Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) guidelines, challenges and application to batteries
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The online webinar, "Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) guidelines, challenges and application to batteries", organised by KIT, will take place on 7th June 2024, from 14:00 to 15:45 (UTC + 01:00), as part of the TwinVECTOR project.
In many areas of application, batteries are a highly relevant technology for realising the climate neutrality targets under the European Green Deal and the RePowerEU plan. For this reason, the EU Parliament and the Council have laid down rules for batteries that take into account both technological developments and future challenges in order to make batteries more sustainable, durable and better-performing. This includes the regulation recently adopted in April on the prohibition of products manufactured using forced labour on the Union market, which also takes into account the entire supply chain (or life cycle) of all materials and components used in a battery.
This means that not only are environmental and economic impacts in supply chains and product life cycles seen as areas of interest, but also social impacts. Basic work was conducted by the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)-SETAC (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry) Life Cycle Initiative which published “Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of products” in 2009 and an update in 2020. This guideline complements the environmental LCA and Life Cycle Costing, contributing to the full Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA).
The next session of TwinVECTOR Webinar Series is organised with the title of “Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) guidelines, challenges and application to batteries”, consisting of two presentations focusing on the basics of the SLCA method (social impact indicators, guidelines, quality of social impact databases, challenges) and an application of the method on the raw materials of a sodium-ion battery in comparison with results from the lithium-ion battery. The online webinar is carried out in cooperation with StoRIES, EERA Joint Programme Energy Storage, and POLiS.
