Beyond the Charge

Batteries and recycling usage are generally seen as positive developments in the quest to curb the environmental harm caused by fossil fuels. But that perspective can be short-sighted, as with the use of lead-acid batteries in developing countries. Such batteries, commonly used to power small vehicles, tend to be widely used because they support electrification and mobility and can be recycled.

But this Q&A with Erica Plambeck and Nishant K. Verma reveals that, due to irresponsible recycling practices, battery technology is not the panacea people may perceive it as. Plambeck – a professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business – says recycling such batteries, such as the commonly used lead-acid battery, can be problematic when done irresponsibly, leading to large lead emissions and significant public health crises in developing countries. 

Verma, an associate professor of production and operations management at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, researches product reusability, supply risk, and EV battery operations. He points out the importance of considering the entire life cycle of batteries across their production, use, and recycling, as each stage may have unanticipated negative consequences.

Q. Erica, you have worked on batteries from sustainability, policy, and public health perspectives. Could you briefly tell us about your research journey, especially regarding your work on lead-acid batteries?

Erica: My work on batteries emerged from a collaboration with a Stanford Medical School professor, an environmental PhD student, and a public health organization in Bangladesh. We wanted to understand the causes of the public health crisis of widespread lead exposure in Bangladesh and other developing countries and develop solutions. 

Lead-acid batteries are widely used in Bangladesh because they are cheap, the technology is long-established, and they support electrification and mobility, particularly by powering two- and three-wheelers in Bangladesh and other developing countries. Large lead emissions occur due to the irresponsible recycling of used lead-acid batteries. Lead emissions also occur in battery manufacturing. 

“The biggest lesson is that a technology can look beneficial at the point of use but be extremely harmful across its lifecycle if governance is weak.”

Lead exposure is a major public health issue, especially in developing countries. It causes permanent brain damage, especially in children. Lead exposure also causes cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, reproductive problems, and many other ailments. For cardiovascular disease alone, lead exposure may be causing more premature deaths annually than malaria. 

My research aims to use business model and policy innovation to increase the life of lead-acid batteries by reducing the rate of recycling and to create economic incentives for responsible recycling, especially in smelting. This can be accomplished through tariffs and subsidies in a manner that generates positive net revenue for governments and promotes a shift toward advanced lead-free batteries over time.

Q. Your work shows that lead-acid batteries can support development but also create serious environmental and health harms. What are the core lessons from the lead-acid battery ecosystem?

Erica: The biggest lesson is that a technology can look beneficial at the point of use but be extremely harmful across its life cycle if governance is weak. 

In the case of lead-acid batteries, recycling is widespread because lead is valuable, but much of it happens in an unsafe, irresponsible manner so as to cut costs. This releases fine particulate lead into the environment, which can travel long distances and cause widespread contamination. So, the impacts are local but may also be regional or trans-national. No level of lead exposure is safe. 

Another important lesson is that even a 100% recycling rate does not automatically mean safe or sustainable outcomes. Without proper regulation or incentives, high recycling activity can still lead to severe environmental and health damage.

Q. Electric mobility is often presented as a sustainable solution, but when we take a full life cycle view, that claim becomes more complicated. In your view, where does the sustainability narrative around EVs fall short?

Erica: The sustainability narrative often focuses too much on the use phase, reducing emissions during operation while ignoring upstream and downstream impacts. What the lead-acid case teaches us is that life cycle matters. If we do not properly manage production, recycling, and disposal, we risk shifting environmental harm rather than eliminating it. 

So, the key gap is that we are not paying enough attention to how battery systems are governed across their entire life cycle, especially in regions where regulatory capacity is limited. 

Q. If you were advising policymakers in emerging economies, what kind of battery policy framework would you prioritize so we do not repeat the harms seen in the lead-acid sector?

Erica: If society continues to use lead-acid batteries, we must change practices to reduce emissions from smelting lead scrap, which currently has extremely high emissions. Governments must ensure that recycling occurs in facilities that have low emissions and are properly regulated, which requires a tax and subsidy scheme to support a low-emission recycler. 

A solution is to substitute non-toxic alternatives for lead-acid batteries. While transitioning to advanced lead-free batteries, which may occur due to market forces alone, government action is needed to discourage people from dumping excess used lead-acid batteries when the demand for lead drops. It is not enough to rely on market incentives alone. 

“Without proper regulation or incentives, high recycling activity can still lead to severe environmental and health damage.”

Another important aspect is international coordination. For example, there are opportunities to export used lead-acid batteries to countries with facilities that handle them responsibly, but that requires good data and policy alignment across countries.

Q. What are the core sustainability challenges associated with lithium-ion batteries today? How are they different from lead-acid batteries.

Erica: Lithium-ion batteries have the potential for fires and explosions, particularly with low-quality cells in a setting with weak consumer protections. 

High-quality lithium-ion batteries have higher up-front cost and longer useful life than lead-acid batteries. In a developing country with weak consumer protection, clever new business models are needed to raise consumer trust and willingness and their ability to pay for these batteries. One solution that we have developed is obtaining a loan from a microfinance organization with a duration that matches the promised battery life, which functions as a signaling mechanism of quality and durability. Government tariff and subsidy policies can also influence the demand for lead-acid versus lithium-ion batteries.

Q. Nishant, your work is among the early contributions that adopt a life cycle perspective on lithium-ion batteries and EV policy design. Could you briefly share your research journey and what drew you to this space?

Nishant: I, along with my research collaborators, was following the EV space regularly back in the early 2020s. We were always intrigued by the core element of these vehicles – the batteries. We wanted to deeply understand the engineering dynamics of EV batteries without having any research agenda in our minds. 

We started interacting with battery scientists to understand the nature of such batteries. In doing so, we discovered the fascinating life cycle of a battery, which is beyond its useful life in an EV. This was the triggering moment from which we started exploring the life cycle perspective of a battery. This is not only relevant from a firm’s point of view, but also from a regulator’s viewpoint. 

Q. Lithium-ion batteries are widely regarded as the backbone of electric mobility and energy storage. At the same time, the technology landscape is evolving rapidly, with chemistries such as NMC, LFP, and emerging solid-state batteries. How  do you view this pace of technological development, particularly in terms of innovation, uncertainty, and the risk of technological obsolescence?

Nishant: This is a very valid question to ask. The technology clock speed right now is quite fast. The implication of such an evolving but unstable technological development poses unique challenges for both firms and regulators. For example, the clear difference between the value proposition of an LFP and an NMC battery back in the day meant clarity in adoption. If range and energy density are the priority, NMC was a better choice compared to LFP, which was a cheaper option with relatively lower performance. However, just in the past few years, 
LFP technology has improved considerably, bridging the gap in performance and durability. 

From a firm’s perspective, not only does it have to carefully choose battery technology based on the customer segment in focus, but it also has to keep in mind the supply chain considerations, such as the supply risk. The chemistry changes with the battery technology, which in turn changes the raw material requirements drastically. Furthermore, the capex risk is high, since factories, cathode lines, supplier contracts, and recycling systems are chemistry-specific. 

From a regulator’s perspective, staying open to the technology developments will help. This means that regulators have to be flexible in their policy design to support or not support certain technologies based on real-time developments. They must also keep in mind that battery technology has an impact starting from the downstream-most entity of the supply chain (vehicle manufacturers and sellers) to the upstream-most entity (mining sector). This enables policy design to be more global than local. Finally, the lifecycle perspective becomes very important when the technologies are evolving in such a fast-paced manner. 

Q. There is growing emphasis on policy tools such as extended producer responsibility (EPR), recycling mandates, and minimum recycled content requirements in new battery manufacturing. From your perspective, are current policy frameworks sufficient to ensure a sustainable lithium-ion ecosystem, or do you see important gaps in their design and enforcement?

Nishant: These are indeed very good developments toward creating a sustainable battery ecosystem. However, the challenges are not new and are the ones that are typically associated with EPR policies. These include: 

• Implementation bottleneck: While targets are well defined, implementing recycling and reuse mandates requires a very robust reverse logistics ecosystem. This is even more challenging, since we are talking about the products (batteries and EVs) whose supply chains have not matured so far.
• Traceability and auditable data: While the battery passport framework is indeed going to help, it is yet to be seen how much granularity of data can be traced in the near future. Moreover, the reliability of the data is also going to be a key issue here.
• Technology shifts: Ever-evolving battery technologies are going to pose challenges in stabilizing the architecture of such a data structure, which is going to be key in implementing these mandates. 

We must note that these challenges are going to get accentuated in the developing economies even more, where the presence of the informal sector is going to make it very hard to implement 
any such initiatives. There is growing interest in battery passports and digital traceability systems. 

Q. From an operational standpoint, what do you see as the biggest challenges in making these systems work? 

Erica: In principle, tracking systems like battery passports can play a very important role in improving transparency and accountability across the life cycle. 

But the challenge is implementation. You need systems that can reliably track batteries across multiple stages, production, use, reuse, and recycling, and across different actors and geographies. There is also a need to ensure data quality and compliance. Without proper enforcement and incentives, these systems may exist on paper, but they may not function effectively in practice. 

Nishant: With lithium-ion batteries, we are already struggling with consistent data capture and life cycle tracking. With emerging technologies, such as solid-state batteries, the challenge intensifies because the ecosystem itself is still evolving. From an operational perspective, the biggest concern is that traceability systems may lag behind technological innovation. Firms may adopt new chemistries faster than standards and tracking systems can adapt, leading to gaps in visibility and accountability. 

This suggests that policymakers and firms need to think of battery passports not only as fixed compliance tools, but also as adaptive systems that evolve alongside technology.

References 

Plambeck, E., Wang, Q., Kundu, A., 2026, “How to Reduce Lead Emissions from a Lead-Acid Battery Circular Economy with Formal and Informal Processes,” Stanford Business Graduate School, Working Paper No. 4317, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/how-reduce-lead-emissions-lead-acid-battery-circular-economy-formal. 

Singh, N.K., Verma, N.K., & Kumar, M., 2026, “Understanding a battery's environmental footprint across its lifecycle: Should governments support the development of battery management systems?” Decision Sciences, 57, 256–276. https://doi.org/10.1111/deci.70029. 

Singh, N.K., Kumar M., Verma, N.K., 2023, “From Electric Vehicles to Electric Vehicle Batteries: A Pivotal Shift in Focus of Policymakers,” Forbes India, https://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/from-electric-vehicles-to-electric-vehicle-batteries-a-pivotal-shift-in-focus-of-policymakers/89513/1. 

Verma, R., Singh, N.K., Verma, N.K., Kumar, M., 2024, “Crucial Role of Inspection in Utilising Electric Vehicle Batteries,” Forbes India, https://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/crucial-role-of-inspection-in-utilising-electric-vehicle-batteries/94854/1.