@proceedings{Pen2022,
Author = {Penaherrera, Fernando; Davila, Maria; Pehlken, Alexandra; Koch, Björn},
Title = {Quantifying the Environmental Impacts of Battery Electric Vehicles from a Criticality Perspective},

Year = {2022},
Series = {28th International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation},
Organization = {IEEE ITMC},
type = {proceedings},
Abstract = {The transportation sector is facing a radical socioeconomic
and socio-ecological transition due to the energy shift
from fossil-fuel-based vehicles for the reduction of emissions.
Electric vehicles have become the most promising alternative
to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV). Within them,
battery electric vehicles (BEV) appear to be the chosen technological
solution. Most BEV use Lithium-ion batteries because
of their properties. This has increased the demand for such
batteries exponentially, and consequently for the raw materials
to manufacture them. To assess the sustainability of this shift
holistic analyses are required. The environmental sustainability
of BEV has been widely discussed, mainly using Life Cycle
Assessments (LCA). Nevertheless, LCA runs short in providing a
holistic assessment. The indicator recommended by the European
Commission for evaluation or resource depletion, the Abiotic
Depletion Potential (ADP), is insufficient to track the impact of
critical resource consumption. Current Life Cycle Impact Assessment
methods are insufficient to provide information to decisionmakers
about the impacts of electromobility when discussing
critical material consumption. To address this gap, this paper
presents a solution by applying a set of indicators which considers
criticality of materials. It uses two methods to characterize the
consumption of critical raw material: the Criticality Weighted
ADP for the Economic Importance (CWADP) and the weighted
GeoPolitical-related Supply Risk (GeoPolRisk/P). To exhibit the
functionality of these methods, a case study is presented for
transportation of passenger cars, including ICEV, and three types
of BEV, with three different types of lithium-ion batteries (NMC,
LFP and LMO). The results show how including criticality of
raw materials in the impact assessment methods changes the
outcome of the analysis on whether BEV are an environmentally
sustainable alternative to ICEV. The CWADP and the weighted
GeoPolRisk methods show that battery electric vehicles have a
higher consumption of critical raw materials and its impact.
While battery electric vehicles present a reduction of greenhouse
gas emissions of up to 77% per km of transportation, the use
of economically important critical materials is increased up to
210%, and the use of critical materials with supply risk is
increased up to 163%. The increased use of critical materials
could cause potential problems with concurring markets for use
of precious metals and demonstrate raw material supply chain
bottlenecks for the case of lithium and cobalt.}
}
@COMMENT{Bibtex file generated on }