17.1 Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment
17.1.1 The Reference Scale Approach
17.1.2 The Impact Pathway Approach
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an objective assessment of potential impacts aligned with ISO norms 14040-44:2021.
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Connecting quantitatively inventory input to possible impacts.
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A rational use of elements such as the functional unit, the setting of system boundaries and the rational choice of cutoff criteria, which are often blurred and confused in type I s-LCA approaches.
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Generalising the insights to similar productive sectors.
17.2 Experiences in the s-LCA of Batteries
Author | Field of application | Objectives | Methods | Social categories or indicators | Involved actors | Affected stakeholders | Main results |
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Egbue [20] | Electric vehicle (EV) Li-ion batteries | To assess the social and socio-economic impacts along some parts of the lithium life cycle, in particular extraction and production impacts | s-LCA | Not available | Not available | Society, workers, local communities | Understanding and tracking impacts of lithium for EV batteries over some of its life cycle processes. s-LCA can be used by engineering managers to improve social and socio-economic conditions of production and consumption of lithium |
Sansa et al. [23] | Batteries | Proposing a new model for the selection of sustainable design options, able to deal with the uncertainties and the imprecisions due to the technological choices and their potential impacts since early design phase of the product | Environmental LCA (ELCA), economic LCA (EcLCA), s-LCA and the fuzzy analytic network process | Experts, involved to confirm results | Employees, consumers, managers, governors | The design option PDO1 (lithium iron phosphate, 2 volts, durability of 1000–2000 cycles and specific energy of 90–120 Wh/kg) is considered the most suitable for the design of the product since it generates the minimum impacts through all the life cycle phases | |
Guo [24] | Lead-acid battery, Li-ion battery, Nas battery and NiMH battery | Developing a life cycle sustainability decision-making framework for the prioritisation of electrochemical energy storage under uncertainties by combining MCDM method and life cycle sustainability assessment | LCA, LCC, s-LCA and two MCDM methods: Bayesian best-worst method (BWM) and fuzzy TOPSIS (technique of order preference similarity to the ideal solution) | Social acceptance, electric power system reserve capacity reduction | Five top-tier experts of energy storage including three professors and two practitioners, involved in the weighting process | Society | Result indicates the Li-ion battery has the best life cycle sustainability performances according to eight sustainability criteria from four pillars: economy, environment, society and technology |
Thies et al. [21] | Lithium-ion batteries | Assessing the social sustainability hotspots of lithium-ion batteries with a spatially differentiated resource flow model of the supply chain. Comparing three supply chain configurations | s-LCA: Social Hotspots Database in openLCA | Child labour, corruption, occupational toxics and hazards, poverty | Not available | Children, workers, society | The Germany-focused production entails much lower risks in the cell production and pack assembly stage compared to the China-focused production. The results confirm that significant risks originate from the production of raw materials, with graphite production, cobalt sulphate production and nickel sulphate production being the main contributors based on actual production shares |
Wang et al. [25] | BEVs | To assess the life cycle sustainability of BEVs in China, and the results obtained by comparison with internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) will be used to analyse the developmental advantages and problems of BEVs | LCA, LCC, s-LCA, TOPSIS | Freedom of association and collective bargaining, child labour, fair salary, forced labour, equal opportunities/discrimination, health and safety for workers and consumers, feedback mechanism, access to material resources, local employment, contribution to economic development, technology development, policy and subsidy | Questionnaires and on-site interviews with stakeholders in the three phases of manufacturing, operation and recycling of the vehicles for data gathering | Workers, consumers, local community, society, government | A comparison of BEVs and ICEVs. The study found that the life cycle sustainability of ICEVs in China was better than that of BEVs |
Wilken et al. [26] | Electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles | Presenting a novel approach to analyse ICEV-, BEV- and FCEV-type (fuel cell electric vehicle) passenger cars on a multidimensional basis | LCA, LCC, PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) | The social assessment was realised through the application of specific weighting scenarios as part of the MCDM process | To exclude bias and keep the assessment feasible, neither stakeholder representatives nor ‘experts’ were involved in this study | Car owners or users | The weights and preference thresholds only marginally affect the rankings: the BEV alternatives based on renewable electricity (i.e. BEV_wind/PV) share the upper ranks with the conventional vehicles (i.e. ICEV_diesel/gas) in the majority of scenario combinations, whereas BEV_EU-mix and all of the FCEV alternatives are mostly ranked lower |
Mancini et al. [27] | Responsible sourcing initiatives for cobalt | Comparing the situation of two pilot projects about the general situation at cobalt small-scale mining sites in Congo (DRC). Providing the basis to discuss the lessons learned for the assessment and monitoring of responsible sourcing programmes and of due diligence schemes and possible implications for policy | OECD Guidance, CCCMC (China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters) guidance, IFC (International Finance Corporation) Performance Standards, s-LCA | Local community: health and safety, local employment and economy, social benefits/losses, cultural heritage and land rights, discrimination, forced migration/resettlement and land rights and poverty Workers: health and social well-being, wages, social benefits, working conditions, discrimination, freedom of association and collective bargaining, training and education, job satisfaction and engagement | Interviews to miners, miners’ representatives, pilot initiative implementers, ex-child workers for data gathering | Local communities, workers | Results show that the systems analysed are rather effective in implementing the changes that they are designed to make, especially in the case of life-threatening working conditions, child labour and corruption. However, the risk categories addressed by these projects are dictated by downstream expectations and do not necessarily correspond to the demands of the miners they are designed to protect. For instance, price calculation and income as well as gender considerations are particularly salient aspects and are not captured by responsible sourcing programmes but are part of the s-LCA framework |
Muller et al. [22] | Flexible and modular mining plant (MMP) | The goal of this study is to assess the social implications of a new mining paradigm, small-scale ‘switch-on switch-off’ (SOSO) mining, which is based on the design of a flexible and modular mining plant (MMP) and aims at exploiting quickly and safely European small high-grade deposits of raw materials, including critical | s-LCA (PSILCA v2.0 database) | Society: contribution to economic development, value chain actors, corruption, fair competition and promoting social responsibility Local community: access to raw material resources, safe and healthy living conditions, local employment and migration, respect of indigenous rights Workers: health and safety, fair salary, social benefits, working time, child labour and freedom of association | Interviews with members of the project in charge of the MMP development, deployment and operations | Society, local communities, workers, children | Switching the electricity supply system increases the overall risk due to the increase in potential impacts occurring on the renewable energy supply chain (e.g. battery manufacturing). When switching the country of operation to Greece, the overall potential impacts are predicted to decrease |