Empowering battery supply chain sustainability
Customer Requirement
Changing regulations, supply chain risks and new battery technologies mean that battery supply chains are coming under closer scrutiny than ever before. As part of its sustainability journey, an international OEM sought to gain a better understanding of the environmental impacts associated with the supply chain of its Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) battery cells.
The OEM wants to drive continual improvement across its supply chain so requested the development of a dynamic tool that it could use to understand existing impacts and engage its supply chain, updating values with supplier specific information as it became available.
Ricardo solution
Ricardo’s experts conducted a review of available literature to compile life cycle inventories (accounting for resource use and emissions) for each stage of the battery cells’ supply chain. The data from these inventories were inputted into Ricardo’s life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to quantify the climate change impacts (as well as 10 other environmental impacts such as resource scarcity and ecotoxicity).
The tool’s functionality enables modelling of ‘What-If’ scenarios to explore supply chain options and inform decision making.
Ricardo made bespoke developments to its LCA tool to enable the OEM to efficiently analyse its battery cell supply chain and assess new supplier data as it becomes available or is updated.
Customer benefit
The OEM now has a much clearer understanding of the environmental impacts associated with its battery cell supply chain and will be able to sustain and improve this clarity over time using Ricardo’s dynamic tool. The results will inform decision making highlighting ‘hotspot’ areas for action for the greatest sustainability improvements helping move the OEM closer to its sustainability goals while mitigating corporate risk.
Through its modelling capabilities, the tool enables the OEM to confidently choose the most sustainable course of action, showing the climate change and other environmental impacts of different supply chain scenarios such as:
- Impacts of sourcing from one country over another, for each step of the supply chain.
- Quantification of the effect of different electricity mixes and increased renewable generation.
- Comparison of different extraction/manufacturing techniques.
The tool will improve in accuracy over time as the OEM is able to replace average industry values with more specific data from its supply chain and use the results to engage with its suppliers for a more sustainable future.
Find out more
To find out how we can support your organisation to understand, dynamically model and manage your supply chain's environmental impacts please get in touch