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This study defines a methodology for the development of an economic indicator of natural resource use to be applied in the framework of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to integrate the assessment of the environmental performances of products or processes during their life-cycle. The indicator developed-called Commodity Life Cycle Costing (or C-LCC)-is based on market prices, therefore incorporating information from both the demand and supply sides. Monte Carlo analysis is used to take price volatility into account. Alternative versions of the indicator, based on open-source data or calculated considering European Union’s critical raw materials only, are also developed. The study also provides a comparison between the C-LCC indicator and ReCiPe’s Mineral and Fossil Resource Depletion indicators and applies the proposed methodology to several types of batteries for stationary energy storage.

Electrochemical storage systems are an enabling solution for the electric system ecological transition, allowing a deeper penetration of nonprogrammable renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar energy. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are state of the art energy storage technology. Nevertheless, LIBs show critical problems linked to their production, especially for what concerns energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and rare raw materials use. Finding alternative storage technologies seems crucial for support energy transition, but at the same time, it is important to study their sustainability from the very beginning of their technological development. Using this framework, this paper presents a life cycle based environmental-economic assessment, comparing Na-ion coin cells (Ti1Al1TiC1.85 MXene as anode material) with LIBs. LCA results show that the assessed Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are less environmentally friendly than LIBs, an outcome driven by the SIBs’ lower energy density. However, if results are shown by mass, SIBs can represent potential alternatives to LIBs. On the other hand, the analysis shows that even Na-ions already use less critical resources, both in absolute and in relative values, highlighting the need, at least for the European Union, to find valid alternatives to LIBs if the 2050 decarbonization targets are to be met.

The Smart City paradigm aims to improve citizens’ quality of life in a scenario where the percentage of people living in urban areas is getting higher and higher. In this paper, a new methodological approach is presented to evaluate to what extent the smart cities’ development pursues sustainable development goals. This methodology is called Smartainability. The Smartainability approach allows to estimate, with qualitative and quantitative indicators, how far smart cities are more sustainable (and smart) in environmental, economical, energetic and social fields,thanks to innovative technologies. Moreover, this estimate can be performed before the technologiesdeployment. The methodology has been tested on the case study of the Expo Milano 2015 site. The implementation on the Expo Milano 2015 site, demonstrates that Smartainability methodology is able to give decision makers useful information on benefits generated by smart solutions deployment. This aspect is due to three relevant issues: benefits are expressed with quantitative indicators; indicators are estimated before technologies or solutions implementation; benefits are connected to technologies or solutions deployment.

The purpose of this article is to realize a review of studies dealing with life cycle assessment of electric grids or their components, in order to put in evidence methodological aspects to be considered with particular attention or requiring further deepening in future researches. After a preliminary bibliographic screening, the review analyses 16 scientific articles. The review considers 16 studies which are all based on a life cycle perspective and pays particular attention on some methodological issues such as: functional unit definition, selection of the impact categories, energy mix taken into consideration in order to quantify the environmental impact associated with grid losses, and end of life of grid components. The review considers, also, the analysed studies’ compliance to ISO 14040 recommendations. All the 16 studies have a good degree of compliance with ISO 14040. Concerning impact categories selection, the review showed a wide set of impacts taken into consideration: some categories are frequently utilized while others are present only in few studies. The analysis puts in evidence that recycling is a crucial aspect, determining a sensible reduction of impacts, which in some cases can compensate for the total impact of the end-of-life stage. Energy losses have a great influence on the overall impact. Neglecting losses in the valuation of networks or resistive components may be too simplifying, if not even misleading. Selecting a suitable functional unit is not an easy task. Beyond the specific outcomes, the analysis puts in evidence two general research needs. First, the definition of functional unit: some authors use a very specific functional unit which allows a correct description of the service provided by an electricity network while others use a functional unit allowing easier comparison with other studies. Second, considering the loss relevance and the infrastructure lifespan, an appropriate evaluation of the electricity mix is crucial.

The introduction of stationary storage systems into the Italian electric network is necessary to accommodate the increasing share of energy from non-programmable renewable sources and to reach progressive decarbonization targets. In this framework, a life cycle assessment is a suitable tool to assess environmental impacts during the entire life cycle of stationary storage systems, i.e., their sustainability. A Li-ion battery (lithium–iron–phosphate (LFP), nickel–manganese–cobalt (NMC) 532, and NMC 622) entire life cycle assessment (LCA) based on primary and literature data was performed. The LCA results showed that energy consumption (predominantly during cell production), battery design (particularly binder choice), inventory accuracy, and data quality are key aspects that can strongly affect results. Regarding the battery construction phase, LFP batteries showed better performance than the NMC ones, but when the end-of-life (EoL) stage was included, NMC cell performance became very close to those of LFPs. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses, done using the Monte Carlo methodology, confirmed that the results (except for the freshwater eutrophication indicator) were characterized by a low dispersion and that the energy mix choice, during the different battery life phases, was able to greatly influence the overall impact. The use of primary and updated data related to battery cell production, like those used in the present paper, was necessary to obtain reliable results, and the application to a European production line is an item of novelty of this paper.

In electric and hybrid vehicles Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), batteries play a central role and are in the spotlight of scientific community and public opinion. Automotive batteries constitute, together with the powertrain, the main differences between electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles. For this reason, many decision makers and researchers wondered whether energy and environmental impacts from batteries production, can exceed the benefits generated during the vehicle’s use phase. In this framework, the purpose of the present literature review is to understand how large and variable the main impacts are due to automotive batteries’ life cycle, with particular attention to climate change impacts, and to support researchers with some methodological suggestions in the field of automotive batteries’ LCA. The results show that there is high variability in environmental impact assessment; CO2eq emissions per kWh of battery capacity range from 50 to 313 g CO2eq/kWh. Nevertheless, either using the lower or upper bounds of this range, electric vehicles result less carbon-intensive in their life cycle than corresponding diesel or petrol vehicles.

Research projects performed by RSE for the Research on the Italian power system have a strong sustainability dimension, according to the public interest nature of the Fund. The development of methods to account for sustainability of smart grids has considered the Key Performance Indicators used in demonstration projects of the European Framework Programme. As far as smart cities are concerned a new metrics called Smartainability has been proposed and applied to the case of the site of the Milan EXPO 2015 Universal Exposition.