Overview
During the eLCAr project (E-Mobility Life Cycle Assessment Recommendations) tailored guidelines for conducting LCAs on electric cars and their components were prepared.
Building on the existing ILCD handbook, all issues concerning LCA are addressed with focus on the specifics requirements of electric vehicles and their components. Starting with the definition of goal, scope and an appropriate functional unit, methodological aspects are addressed for all life cycle stages of electric vehicles.
The eLCAr (E-Mobility Life Cycle Assessment Recommendations) project aimed at supporting the process of assessing the environmental impact of electric vehicles. In order to do so a set of guidelines derived from the ILCD Handbook and adapted to the specific requirements of the projects of the Green Cars PPP were to be designed. This set of guidelines wouldl be benchmarked according to a set of criteria such as applicability, practicability and ease of use and disseminated in an up to date fashion relying on interactive and online training materials.
The guidelines should answer questions of how to treat ambiguities in the analysis of all aspects of electric mobility. They also should provide a coherent benchmark framework enabling an ecological comparison of electric vehicles with other technologies such as bio-fuel propelled cars and hydrogen-based mobility. The project work plan should also reflect the broad range of topics such as battery and electric component production, typical vehicle utilization and driving cycles, interaction between electricity storage, power generation and grid services, as well as end of life and recycling by covering the different stages of an EVs life.
Stakeholders were tp be actively involved in the process, either by taking part in a number of input workshops or by participating in the projects advisory board, which was to ensure crucial feedback from practitioners in the industry. Special attention will be paid to the requirements of participants of the Green Car Initiative, of which some stakeholders have already declared their support for and willingness to assist the project.
Furthermore, the eLCAr project aimed to develop training materials and concepts which would facilitate a swift and sustainable diffusion of the results into the respective stakeholder groups. Thus different learning and teaching concepts from self-learning materials to an interactive online platform would be utilized to address as many different types of stakeholders and preferences as possible.
The project was structured in five different work packages, which together form a consistent work plan to achieve the overall objectives of the eLCAr project.
Work package 1 was designed to lay the foundations for following tasks mainly by gathering and processing information (lead by RWTH Aachen).
Work package 2 used this information to tailor guidelines out of the ILCD specifically designed to electric vehicles (lead by EMPA). These guidelines were tested and validated with the help of user cases by work package 3 whereas the results were given back to WP2 to improve their quality in an iterative process if necessary (lead by RWTH Aachen).
Work package 4 disseminated the results of the three previous work packages by creating a number of different dissemination materials with particular respect to practitioners in the industry (lead by ifu Hamburg). The overall project steering and monitoring was provided by work package 5 (lead by RWTH Aachen).
Funding
Results
The scope and type of critical review desired should have been defined in the scope phase of an LCA, and the decision on the type of critical review should have been recorded. The recommendations for critical review are of a general nature that is topic independent. The guidelines below are therefore taken directly from the general ILCD Handbook.
The critical review is one of the key features in LCA. Its process shall assure, among others:
- whether the methods used to carry out the LCA are consistent with this guidance document and thereby also with ISO 14040 and 14044:2006,
- the methods used to carry out the LCA study are scientifically and technically valid,
- the data used are appropriate and reasonable in relation to the goal of the study,
- the interpretations reflect the limitations identified and the goal of the study, and
- the study report is transparent and consistent.
The detailed review requirements regarding what to review and how, and how to report the outcome of the review are given in the separate document “Review scope, methods, and documentation”.
For LCA studies directed towards public audiences, an interactive review process at various stages of the LCA can improve the study’s credibility.
Strategy targets
An efficient and integrated mobility system:
- A Single European Transport Area