The global commitment to decarbonizing the transport sector has resulted in an unabated growth in the markets for electric vehicles and their batteries. Consequently, the demand for battery raw materials is continuously growing. As an illustration, to meet the net-zero emissions targets, the electric vehicle market demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite will increase 26-times, 6-times, 12-times, and 9-times respectively between 2021 and 2050. There are diverse challenges in meeting this demand, requiring the world to embrace technological and knowledge advancements and new investments without provoking conflicts between competing goals. The uncertainties in a sustainable supply of battery minerals, environmental, social and governance complexities, and geopolitical tensions throughout the whole battery value chain have shaped the global and regional concerns over the success of transport decarbonization. Here, focusing on the entire value chain of electric vehicle batteries, the approaches adopted by regulatory agencies, governments, mining companies, vehicle and battery manufacturers, and all the other stakeholders are evaluated. Bringing together all these aspects, this literature review broadens the scope for providing multifaceted solutions necessary to optimize the goal of transport decarbonization while upholding sustainability criteria. Consolidating the previously fragmented information, a solid foundation for more in-depth research on existing difficulties encountered by governmental and industrial actors is created. The outcomes of this study may serve as a baseline to develop a framework for a climate smart and resource efficient supply of batteries considering the unique impacts of individual players.

A global transition from the current “brown economy” to a “green economy” has been perceived as an ineluctable carbon neutrality strategy to deal with climate change and its global devastating impacts. This global ambition of green economy necessitates large-scale electrification which imposes growing demand for lithium-ion batteries as state-of-the-art energy storage technologies. Thereupon, the developing market of batteries reinforces the concern over the resilient and consistent supply of battery raw materials. By the reason of the interdependencies of all the stages involved in a value chain of a battery, it is critical to identify the battery material supply-disruptive risks and uncertainties, and subsequently to analyze the impacts of the perpetuation of the supply issues on the future market of batteries. In this research study, to contribute to these processes necessary for overcoming the ongoing supply sustainability challenges, the focus is on lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt, which are among the battery raw materials with high supply risks. After analyzing and categorizing the driving forces behind the historical and current bottlenecks to their mining production, the regional and global mining production of those battery materials have been predicted for twenty years ahead using three time series forecasting techniques including Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average, Holt's linear trend, and Holt-Winters’ methods. Forecasting possible future production trends of those battery raw materials is indisputably imperative to resolve planning strategies while dealing with uncertainties and supply risks. Reliable supply forecasting results provide more uncertainty and risk management achievements since the stakeholders and policymakers can use the outcomes as a source of information in the decision-making process at any stage of a lithium-ion battery value chain.