;
• Give short to medium-term projections for how that will develop, including specific electric vehicle battery projections; 
• Make recommendations for future policy/ regulation considerations to improve the sustainability and support a greater level of circularity across the entire battery life cycle.

• Updating the existing Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for batteries giving manufacturers a greater duty to minimise waste and associated emissions;
• Introducing battery recycling targets and carbon footprint declarations to discourage waste;
• Designing new batteries with end-of-life in mind so they are easy to disassemble for re-use.

This report was commissioned and funded by Transport Scotland in October 2021 and awarded to Oakdene Hollins in February 2022. This predates Zero Waste Scotland current research processes but aimed to build upon the evidence outlined in prior Zero Waste Scotland commissioned outputs on batteries. Publication led by Transport Scotland was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances.

Zero Waste Scotland, with permission from both Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government, is publishing this report now to support Transport Scotland.

This is a historical report, Zero Waste Scotland is not responsible for any time bound changes to data or values following this reports completion in December 2022. Previous Zero Waste Scotland research relating to batteries can be found here.