Focus Report on LCA and critical material demand for energy technologies

Environmental assessment of energy technologies will be performed, informed by the other tasks within this WP and following the EU ILCD Handbook for the application of LCA released in 2010. The results will serve to characterise the environmental sustainability of the systems and provide recommendations to energy policy makers. Life cycle inventories (LCIs) of different energy technologies will be modelled, building on inputs from WP6, in particular Task 6.2, combined with recent developments in LCI knowledge, e.g., via the release of the spatially differentiated EcoInvent 3.1. Many of the key technology investments of a future low carbon society rely on and increase the demand for critical materials. This task will identify these critical materials and analyse the likeliness for availability bottleneck. Starting with a literature review, these materials will then be mapped against the technologies included in the Integrated European Model, taking into account the uncertainties as described in the literature. The pathways developed in WP1 will be used to assess the material requirements of each pathway. These material requirements will then be further evaluated against the causes of criticalities to assess whether bottlenecks seem likely and under what conditions.