Environmental impacts of Lithium Metal Polymer and Lithium-ion stationary batteries

The results show that the battery manufacturing stage drives the majority of environmental impacts in the different investigated batteries. Li-ion batteries cause significantly more impacts than LMP units in terms of global warming and ozone depletion. The effects on global warming come mainly from the production of components in countries where fossil fuel dominates electricity mixes. The production of polytetrafluoroethylene, used only in Li-ion batteries, is the main contributor to the ozone layer depletion category and also an important source of global warming emissions. Conversely, LMP batteries are responsible for a bigger impact in terms of aquatic eutrophication originating from sulfidic tailings linked to mining activities. An additional finding of this study is that centralized battery system configurations bring smaller environmental impacts than distributed systems with more but smaller storage units.