Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

As e-vehicles rise, the pile of spent lithium-ion batteries that once powered those cars and e-bikes is soon expected. The volumes being in millions, they end up in landfills. Recycling-infrastructure in India is inadequate at less than 5% recycling-rate. Recycling plants are economically not feasible today with low material recovery efficiencies; while they improve, we must evaluate reuse of discarded batteries in other applications delaying the recycling and avoid land dumping. Nunam has built a PoC to reuse spent batteries into clean, sustainable and affordable energy systems to citizens at the bottom of the pyramid in a circular economic model.

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Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Social and Economic Development of underprivileged population and women: Developing countries like India face issues with energy access, in 2020, 2.4% of Indian households still lacked access to electricity. For the rest of electrified India, 24X7 power supply is still a distant dream. Due to various grid utility issues, families in India face power cuts ranging from 4 to 15hours/day. Reliable energy access is key to a range of development indicators, including health, education, food security, gender equality, livelihoods and poverty reduction. Energy helps women be more efficient; usually, they walk long distances to fetch water, a water pump can do it, or collect firewood for cooking. Instead, when enabled with energy, they can earn by using for productive purposes, such as tailoring, crafts, etc., which brings additional income. Children can study at home with good lights, and youth will have more job opportunities as energy creates more local enterprises. Enabling clean energy access and affordable for all would have short- and long-term social and economic development. Solar energy can help overcome hardships but not viable due to expensive batteries. With our SLB‚ , these poor, underserved populations will have the opportunity to afford clean energy solutions. 

End dumping of toxic batteries: Today, Lithium batteries find their usage in every electronic gadget. Countries like India do not have a collection process to reuse or recycle these end of life batteries once they are discarded. Due to lack of processes and mechanisms, these toxic batteries will end up in landfills, agriculture fields, and water streams in the coming years. They are resulting in pollution of food and water sources. With Nunam‚ business model, where batteries will be repurposed in the end of life and add value to the e-waste, dumping can be avoided. 
End to child labour with reduced demand for mining: One of Lithium battery manufacturing's dark sides is the need for cobalt mined in unethical ways in D.R.Congo. Cobalt mining in D.R.Congo employs roughly 40000 children, where 10-year-old kids lug heavy sacks of cobalt to be washed in rivers, who would have started when they were 4 to pick it out of a pile. With our business model of recycling a viable business, demand for virgin cobalt can be reduced by recovering cobalt from the end of life batteries. 

Reduction in CO2 emissions in eco-sensitive regions: with affordable energy access using our solutions to remote and underdeveloped regions, we can potentially get rid of diesel gen-sets and kerosene lamps for energy light purposes. The CO2 emissions from these gensets are resulting in air pollution and destroying the local ecosystem. Our solutions are expected to reduce air pollution and protect the eco-sensitive regions.

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