Life Cycle Assessment
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision-making tool to identify environmental burdens and evaluate the environmental consequences of a material, product, process, or service over its life cycle.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a decision-making tool to identify environmental burdens and evaluate the environmental consequences of a material, product, process, or service over its life cycle.
Life Cycle Assessment: Lead Production
The International Lead Association, supported by experts at Sphera, have completed life cycle assessments for production of refined lead by European recyclers and primary lead producers from a mix of European and North American facilities.
Life Cycle Assessment of Primary Lead Production Mix (EU and NA)
Life Cycle Assessment of Secondary Lead Production Mix (EU)
The study on recyclers included data for 14 sites in 9 countries, represented 50% of secondary production in Europe, obtained for a reference year of 2015.
For primary lead production participating companies represented 86% of primary production in Europe and North America over the same period.
The functional unit for both studies was: 1 kg of refined lead (99.00 – 99.99%) at the factory gate
This functional unit is consistent with the study’s goals to calculate the environmental impact of primary and secondary lead products from cradle-to-gate.
The studies were conducted according to international ISO standards on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and third- party critical reviews were carried out by Prof. Matthias Finkbeiner from Technical University Berlin.
Life Cycle Assessments for lead production can help inform an evaluation of the impacts of production of products that utilise lead as a raw material.
Life Cycle Assessment: Lead-Based Batteries
In 2022 Sphera completed a Life Cycle Assessment for the production of lead-based automotive batteries in Europe. This was then used to compare the life cycle impacts of 12V lead and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries used in automotive applications.
Life Cycle Assessment of Automotive Lead Batteries (Europe)
Comparative LCA of Lead and LFP Batteries for Automotive Applications (Europe)
Comparative LCA Motive power Lead Battery and LFP Battery and LFP Batteries (North America)
Key Finding: European manufacturing of lead-based batteries has a 6X lower environmental impact than equivalent lithium batteries manufactured outside the region
This observation is a result of the lower carbon footprint of energy used in the European battery manufacturing process and the fact that currently most of the raw materials used for European production of lead-based batteries are derived from recycling end-of-life products that contrast with the high virgin raw material usage for the manufacture of LFP batteries coupled with their low recycling rates.
Similar findings were observed in life cycle comparison of lead and lithium batteries for motive (forklift truck) applications in a North American study carried out in 2024.