Battery Electric Vehicles Life Cycle Assessment in Context: Climate, Charging and System-Scale Constraints
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Conventional life cycle assessments (LCAs) of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are methodologically compliant but often interpreted beyond the contextual limits of their assumptions. The BEV lifecycle outcomes depend strongly on electricity‑grid composition, battery‑production emissions, and lifetime mileage. Yet most LCAs apply static energy‑use factors, average grid intensities, and fixed battery degradation profiles that do not reflect real‑world variability. Climate‑driven thermal penalties and battery‑aging dynamics substantially alter operational energy demand and break‑even distances, especially in extreme climates. Likewise, use‑phase emissions vary with charging time, marginal generation, and evolving grid mixes, making annual‑average emission factors insufficient for claims about charging optimization or system‑level benefits. As BEV adoption scales, fleet‑level processes (including battery reuse, recycling, supply‑chain evolution, and the spatial redistribution of nongreenhouse‑gas impacts) introduce further divergence between modeled and realized environmental outcomes. Infrastructure readiness, grid flexibility, and policy sequencing ultimately determine whether modeled lifecycle gains materialize in practice. This chapter proposes a three‑layer context‑sensitive LCA framework that directly maps identified sources of decision fragility to distinct analytical domains: methodological corrections (e.g., climate-dependent energy use and battery degradation), system-level extensions (e.g., temporal charging–grid interactions and fleet-scale dynamics), and contextual enablers (e.g., infrastructure readiness and grid flexibility). By explicitly linking each limitation to a corresponding analytical layer, the framework ensures that lifecycle claims are grounded in the conditions under which they are evaluated. Aligning claim strength with evidentiary requirements shifts BEV LCA from static product comparison to conditional system evaluation, ensuring BEV lifecycle results are robust, transferable, and policy‑relevant across heterogeneous energy systems.
Source: IntechOpen eBooks
Author: Michael Samsu Koroma
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7202090360