Geopolitical-related supply risk assessment as a complement to environmental impact assessment: the case of electric vehicles

Abstract

Purpose Introducing a geopolitical-related supply risk (GeoPolRisk) into the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) framework adds a criticality aspect to the current life cycle assessment (LCA) framework to more meaningfully address direct impacts on Natural Resource AoP. The weakness of resource indicators in LCA has been the topic of discussion within the life cycle community for some time. This paper presents a case study on how to proceed towards the integration of resource criticality assessment into LCA under the LCSA. The paper aims at highlighting the significance of introducing the GeoPolRisk indicator to complement and extend the established environmental LCA impact categories. Methods A newly developed GeoPolRisk indicator proposed by Gemechu et al., J Ind Ecol (2015) was applied to metals used in the life cycle of an electric vehicle, and the results are compared with an attributional LCA of the same resources. The inventory data is based on the publication by Hawkins et al., J Ind Ecol 17:53-64 (2013), which provides a current, transparent, and detailed life cycle inventory data of a European representative first-generation battery small electric vehicle. Results and discussion From the 14 investigated metals, copper, aluminum, and steel are the most dominant elements that pose high environmental impacts. On the other hand, magnesium and neodymium show relatively higher supply risk when geopolitical elements are considered. While, the environmental indicator results all tend to point the same hotspots which arise from the substantial use of resources in the electric vehicle's life cycle, the GeoPolRisk highlights that there are important elements present in very small amounts but crucial to the overall LCSA. It provides a complementary sustainability dimension that can be added to conventional LCA as an important extension within LCSA. Conclusions Resource challenges in a short-term time perspective can be better addressed by including social and geopolitical factors in addition to the conventional indicators which are based on their geological availability. This is more significant for modern technologies such as electronic devices in which critical resources contribute to important components. The case study advances the use of the GeoPolRisk assessment method but does still face certain limitations that need further elaboration; however, directions for future research are promising.

Systems Thinking for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: A Review of Recent Developments, Applications, and Future Perspectives

“…On the other hand, only three studies were able to quantify the global impacts of products using LCSA framework. These three studies present an application of a new socio-economic indicator to measure geopolitical supply risks of materials of products [12,16,34]. Although the method proposed is a useful indicator that provides important insights for geopolitical risks, it relies on the first layers of supply chain outside of a country investigated.…”

Extension of geopolitical supply risk methodology: Characterization model applied to conventional and electric vehicles

“…The approach has been applied to an LCSA case study of a European manufactured electric vehicle (EV) based on a widely cited study and LCI data from . As noted in the case study (Gemechu et al, 2015b), two of the primary limitations of the approach have been (1) the simplified representation of supply chains (the methodology implicitly assumes a single-stage supply chain, which is unrealistic for complex products) and (2) the lack of an LCIA characterization model to relate supply risk to a functional unit. Helbig et al (2016a) addressed…”

The role of primary processing in the supply risks of critical metals

“…Nassar et al (2015) point out the existence of an additional risk factor ('companionality') for metals that are mined as a by-product, availability of which is dependent on production and recovery of their host metals. Increasingly, such metal-criticality assessments have also been performed at the product level, for electric vehicles (Ziemann et al, 2013;Gemechu et al, 2017) and energy storage systems (Simon et al, 2014), for example.…”