Social LCA for rare earth NdFeB permanent magnets

Werker, Jasmin; Wulf, Christina; Zapp, Petra; Schreiber, Andrea; Marx, Josefine

doi:10.1016/j.spc.2019.07.006

Cited by 20 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As a general outcome, the S-LCIA evaluation phase is very challenging as very few studies consider a complete product system in S-LCA (Ciroth and Franze 2011); they rather focus on one specific process activity (Pastor et al 2018;Werker et al 2019). Modeling transportation technologies requires considering multiple input processes for which data is often scarce.…”

Section: S-lcia Results For Value Chain Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Step-by-step social life cycle assessment framework: a participatory approach for the identification and prioritization of impact subcategories applied to mobility scenarios

Bouillass

Blanc

Pérez‐López

2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose Investigating potential social and socio-economic impacts should play a key role for the development of sustainable mobility alternatives. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is becoming increasingly important to ensure holistic sustainability assessments. The present work aims at identifying and evaluating social and socio-economic impact subcategories in S-LCA. A novel participatory approach implying all concerned stakeholders is proposed to select relevant impact subcategories and thus contribute to a thorough interpretation of S-LCA results. It is applied to assess electric and conventional vehicles. Methodology This paper describes a comprehensive step-by-step S-LCA framework. The innovation of this work consists in defining a structured S-LCA framework integrating a systematic approach based on two stages: (1) a sectorial risk analysis for the identification of impact subcategories and (2) a participatory approach for their prioritization. The proposed participatory approach considers all concerned stakeholders to enable the selection of the most relevant impact subcategories. A set of social inventory indicators is attributed to subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. These are used to perform the social evaluation and carry out a full analysis in the result interpretation allowing thus to integrate a multi-actor perspective to the materiality assessment. Results The defined S-LCA framework is implemented to compare two mobility scenarios, corresponding to electric and conventional vehicle technologies. A new set of mobility-related impact subcategories is proposed for users’ stakeholder. Following the new designed participatory approach, subcategories for all stakeholders are prioritized according to different actors’ perceptions. For example, “safe and healthy living conditions,” “local employment,” and “delocalization and migration” were perceived for local communities as the most relevant subcategories by the different consulted stakeholders (industrial, academic, and public actors and users). These results also showed that social significance varies depending on the consulted actors and on the geographical area of the study. Using PSILCA database, we have investigated the subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. Results for the evaluation and interpretation phases are presented for both transportation technologies. Conclusions This approach aims at increasing local relevance of S-LCA results and their representativeness. Results for the considered mobility scenarios have demonstrated the need to extend the scope of the materiality assessment, generally used for determining subcategories’ social significance from a single stakeholder perspective, by involving other stakeholders into the prioritization stage. Moreover, the proposed comprehensive S-LCA framework integrating the participatory approach is general enough to be applied to other product systems and sectors.

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Section: S-lcia Results For Value Chain Actorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Step-by-step social life cycle assessment framework: a participatory approach for the identification and prioritization of impact subcategories applied to mobility scenarios

Bouillass

Blanc

Pérez‐López

2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…Recent researches confirm the potential relevant impact not only in terms of environmental indicators 29 but also in terms of social impacts, 30 which means that the extraction of REEs can be related with distortions on living conditions for certain population and workers. Unsurprisingly, EU community defines REE and, in particular, certain metals (Heavy-REE) as CRM – critical raw materials.…”

Section: Literature Review On Motors For Evs and On The Role Of Motormentioning

confidence: 92%

Environmental sustainability analysis of Formula-E electric motor

Pero

Berzi

Dattilo

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part D:

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Demand for urban mobility continue to be on the rise and the changing landscape has profound repercussions on a varied range of issues as well as health, safety, water, transport and energy consumption. For this reason, to achieve sustainable urbanization, cities must generate better employment opportunities, expand the necessary infrastructure, ensure equal access to services, preserve the natural assets within the city and surrounding areas. In this context, even in motorsport (particularly in FIA) future trends are beginning to be oriented to sustainability issues and there is a growing interest in assessing the sustainability profile of racing vehicles. Environmental protection and eco-mobility represent the main challenge facing Formula-E by offering electric vehicles (EVs) designed to combine technology, innovation and sustainability, as well as to enable the transition towards low-carbon smart cities in the next future. Up today the sustainability issues in Formula-E have been treated exclusively at system level (i.e. logistics and management, travel, infrastructure and so on), but no studies exist at component level. Technological development related to racing performance field is also potentially boosting innovation, thus supporting continuous improvement of electrical powertrain in terms of efficiency, performance and optimal use of materials, such as rare earths for electric motors and active materials for batteries. The target of the paper is the development and implementation of a tailored methodological approach to assess the environmental impacts of the whole Life-Cycle (LC) of a Formula-E electric motor. The primary data collection is functional to enhance knowledge and inventory regarding the specific application. At the same time, the results provide useful indications to both improve product development under eco-design perspective and ensure technology transfer from racing high-performance cars to commercial vehicles.

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“…Bajo estas circunstancias, China ha tenido el poder para afectar los precios mundiales de las tierras raras, ha logrado incrementar su producción alrededor de 140% del 2018 al 2021 (Garside, 2022), tan sólo en una década, al mismo tiempo se puede esperar que una caída en las exportaciones de REEs de China resulte en un aumento de los precios. Bajo este panorama, EE UU ha anunciado su compromiso para producir imanes de NdFeB con insumos obtenidos desde dentro del país (Werker, Wulf, Zapp, Schreiber & Marx, 2019), por su parte Japón ha estado mirando hacia otras naciones como Kazajistán y Vietnam para conseguir suministros de óxidos de tierras raras, pues les son indispensables para su producción y exportación de tecnología de alta gama (lo cual es un 22% más de lo que produce y exporta EE UU) (Schmid, 2019) y algunos países, entre ellos India y Japón están explorando el fondo del mar para la extracción de minerales de tierras raras (Takaya et al, 2018) (Ganguli & Cook, 2018). Figura 1.…”

Section: Composición (%)unclassified

Una perspectiva global de las tierras raras

Toache-Pérez

Bolarín-Miró

Jesús

et al. 2022

aactm

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Los elementos de tierras raras han sido considerados por diversos países como elementos críticos, debido a su importancia tecnológica que impulsa al mundo moderno, además, aunque las tierras raras pueden encontrarse en la mayor parte del mundo, en la actualidad existe un desabasto a nivel mundial, debido a la cada vez menor cantidad de yacimientos minerales que pueden ser económicamente rentables para su extracción y producción. En este sentido, poco más del 50% de la cantidad de tierras raras que se comercializan a nivel mundial, provienen de China, quien ha creado un monopolio en la producción y exportación de dichos elementos, de igual manera es importante mencionar que aunque ciertos elementos de tierras raras son indispensables para las nuevas tecnologías, sus procesos de extracción generan gases y efluentes peligrosos para el medio ambiente y el ser humano, razón por la cual diversos países han implementado políticas que encarecen el procedimiento de producción de tierras raras, encaminando a buscar alternativas que sean amigables con el ambiente y al mismo tiempo sean económicamente rentables.

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Social LCA for rare earth NdFeB permanent magnets

Cited by 20 publications

References 24 publications

Step-by-step social life cycle assessment framework: a participatory approach for the identification and prioritization of impact subcategories applied to mobility scenarios

Step-by-step social life cycle assessment framework: a participatory approach for the identification and prioritization of impact subcategories applied to mobility scenarios

Environmental sustainability analysis of Formula-E electric motor

Una perspectiva global de las tierras raras

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