Life cycle assessemnets and what they have wrong

I plan to publish a paper and want to run this by the Tesla enviromentally minded folks first.

Currently LCAs if using virgin materials attribute all the mining/refining/ and other stuff to one end product.

This is not technically true and is a failure in life cycle assessements.

Consider copper
We have the mine/refine/melt/form/delivery/use
but once that product is done, now it moves onto the next product, and that product uses "recycled" copper which uses alot less energy and resources

What I propose is 100 years/(product life cycle)= number of products

Then
(virgin + (number of products-1) * recycling energy)/ number of products

Batteries
mine/concentrate/refine/form/deliver/use

same premise, but the mine/concentrate is taken out for subsequent batteries and the refine.

Also with the batteries one must also consider the end of life uses as back-up power

So for the battery it would be:
cycle life as an EV battery/ Cycle life as an EV battery + cycle life as a back-up battery= % as an EV battery

Then a similar formula as before, but multiplied by % as an EV battery to get the impact per product of EV.


What do you think? More accurate and more realistic

ItsNotAboutTheMoney said:

I don't think you can do that.
The question is whether you use virgin material.
If you do, you get the virgin energy cost.
If you don't you get the recycled energy cost.

Click to expand...

Thats is exactly what i am saying. Virgin materials get blended, but once you enter the the supply chain, subsequent, next gen cars or other materials are using all recycled materials.

Currently, if you develop a new tech and have the oppurtunity to use a different raw material that has to be mined, you are unfairly being penalized.

The problem is that if the new material enters the chain, the first iteration gets charged the most for it, which is not appropriate.

Imagine if you made a new penny, then 20 years later melted down that penny and made a new penny, so on and so forth for 100 yrs.
It is that first penny or should the copper impact be spread out over that 6 cents or just that one cent?

I think it should be spread out over all 6 since without the first you dont get the 2nd.