From cars and trucks to buses and trains, electric vehicles are playing an increasingly vital role in decarbonizing mobility and reducing oil dependence. However, this transition brings with it a significant challenge: immense pressure on battery supply chains. As demand for EVs increases, consumer countries will need to develop and implement policies that address the environmental and social impacts of the supply chain, while ensuring a stable supply of these transition minerals.
A new report I co-authored that is released today by UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) outlines a framework for building a more responsible battery supply chain, drawing insights from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation (2023). This regulation is designed to reduce the carbon footprint of batteries, limit the use of hazardous materials, decrease reliance on raw materials from outside the EU, and promote high rates of collection, reuse, and recycling. By advancing a circular economy, it strengthens supply chain security, supports energy resilience, and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy.
The current battery supply chain faces several pressing challenges. Mining critical minerals can lead to human rights violations, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and soil degradation. Refining processes, particularly in countries with lax environmental regulations, emit greenhouse gases and toxic waste. In addition, many battery materials pass through complex global supply chains, making it difficult to trace their origins and ensure responsible sourcing due to lack of transparency and traceability. Finally, end-of-life management remains a pressing issue, as current recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are low and too many batteries end up in landfills or inefficient recycling systems.
Based on the EU’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation and the Critical Raw Materials Act, the report offers actionable recommendations for policymakers and industry leaders worldwide to address these battery supply chain challenges. Some key recommendations for government leaders include:
- Mandating transparency and traceability requirements for sourcing critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, through regulations and supply chain audits to ensure responsible mining practices and minimize human rights and environmental impacts
- Developing rules to minimize the environmental footprint of both domestic mineral processing and imported minerals, including limits on water usage, energy consumption, and pollutant emissions, as well as mandating the use of best available techniques.
- Implementing mandatory due diligence requirements aligned with international standards, ensuring they are integrated into supplier contracts for key transition minerals to identify and address social and environmental risks in battery production.
By drawing inspiration from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation, other jurisdictions can adapt and tailor these policies to fit their specific challenges. A unified approach within the major consumer countries to responsible battery sourcing, processing, and recycling can reduce environmental harm and ensure a fair and ethical transition to a clean energy future.
Access the full report here: A Policy Blueprint for Ensuring Sustainable Battery Supply Chains
This post was co-authored by CLEE Climate Fellow Shruti Sarode.
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, leading environmental justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, joins us to discuss her new book Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope.
In this deeply personal collection of essays, Flowers explores urgent political issues, from reproductive rights to the disenfranchisement of the rural poor, from food justice and gun violence to the history of infrastructure in the South where she grew up and still resides.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guest? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss “After the Raid,” an investigation by award-winning journalist and guest Jack Herrera, about one of the largest workplace ICE raids in US history, which upended the Panhandle town of Cactus, Texas.
ICE agents raided Swift meat company plants in six states on Dec. 12, 2006, arresting nearly 1,300 workers. In the tiny town of Cactus, 297 workers were arrested— about 10 percent of the town’s population.
Then later in the show, we’ll discuss the latest from the Trump administration, from the confirmation of Robert Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, to the proposed closure of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, to announced mass firings of government workers.
Joining us will be Chris Lehmann, DC Bureau chief for The Nation and author of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
Double shot of KALW for me today! First, on Your Call’s One Planet Series at 10am: how will the rising cost of home insurance, driven by worsening climate disasters, push up the costs of owning a home? In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away. Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative reporter at ProPublica and The New York Times, will discuss these trends.
Later in the show, we’ll examine the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency with Marianne Lavelle, an award winning reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, news organization Inside Climate News. According to Inside Climate News, employees tasked with overseeing environmental justice initiatives at the Environmental Protection Agency could be placed on immediate administrative leave, leaving them in limbo.
Then at 6pm PT, I’m hosting State of the Bay, where we’ll talk to UCSF doctors and scientists about the impact of uncertain federal funding on our public health and on the cutting edge research happening here in the Bay. Guests include Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, infectious disease doctor at UCSF, and Pamela Munster, Professor in the Department of Medicine in Hematology/Oncology at UCSF.
We’ll also discuss how the Rose Pak Democratic Club recently ended its affiliation with the Democratic Party. Joining us will be Jeremy Lee, President of the Rose Pak Democratic Club, and Ko Lyn Cheang, Asian American and Pacific Islander reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
And finally, we’ll hear from the director of the new film Underdogs, about how the human-dog bond transforms incarcerated people.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT for Your Call and then again at 6pm PT for State of the Bay. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll discuss a joint investigation by The Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab that reveals how US companies are exporting their hazardous industrial waste to Mexico and Canada, leaving our neighboring countries with all the health and environmental consequences. The U.S. companies are exporting over 1 million tons of hazardous waste annually, most of which is shipped to Mexico and Canada.
Joining us will be reporters:
- Erin McCormick, California-based reporter with The Guardian
- Verónica García de León, journalist with Quinto Elemento Lab
Then we’ll cover a move by the Trump administration officials to release significant amounts of water from two dams in California’s Central Valley, with Jessica Garrison, Northern California correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On Your Call’s Media Roundtable this morning, we’ll discuss the new FRONTLINE documentary “Trump’s Comeback.” The film examines key moments in Trump’s life and career, his lies about the result of the 2020 election, felony convictions, and his return to the Oval Office. Joining us will be the director/writer Michael Kirk.
Then later in the program we’ll look at the media coverage of ICE raids, Trump’s immigration crackdown, and the mass deportations happening across the country. Joining us to discuss will be:
- Uriel García, immigration reporter at the Texas Tribune
- Wendy Fry, Emmy-winning multimedia investigative journalist who reports on poverty and inequality for the California Divide team at CalMatters
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll have a conversation about why we should change our approach to fighting wildfires. In 2024, the Forest Service and Department of the Interior combined spent more than $4 billion on wildfire suppression, and only a little more than $700 million on preparedness. Wildland firefighter and writer Lazo Gitchos joins us to talk about these priorities and how they could change.
And we’ll also talk about the health effects of fire smoke on firefighters with Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call, we look ahead to the next four years under President Trump. Trump has provided some indications about his legislative priorities and what he might do…but what can individuals do in response? We’ll be joined by:
- Anand Giridharadas, author of The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (get a free trial subscription to his surstack newsletter, the Ink, by clicking here)
- Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible
We’ll also take your calls and questions about how to navigate the news cycle, stay involved in causes, and make a difference.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call One Planet Series, we’ll discuss a New York Times / Fuller Project investigation about human rights abuses in India’s Sugar Industry.
The investigation reveales that household-name companies and Indian politicians profit off a brutal system that forces children to work, pushes them into underage marriages and coerces women to get unnecessary hysterectomies to keep them working in the fields, unencumbered by menstruation or routine ailments.
Joining us will be Megha Rajagopalan, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative correspondent for the New York Times.
Then later in the show, we’ll discuss US imperial ambitions in Greenland. In his latest article In These Times, journalist and guest Adam Federman, reporting fellow with Type Investigations and author of “Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray,” writes that in recent years, both Democratic and Republican administrations have cast Greenland as central to U.S. security in the Arctic and squarely within America’s sphere of influence.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss a recent investigation about how a deceptive PR strategy pioneered in 1950s California first exposed the risk of climate change and then helped the industry deny it. Joining us will be Rebecca John, investigative climate journalist and research Fellow at the Climate Investigations Center.
We also talk about the news media coverage of the devastating LA fires, and the fossil fuel industry’s efforts in California to kill a bill that would have forced major fossil fuel companies to contribute to a fund, which would pay for climate disasters. Aaron Cantu, award-winning investigative journalist covering gas and oil in California for the Capital & Main, will describe the details.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
