On 3 December, CIRCUBATT will host a full day on sustainable batteries at CARE INNOVATION 2026 in Vienna. The morning brings six talks from our consortium. In the afternoon, we open the doors to sister projects in a clustering event, and there is still room to join.
Batteries sit at the heart of Europe’s energy transition. Yet every stage of their life raises its own questions. How can we make them with less harmful chemistry? How do we recover their materials? And when does it make more sense to give a battery a second life instead? This day brings those questions, and the people working on them, into one room.
What is Going Green CARE INNOVATION 2026?
Going Green CARE INNOVATION is one of the oldest conference series on circular economy in electronics, automotive and other high tech sectors. These are two of the fields where sustainable batteries matter most. The 2026 edition runs from 1 to 3 December at the ARCOTEL Wimberger in Vienna.
The programme features more than 140 presentations, mostly from industry experts. Speakers come from companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Philips. As a result, the conference is a rare meeting point where researchers and the companies that will use their results sit side by side.
This year’s guiding question is “Circular Economy: key for Resilience and the Clean Industrial Deal?”. The Clean Industrial Deal is the European Commission’s plan to make decarbonisation a driver of industrial competitiveness. Circularity is one of its building blocks: keeping materials in use for longer, so that Europe depends less on imported raw materials.
The CIRCUBATT session at CARE INNOVATION 2026
Our dissemination session takes place on 3 December, from 08.30 to 10.30 CET. After a short introduction to the project, six partners will present their work. Together, the talks follow a battery through its whole life: how it is made, how it is recycled, what new materials come out of it, and how it can earn a second career.
Making and recycling batteries more sustainably
The first talk looks at how batteries are made. MEET Battery Research Center at the University of Münster will present ways to make electrode production more sustainable from a materials and processing perspective. This matters because many manufacturers still rely on N methyl pyrrolidone (NMP), a toxic solvent, to produce cathodes. A recent review in RSC Sustainability notes that water based electrodes can need around ten times less energy to produce.
Next comes recycling chemistry. The National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana will present a selective, two step process for recycling LFP cathodes with deep eutectic solvents. These are mixtures of simple ingredients that become liquid at much lower temperatures than their individual parts. Researchers are studying them as a greener alternative to conventional chemical recycling, because they can dissolve battery metals under milder conditions.
The third talk closes the loop. Shift Materials will show how recycled lithium and iron phosphate can become new LFP and LMFP cathode materials made for Europe. Manufacturers widely use LFP, or lithium iron phosphate, in electric vehicles and energy storage. LMFP adds manganese to the same structure, which raises the battery’s operating voltage and energy density.
Cost, climate and a second life for batteries
Then the focus turns to cost and climate impact. Battronics will share a cost assessment and life cycle analysis of lithium-ion battery recycling. The two views belong together, because the cheapest recycling route is not always the cleanest one. Our Environmental and Economic Impact Report shows how strongly the local electricity grid shapes that balance.
The fifth talk is about second life. The University of Greenwich, which coordinates CIRCUBATT, will present a data driven tool that plans how second life EV batteries support the electricity grid. Crucially, it takes battery ageing into account, so the battery earns its keep without wearing out too quickly. The team built the tool for a Battery as a Service model, which we explain in our plain language guide to Battery as a Service.
Finally, the University of Essex will report on the project’s pilots of Battery as a Service and Data as a Service. In the first model, customers pay for the energy service instead of owning the battery. In the second, information on how a battery is used and how healthy it is becomes a service in its own right. That information helps decide whether a battery should be reused, repaired or recycled.
A clustering event on sustainable batteries
From 11.00 to 16.00 CET, CIRCUBATT will host a clustering event on “Sustainable Batteries: disruptive technologies and a competitive edge across the full value chain”. In Horizon Europe, clustering means that projects working on related challenges share results, compare approaches and avoid duplicating work. In practice, it is one of the fastest ways for research to reach the people who can use it.
So far, seven projects have confirmed their participation alongside CIRCUBATT: BATTwin, BeyondBattRec, INERRANT, MaaSiveTwin, RISBAT, THOR and ReUse. The BatteryHeroes cluster will also take part. Between them, these projects cover battery design, digital twins, testing, preprocessing, recycling and reuse.
How to join us at CARE INNOVATION 2026
The clustering event is still open to additional projects and experts working on sustainable batteries. If you would like to take part, contact Bernd Kopacek at bernd.kopacek@isl-group.at. Details on conference registration are available on the CARE INNOVATION registration page.
We look forward to meeting you in Vienna. In the meantime, find out more about how CIRCUBATT works in our frequently asked questions.