Life Cycle Assessment of a Lithium-Ion Battery pack for Energy storage Systems : - the environmental impact of a grid-connected battery energy storage system

Sammanfattning: This thesis assessed the life-cycle environmental impact of a lithium-ion battery pack intended for energy storage applications. A model of the battery pack was made in the life-cycle assessment-tool, openLCA. The environmental impact assessment was conducted with the life-cycle impact assessment methods recommended in the Batteries Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules adopted by the European Commission (2016). The findings in this study showed that the most important parameter in the cradle-to-grave assessment was the use-stage losses, which can be reduced by using electricity grids with high sharesof renewable energy or by increase the round-trip efficiency of the battery system. However, for the cradle-to-gate assessment, five impact categories were found to be relevant. These categories were: climate change, acidification, fossil resource use, resource use (minerals and metals) and particulate matter. Furthermore, within these impact categories, four materials contributed to more than 65 % of all impact. These key materials were; nickel, aluminium, cobalt and graphite. Therefore, a recommendation to battery manufacturers is to prioritise sourcing these four key materials from sustainable suppliers to reduce the overall cradle-to-gate environmental impact. Lastly, by integrating recycling of the battery pack in the end-of-life-stage, it was possibleto achieve a net reduction of 9-20 % of the cradle-to-grave climate change, acidification and fossil resource use compared to not including recycling. Therefore, the development of efficient and large-scale recycling will likely play a major role in reducing the environmental impact from lithium-ion batteries in the future.