Environmental Impacts of Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries for Electric Vehicles: The Role of Critical Raw Materials

The growing demand for electric traction batteries, together with their high content of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs), necessitates comprehensive life cycle environmental assessments. Limited attention in the literature has been devoted to explicitly disentangling the role of individual CRMs in shaping both environmental burdens and potential end-of-life benefits. This study presents a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment (LCA) of a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery for electric vehicle applications, aiming to identify the contributions of individual life cycle phases and quantify the role of CRMs. The life cycle inventory was developed using data from the literature and the Ecoinvent database, with impacts assessed using the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint hierarchist (H) method. LCA results indicate that the material manufacturing phase dominates most impact categories. A gravity analysis demonstrates that a limited set of CRMs (aluminium, copper, and lithium) structurally governs both environmental burdens and recycling benefits. Monte Carlo analysis indicates low uncertainty for most impact categories. A first sensitivity analysis reveals that improvements in round-trip efficiency exert the strongest influence on environmental performance. A second sensitivity analysis assesses the effect of different energy mixes used to model electricity consumption during the use phase.