This is a pre-study, financed by the Swedish Energy Agency, with the aim of
presenting a research agenda for life cycle assessment (LCA) of electromobility.
Electric vehicles are often portrayed as potential remedies for numerous
environmental problems, most notably global warming. At the same time, LCA
studies already conducted have shown that electric vehicles can also worsen some
environmental problems through increased use of abiotic resources and emissions of
toxicity substances. Whether electric vehicles truly do reduce global warming impacts
also depends on the production technology for the electricity. This type of ambiguous
result calls for a systematic assessment of the environmental and resource
performance of electromobility, such as by LCA. Considering the many overlapping
issues related to LCA and electromobility, it can be thought of as a nexus, involving
different technologies (batteries, fuel cells, electronics, electric motors, different
vehicles, etc.) and different environmental issues (resource use, criticality thereof,
energy-related emissions, etc.). In order to investigate which parts of this nexus are
most interesting to study further, information was obtained from three sources: (1)
workshops with relevant industry stakeholders, (2) interviews with researchers in the
field, and (3) a literature study of key documents in the area of LCA of
electromobility.