Pilbara Minerals’ Pilgangoora Operation in the Pilbara region of
Western Australia. ©ILiA
ILiA publishes the first guidance to determine the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) of lithium products
In this article, first published in its magazine, The Lithium Voice, the International Lithium Association (ILiA) talks about producing the first lithium Product Carbon Footprint Assessment guidance with industry stakeholders
Lithium is essential for the energy transition, allowing lower-carbon transport and more efficient energy management. However, until now there has not been a standardised way to determine the carbon dioxide generated in producing the lithium used in electric vehicles (EVs) and other applications.
Addressing this was an urgent challenge for the industry, not only because of the rapid growth of lithium production, but also because of the demands from regulators and the auto-motive industry to report the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of all the raw materials used in the batteries of EVs.
ILiA’s new guidance, “Determining the Product Carbon Foot-print of Lithium Products”, addresses that need.
By following the guidance anyone will be able to create a product carbon footprint (PCF) for key lithium intermediates and battery-grade lithium carbonate and hydroxide specialty chemicals in a standardised, replicable and comparable way. “It is important to have a globally consistent Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) methodology to allow for the accurate calcula-tion of greenhouse gas emissions and for making meaningful comparisons,” said Anand Sheth, ILiA’s Founding Chairman.
This is the first global effort to standardise lithium PCF guidance and represents the collaborative efforts of over 40 organisations from around the world.
“We encourage anyone who intends to create a PCF of a lithium product to use this guidance because it will increase the comparability of studies. We also invite users to reference this guidance in order to create a common baseline and pro-vide us with feedback”, said Mark de Boer, Chair of ILiA’s Sus-tainable Lithium Subcommittee, which managed the project.
Why standardise?
Any history of human civilisation will inevitably mention standardisation. From using a common language to agreeing on consistent measurements, standards can promote a nation’s unification and governance, streamline industrial development and allow diverse populations to communicate.
A prime example is the Qin Dynasty in China which introduced standardised weights and measures so effective that they are said to have formed the foundation of modern China. Meanwhile, the confusion and frustration caused by a lack of standardisation is familiar to anyone who forgets to bring their travel plug adaptor on holiday.
The growth in both total lithium production and the proportion used in rechargeable batteries, combined with regulatory trends, prompted the need for carbon footprint standardisation in the lithium industry and mirrors similar projects in other battery raw material industries such as cobalt, nickel and graphite.
Data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence shows that in 2018, the lithium market demand stood at around 270,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and nearly half of that material was used by the glass, ceramics, grease and other non-battery industries. In 2024 market demand is forecast to reach 1.2 million tonnes LCE and 88% of it will be used in batteries, while by 2030 the market could reach 3 million tonnes and 94% of it will be used in batteries, primari-ly for EVs and energy storage systems.
There are many standards that can be used to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or a PCF, varying from widely applicable but general-purpose ISO standards, to standards that are focused on the battery and chemical industries. The new ILiA guidance is not another standard and it does not com-pete with standards. Rather, it guides how to make a PCF in the context of the lithium industry by interpreting and com-plying with all relevant standards.
Standardisation allows meaningful comparisons to be made between different lithium producers. It also enables an indi-vidual producer to improve its production process over time. As the US management guru, Peter Drucker, is credited with saying, “what gets measured gets managed”, and what is managed can be improved.
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that standardisation in the lithium industry is not limited to carbon footprints. The Inter-national Standards Organisation (ISO) is currently running a Technical Committee (#333) focused on several aspects of lithium standardization including terminology, chemical anal-ysis and technical conditions of delivery to overcome transport difficulties. [ILiA is an observer on this project]. ISO will also start a ISO/ PC348 project for sustainable raw mate-rials in the foreseeable future.
Laurens Tijsseling of Minviro explained: “The introduction of a product carbon footprint (PCF) guideline marks a significant advancement for the lithium industry, offering a unified framework to accurately assess the carbon footprints of various lithium production processes. This breakthrough enhances transparency and consistency in carbon footprint calculations across a range of lithium deposit types and pro-duction routes, positioning the industry at the forefront of sustainable practices. The PCF also lays the groundwork for broader LCA harmonisation, potentially encompassing a wider range of environmental impacts.”
Creating the new guidance
The hybrid kick-off
meeting in Amsterdam
in September 2023 @ ILiA
In May 2023 ILiA’s Sustainable Lithium Subcommittee appointed Drielsma Resources Europe to manage the project. The entire lithium value chain was invited to contribute in order to make the guidance a consensus document for and by the lithium industry. During the project, input was received from 45 organisations across the lithium industry, academia, consultants, LCA practitioners and supply chain partners [their names are recorded in Annex E of the guidance], all orchestrated under the skilled leadership of Johannes Drielsma.
One participant, the lithium expert Peter Ehren, said “It has been a remarkable process how ILiA has guided and consulted the industry players to publish the first lithium PCF guidance. The objective is that, in the future, the numbers tell the tale with maximum transparency, making the lithium supply chain more sustainable.”
All guidance documents come with considerations, so practitioners should note that (i) this PCF is limited to cradle-to-gate boundaries which exclude the use-phase and recycling.
Next stepsPCFs are used to compare products, industries and some-times make claims and therefore it is important that the cal-culations behind PCFs are based on the same starting points, principles and interpretation of standards, contextualized to the lithium industry. Standardised PCFs can even be used as a metric in (future) legislation, which requires a uniform cal-culation method.
There is growing demand to understand the environmental hotspots in lithium production.”
“This development of a standardised approach in carbon footprint accounting will allow for an apples to apples comparison between sources of material” said Sarah Colbourn, Acting Head of Sustainability at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
The lithium PCF guidance was made by the lithium industry and its stakeholders and is agnostic to the production route. Given the broad participation and the compliance with existing, more general standards ILiA expects this guidance to become the leading reference for anyone determining the PCF of a lithium product.
“While ILiA is proud to present this first of a kind PCF guidance for the lithium industry, we also recognize that this is an iterative process and that some aspects, such as lithium re-cycling, need to be addressed in a subsequent edition. That is part of the standard setting process, and we hope that you will join us for the journey!” said de Boer.
The next product environmental footprint project for the Sustainable Lithium Subcommittee will focus on water use. For more information, please contact ILiA: info@lithium.org
The guidance can be downloaded at www.lithium.org/guidance
