The transition towards a sustainable and circular battery economy in Europe requires robust and comparable assessments of environmental impacts across the battery value chain. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely applied in EU-funded battery research and innovation, yet the methodological diversity across projects limits comparability, benchmarking and policy relevance. This paper, developed within the Battery Heroes sustainability working group, reviews current LCA practices across five Horizon Europe battery projects. The analysis focuses on key methodological elements that influence results, including functional units, system boundaries, end-of-life modelling and allocation, electricity modelling, background data choices, LCIA methods, and impact category coverage. The results show emerging convergence in the key methodological choices. These include the use of capacity-based functional units (1 kWh), reliance on ecoinvent databases, and increasing adoption of the Environmental Footprint (EF3.1) method. However, substantial variability persists in boundary definitions, recycling modelling approaches, electricity assumptions and reporting practices, which can significantly affect interpretation. Based on identified barriers and practitioners' experience, the paper proposes a minimum harmonised reporting set to improve transparency, robustness, and cross-project comparability. These recommendations support alignment with EU regulatory frameworks including EF/Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method and the EU Battery Regulation.
Pinto et al. (Sat,) studied this question.