In the basement of a middle-class home in Jordan’s capital, a homemade energy storage system connects 20 reconditioned Tesla car battery modules to rooftop solar panels, meeting nearly all of the family’s electricity needs and keeping their lights on during power cuts.
“I installed this on my own, although I haven’t formally trained as an engineer. It’s really a hobby,” said the owner of the house, a middle-aged communications professional who asked not to be named.
“It’s cut my electricity bill to a small fraction of what it was,” he said, gesturing towards the stack of modules and inverters.
He bought the batteries from an auto repair shop in Amman that specialises in repairing and reconditioning Tesla batteries – a growing trade in Jordan, where electric vehicles (EVs) now account for more than half of total vehicle imports, according to data from the US International Trade Association.
Jordan’s transport sector accounts for more than a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it a focus of the government’s climate strategy, which seeks to cut emissions 31% by 2030.
But as climate-friendly tax breaks boost sales and help Jordan emerge as an EV leader in the Middle East, the country now faces a looming wave of end-of-life batteries and a lack of formal infrastructure to deal with them.
That is where people like auto repair shop owner Shadi Jameel are stepping in with an entrepreneurial solution.
New life for end-of-life batteries
Besides undertaking battery repair and maintenance in cars, Jameel’s workshop, located in Amman’s Al Bayader industrial area, also sells refurbished batteries to customers for usage in second-life applications such as mobile and stationary energy storage systems, like that installed by the homeowner in his basement.
“We work exclusively with Tesla batteries,” Jameel said, smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the bustling workshop. “We extend battery life and fix issues such as disconnection between modules and cells,” he said.
With about 150,000 EVs on Jordan’s roads this year, and sales forecast to keep growing in the years ahead, Jameel has plenty of supplies.
By 2035, Jordan will have nearly 200,000 depleted high-voltage lithium batteries from EVs alone, according to the Circularity Hub (C-Hub) for Spent EV Batteries. C-Hub was established in 2024 by the German Jordanian University with governmental support to study the issue and shape policies that will enable sustainable management of spent EV batteries and lead to economic growth.
In the meantime, however, there are no formal channels for depleted EV batteries to be recycled or reconditioned in the country of roughly 11 million people – leading to the involvement of a growing informal sector.
In the absence of formal training programmes in the country, many mechanics have taught themselves how to repair and recondition batteries.
“I learned from online videos and by talking to people in other countries that I work with,” Jameel said.
Safety worries
EV batteries that are classed as end-of-life may still retain up to 80% of their original capacity, according to the International Energy Agency, which means they can still be used in second-life applications, such as household energy storage.
“I’ve seen and heard of spent batteries being hooked up to solar systems or other local power setups, often at family farms or vacation homes in semi-remote areas,” said Fadwa Dababneh, C-Hub’s director.
As well as saving money on bills and reducing battery waste, using spent batteries for energy storage stabilises the electricity grid as Jordan aims to get half of its power from renewables by 2030, up from 29% today.
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But the current informal nature of most battery reconditioning raises safety concerns, Dababneh said.
“These setups are typically done by freelancers or hobbyists rather than specialists or businesses formally working in this space,” Dababneh said. “Because they’re informal, there’s limited visibility on how widespread or safe these practices are.”
Two battery-related explosions this year, one in a repair shop and the other during the transportation of a used battery, have spotlighted these risks. While no one was hurt, the explosions have spurred the Environment Ministry to focus on the looming spent-battery crisis.
Prolonging battery life
At the moment, depleted batteries are exported for recycling – mainly to China and Germany, said Mahmoud Zboon, head of the ministry’s Hazardous Waste Department. Otherwise, they can be sent to the sole hazardous waste landfill in the country, where they are held indefinitely.
In practice, many end up in regular landfills, posing environmental and health risks, including the leakage of toxic heavy metals into the soil and groundwater.
Ali Al-Zyoud, chief technology officer at ExelX, a company specialising in battery-regenerative technology, wants to change that.
“There is a lot of potential here in Jordan when it comes to lithium-ion batteries,” he said.
Headquartered in the UAE, ExelX’s centre in Amman works with Japan-based Battery Bank Systems and uses its technology for the diagnosis, charging, and maintenance of different types of batteries.
The technology prevents battery deterioration, restores cell balance and prolongs battery life.
Private sector challenges
According to Al-Zyoud, ExelX has extended the lifecycle of more than 500 Tesla batteries over the past three years.
“Battery replacement is expensive. A regenerated battery only costs 20% of the price of a new one. So this also offers financial benefits to EV owners,” he said, adding that Jordan urgently needs training programmes and collection centres to ensure safe battery storage and prevent dangerous disposal.
Zboon, the government official, said the private sector has been attempting to invest in the establishment of collection centres. But hefty initial investment needs and lack of standardisation in battery technology were challenges.
A strategic brief recently released by C-Hub proposed a robust battery-tracking and traceability system, saying that would enable formal private sector investment to capture value from the battery lifecycle.
Informal workshops should also be regulated and financial incentives would encourage that, Dababneh said.
“Bringing informal repair shops into the formal system would be very beneficial, particularly in terms of ensuring safety and quality,” she said.
The post Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries appeared first on Climate Home News.
Self-taught mechanics give second life to Jordan’s glut of spent EV batteries
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.