Life cycle environmental impacts and carbon emissions: A case study of electric and gasoline vehicles in China

Yu, Aibing; Wei, Yiqun; Chen, Wenwen; Peng, Najun; Peng, Lihong

doi:10.1016/j.trd.2018.09.009

Cited by 126 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The authors identified the valuable outputs contained in the slag of batteries such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese and their possible recovery rates. Increasing battery recycling rates could prevent resource scarcity of certain materials and was also mentioned by other authors [33,46] as an essential path to secure future resource supply. However, the benefit of metal recycling (and therefore reduced scarcity of certain metals) was opposed by the high energy requirement for recovery.…”

Section: Assessment Of Criticality In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Most of the authors underlined that the worse results achieved by EV in the mineral or metal related categories were due to battery manufacturing [33,35]. As shown in Helmers et al (2017) [38], the battery production of EVs has much larger impacts than the one from ICEV.…”

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When fossil, mineral, and metallic resources were assessed jointly (aggregated ADP), EV achieved better results than ICEV due to higher influence of fossil fuels in the overall life cycle of the vehicles [29][30][31][32]. An exception was Yu et al (2018) [33], where EV performed worse than the ICEV. A separate assessment of ADP elements led to higher impacts of EV if compared to ICEV [34,35].…”

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, it could be noted that, especially when the use phase was estimated to be rather short or recycling rates were low, EV performed worse than ICEV [46,47]. This can be explained by a higher demand in metals for EV production [33][34][35]48]. When impact categories related to fossil resources use were used, most of the publications evaluated EV better than ICEV, since EV have a negligible fossil fuel consumption throughout their lifetime.…”

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The increasing resource demand (and the related consequences of it) as pointed out in Figure 1 for cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements, and graphite was not explicitly covered by any of the analyzed publications. For the end-of-life modelling, most of the authors recommended a high recycling rate in order to achieve better environmental results [33,46], but without investigating the possible scarcity of some of the resources. Finally, the eventually poor mining conditions and related social aspects (e.g., such as child labor in mines) in the supplier countries were not approached in any of the analyzed studies.…”

Section: Assessment Of Criticality In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies of Electric Vehicles with a Focus on Resource Use

et al. 2020

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Changes in the mobility patterns have evoked concerns about the future availability of certain raw materials necessary to produce alternative drivetrains and related batteries. The goal of this article is to determine if resource use aspects are adequately reflected within life cycle assessment (LCA) case studies of electric vehicles (EV). Overall, 103 LCA studies on electric vehicles from 2009 to 2018 are evaluated regarding their objective, scope, considered impact categories, and assessment methods—with a focus on resource depletion and criticality. The performed analysis shows that only 24 out of 76 EV LCA and 10 out of 27 battery LCA address the issue of resources. The majority of the studies apply one of these methods: CML-IA, ReCiPe, or Eco-Indicator 99. In most studies, EV show higher results for mineral and metal resource depletion than internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV). The batteries analysis shows that lithium, manganese, copper, and nickel are responsible for the highest burdens. Only few publications approach resource criticality. Although this topic is a serious concern for future mobility, it is currently not comprehensively and consistently considered within LCA studies of electric vehicles. Criticality should be included in the analyses in order to derive results on the potential risks associated with certain resources.

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Section: Assessment Of Criticality In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Assessment Of Resource Use In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Assessment Of Criticality In Electric Vehicle Lcamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies of Electric Vehicles with a Focus on Resource Use

et al. 2020

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Assessing the environmental benefits of battery packs from multi‐vehicle and multi‐region perspective: Aiming for lightweight and carbon neutrality

et al. 2022

Env Prog and Sustain Energy

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Vehicle lightweight and carbon neutrality turn out to be the critical goals in developing new energy vehicles. As an important part of electric vehicles, power battery packs have an impact on the environment. In this study, multiple environmental assessment indicators were grouped into a comprehensive index, namely the green characteristic index, and the green characteristic index was used to comprehensively evaluate the environmental impact of 11 kinds of battery packs. This study calculates

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Evaluation of carbon footprint and energy input of internal combustion engine vehicles in China

Xie

2022

Env Prog and Sustain Energy

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Large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) are discharged into air by combustion of gasoline and energy is input in a passenger internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) system through lifecycle phases. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the lifecycle carbon emissions and primary energy input of passenger ICEVs. With the life cycle assessment method, the calculations of carbon emission intensity and energy input intensity of materials used in lifecycle phases were made. The results show that the total lifecycle gasoline consumption of a vehicle was estimated to be 33,000 kg and the lifecycle CO2 emissions reached 81,311 kg per vehicle. Lifecycle CO2 emissions in use period occupied 89.43%, mainly attributed to the combustion of petrol. The average lifecycle CO2 emission intensity of the materials used was 2.33 kg/kg. The lifecycle carbon footprint of the passenger ICEVs was 163 g/km. The total CO2 emissions of ICEVs in Beijing were largest of all cities due to the maximum owning amount. The ratio of total lifecycle CO2 emissions of ICEVs in 13 large cities studied in this work to those of nationwide ICEVs was 0.179. Thus, more new energy vehicles will be given the prioritized choice in the future.

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Life cycle environmental impacts and carbon emissions: A case study of electric and gasoline vehicles in China

Cited by 126 publications

References 22 publications

A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies of Electric Vehicles with a Focus on Resource Use

A Review of Life Cycle Assessment Studies of Electric Vehicles with a Focus on Resource Use

Assessing the environmental benefits of battery packs from multi‐vehicle and multi‐region perspective: Aiming for lightweight and carbon neutrality

Evaluation of carbon footprint and energy input of internal combustion engine vehicles in China

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