China Drafts EV Battery Recycling Regulations, Eyes 1M Tons by 2030

China plans to strengthen regulation of EV battery recycling, with a target of processing more than 1 million metric tons of retired power batteries a year by 2030.

The State Council Information Office held a press conference on Aug. 26 as part of a series focused on the launch of the 15th Five-Year Plan, covering 2026-2030.

Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, said China will study and draft administrative regulations on the recycling and utilization of power batteries for new-energy vehicles during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

China will also launch joint enforcement campaigns across government departments, while introducing a digital ID system for power batteries. The system is designed to make each battery’s source traceable and its destination trackable.

China aims to process more than 1 million metric tons of retired power batteries by 2030, Xin said.

The move will further tighten oversight of EV battery recycling, pushing retired batteries toward large-scale, standardized utilization.

The need for battery recycling is becoming more urgent. By the end of 2025, China had 43.97M new-energy vehicles on the road, accounting for 12.1% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. As early NEVs enter battery retirement cycles, the battery recycling market is expected to see large-scale growth.

In general, power batteries enter the retirement stage once their capacity falls below 80% of rated capacity, making them less suitable for normal use.

China’s NEV market is also still expanding rapidly. In July 2026, new-energy passenger vehicles reached a retail penetration rate of 65.1%, up 11.6 percentage points from a year earlier and up 2.1 percentage points from June.

New-energy passenger vehicle retail sales reached 5.668M units in the first seven months of the year. The number of power batteries entering retirement will therefore continue to rise.

China’s battery recycling sector has also faced irregular practices, including unauthorized sales of used batteries, illegal dismantling, environmental pollution, and weak enforcement of traceability responsibilities.

In May, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for deeper joint enforcement campaigns targeting the recycling and utilization of used power batteries. Authorities were instructed to investigate and punish violations in accordance with the law.

The proposed battery “digital ID” system would extend oversight across the full life cycle of power batteries. Through digital traceability, regulators will be able to track batteries from production and use through retirement, recycling and utilization.

Battery recycling is not only an environmental issue for the NEV industry. It also affects the recycling of key resources such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.

According to estimates from ChinaEV100, a leading Chinese research institution focused on the NEV industry, recycled lithium, cobalt and nickel output could account for about 8%, 25% and 21%, respectively, of the total metal volumes required for China’s power batteries by 2030.