• The Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, and Norway) have formed the Nordic Battery Collaboration since 2022, working to ensure sustainable, competitive and build an innovative battery ecosystem. Currently, the battery industry is experiencing a significant chasm, leading to delays and cancellations of battery factory projects within the EU. Nevertheless, the battery ecosystem will continue to expand to achieve the ambitious goal of carbon neutrality

• This presentation covers the expertise and global strategy of KCL, which possesses world-class capabilities in battery testing. It will first introduce KCL’s overall role and highlight its core testing competencies in the mobility sector, including battery safety evaluation and fire testing.
• Next, the presentation will showcase the Finland battery testing facility as a strategic European hub, illustrating how it strengthens collaboration with local companies and enhances global market responsiveness.
• Finally, it will provide a comprehensive overview of KCL’s strategies to expand technological capabilities in mobility, including PE(powertrain electrification) and cybersecurity.

• Norway, no.1 country in the world for EV penentration (96% in new vehicle registration now), is now aming to achieve 100% EV shift in 2025. Beyond Electric Vehicle, I would like to share the Norwegian experiences, which is leading green maritime to achieve carbon neutral initiative.

• Sweden offers a unique and competitive environment for battery innovation and production, combining industrial strengths, clean energy, and an advanced innovation ecosystem. By addressing supply chain gaps and fostering collaboration, Sweden is shaping the future of Europe’s battery industry while reinforcing sustainability and resilience on a global scale

• This presentation looks at how global politics and policy changes are making an impact on the battery industry. I focus on three key factors: the U.S.–China conflict, China’s relations with the European Union, and China’s growing ties with the Global South. Together, these international shifts are having a major impact on electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries, which are now seen as both an industrial technology and a strategic resource.
• In the United States, policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act promote local battery supply chains and aim to reduce reliance on China. While this supports domestic production and energy security, it also raises costs and creates challenges for global companies. The European Union combines strict environmental rules with trade defense measures against Chinese EVs. Europe seeks to build sustainable supply chains, but it still depends heavily on Chinese batteries.
• China, meanwhile, continues to lead in battery technology and production. Chinese companies like CATL and BYD are expanding abroad, investing in ASEAN, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. This global strategy helps China secure markets and respond to Western trade barriers.
• The result is a fragmented but highly competitive landscape. My talk will highlight how these Geopolitics trends may shape the future of global EV and battery competition.

• With the increasing penetration of renewable energy sources, the importance of Energy Storage Systems (ESS) in enhancing the stability and efficiency of power systems has been growing significantly. Since 2015, the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) has taken the initiative in deploying frequency regulation ESS and is currently operating approximately 1.4 GW of ESS capacity through subsequent projects. During system operation, various technical and operational challenges have been identified, among which fire safety and lifespan enhancement have emerged as major issues. To overcome these challenges, KEPCO has been actively pursuing research and development of advanced technologies and solutions. This presentation introduces the technologies and strategies aimed at enhancing the safety and lifespan of ESS by utilizing supercapacitors and batteries, in preparation for future power systems.

• Battery production continues to experience robust growth thanks to a consistently rising demand for EVs in China as well as an intensifying oversupply trend within the battery energy storage sector.
• The following topics might be discussed during the session:
  • EV sales: Growth in the new vehicle market will be driven by rising GDP growth, freight requirements, population growth and car ownership rates in emerging economies.
  ➢ EV sales growth will primarily be driven by increasing strictness of emission and fuel economy norms, availability of subsidies and purchase tax incentives in certain regions in the short-term, and dropping battery costs.
  ➢ Utilization rates of non-EV assembly plants will contribute to the rise in the electrification rate in China.
  ➢ We expect pressure from EU members will lead to additional flexibility provided for compliance with the in-place 2035 combustion engine ban.
  
  • Battery demand: The automotive sector will account for the bulk of rechargeable battery demand with sector-specific production rising in 2050. Rising EV penetration within larger vehicle segments will drive up weighted-average pack sizes in the short-to-medium term, driving up battery demand. Long-term, demand growth will be pulled back by lowering pack sizes with high penetration of solid-state chemistries.
  ➢ The storage sector will see production outpacing annual installations in the short term as producers attempt to maximise gigafactory utilisation rates and leverage low commodity prices to improve margins.
  ➢ Long-term sodium-ion demand and production will be driven by the tech’s competitive price which will reach parity with weighted-average Li-ion in the mid-2030s.
  
  • EV cathode chemistry adoption splits
  • ESS demand and chemistry trends: Increasing need for reliable uninterrupted power supply in the digital infrastructure sector as well as a push towards grid resilience will drive demand in the US.
  ➢ Fragmented policies and supply chain dependencies have slowed installations in Europe, but regulatory reforms and the EU’s binding renewable targets will accelerate uptake post-2025.
  ➢ China will see a rapid demand growth in the short-to-medium term on the back of renewable integration, grid upgrades, decarbonisation mandates and rising energy consumption. In the long-term, slowed new build of wind and solar facilities, an expected push to improve utilisation rates and expected redundancy after years of high-speed growth will slow cumulative installations growth, causing annual installations growth to drop and slow after 2034.
  
  • Demand of recycling batteries and capacity

• From Resource Recovery → Battery Material Production
   • Traditional Recycling (1.0): Simple extraction of metals (NiSO₄, Li₂CO₃, Co salts).
   • Innovative Recycling (2.0):
    o Direct precursor regeneration via co-precipitation.
    o Advanced impurity removal (Fe, Cr, F, etc.) to enable high-Ni and LFP chemistries.
    o Full integration: Raw material → Precursor → Cathode material.
• GEM Case Studies (Technical Achievements)
   • Case 1: Waste Batteries → Precursors
    o Recovery rates of Ni, Co, Li > 95%.
    o Precursor quality equivalent or superior to virgin feedstock.
    o Applicable to LFP, NCM, and NCA spent batteries.
   • Case 2: Hybrid Approach (Mining + Recycling Integration)
    o Leveraging both mining and recycling to maximize supply security.
   • Case 3: Carbon Footprint Reduction
     o Using recycled materials reduces CO₂ emissions by 30–50%

• This topic is about the ESS securing policy for energy transition of South Korea.
  Recently, Korea is pursuing an energy transition policy, and the share of renewable energy, particularly solar power, has been increased rapidly. Meanwhile, the intermittency of the renewable is led to increase strain on power system operations. Accordingly, the 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand outlined ESS capacity for power system stability.
  To secure the ESS in a timely and cost-effective manner, the ESS Forward Market was first introduced in 2023, with plans to expand in the future.

• At the forefront of battery innovation, SES AI’s platform Molecular Universe (MU) accelerates the development of next-generation batteries by combining material discovery, formulation, health diagnostics, and hardware applications into a unified AI-driven workflow. Traditional battery R&D cycles could take years, but MU compresses this to minutes using proprietary AI agents like ‘Deep Space’, which perform senior-scientist-level reasoning.
• MU-1, launched this October, marks a quantum leap compared to earlier versions. It provides complete ‘End-to-end material discovery’ capability, including literature research and solution recommendation (“Ask”), molecule search (“Map” and “Search”), formulation search (“Formulate”), and cell performance prediction (“Predict”). MU-1 has the potential to accelerate the battery material discovery process from years to just tens of minutes.
• Outperforming leading LLMs in battery-specific tasks, Molecular Universe (MU) stands as the most domain-specialized platform in the sector. Its ultimate goal is to enable seamless integration of software, materials, and products across industries such as EVs, drones, robotics, and ESS.

• 全球能源革命正以电池技术突破与产业链重构为双重引擎持续推进。作为动力电池产业的两大主导者，中韩两国占据全球86%的市场份额，形成"竞争筑壁垒，合作破困局"的动态格局。双方在技术迭代周期中既互为挑战者，又在供应链、标准体系构建中成为利益攸关方，其竞合策略的演进正重新定义全球新能源产业生态。
  未来十年中韩能否构建起"技术标准共同体-资源保障联合体-市场拓展协作体"的三位一体架构，将决定全球能源转型的最终图景。我将从以下几个角度来分析：
  一、 三维透视的竞合格局演化
  二、 生态共创的价值链革命
  三、 未来十年的范式突破与风险预判
• The global energy revolution is continuously advancing with breakthroughs in battery technology and the reconfiguration of the industrial chain. As the two leading players in the power battery industry, China and Korea hold 86% of the international market share, forming a dynamic pattern of "competition builds barriers, cooperation breaks deadlocks". In the cycle of technological iteration, they are both challengers to each other and stakeholders in the construction of supply chains and standard systems. The evolution of their competitive and cooperative strategies is redefining the global new energy industry ecosystem.
• Whether China and South Korea can build a three-in-one framework of "technical standard community - resource guarantee consortium - market expansion collaboration" in the next decade will determine the ultimate picture of the global energy transition. I will analyze it from the following perspectives:
  1. The evolution of the competitive and cooperative landscape in three-dimensional perspective
  2. The Value Chain Revolution of Ecological Co-creation
  3. Paradigm Breakthroughs and Risk Predictions in the Next Decade

• As a next generation of innovation, global leading manufacturing companies like LG Energy Solution are pursuing AI-Driven Manufacturing Revolution.
• With various journeys LG CNS - No. 1 DX/AX Service Provider in South Korea - have collaborated, the new paradigm will be explained in detail and proposed for the future direction.
• To be the final winner of next generation manufacturing competitions, LG manufacturing companies has implemented hyper-automation strategy to Dark Factory, which includes Facility Automation, Data-Driven Decision Making, and AI Quality Inspection. The presentation will contain real use cases of LG Energy Solution.

• 1.Global Trend
  2.Electrification Strategy
  3.Battery Technology

• LG Energy Solution (LGES) is leading the future energy industry by developing advanced automotive battery, mobility & IT battery, and ESS battery enterprises, which are key for the green energy transition. LGES strives to contribute to the upcoming era of eco-friendly energy by developing next-generation batteries with core technologies and intellectual property rights accumulated through proactive and continuous investment in R&D.
• In this talk, the technology development history of LGES will be introduced. Then the battery cell R&D strategies and some of the recent advances of LGES aimed at maintaining the competitiveness will be presented. Which will include material development aligned with our product strategy and process innovations such as dry electrode process. Finally, some of AI assisted diagnosis and prediction technologies and laboratory automation will be presented.

• Introduction to the growing need for silicon anode materials driven by evolving customer requirements in the lithium-ion battery industry, and an overview of the business competitiveness required to respond to these market changes from the perspective of a SiC silicon anode solution provider.

• This presentation highlights both the dominant global supply chain and the development of independently established proprietary cathode material technologies. Our business strategy, aimed at reducing dependence on specific countries in connection with the IRA, emphasizes autonomous innovation, material diversification, and sustainable production models. In this session, we introduce strategies to minimize regulatory risks by localizing materials with high dependence on PFE supply and operating the supply chain more efficiently through proprietary technologies. Notably, our world-first >90% NCMA technologies have already been recognized, and we have established an independent NCM-based value chain spanning upstream, precursor, cathode materials, and recycling. Furthermore, we are preparing to produce LFP cathode materials—previously dominated by PFE for the first time in Korea, based on Non-PFE technologies.
  Through these advancements, we will examine how competitiveness in energy density, safety, and cost efficiency can be secured, while also reinforcing the resilience of global supply chains from a geopolitical perspective. Finally, we will discuss pathways to scale these innovations commercially and strengthen long-term technological leadership in the battery materials sector.

Seunghyun Ko - Next-generation Graphite-based anode materials for Advanced EV Batteries

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