Environmental impact assessment of material manufacturing for nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries

Li-ion batteries are critical in advancing sustainable mobility and reducing GHG emissions. However, the extraction and processing of materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel can lead to significant environmental degradation and health risks. Optimising battery manufacturing is therefore essential to minimising the life cycle impacts of electric vehicles. Among Li-ion chemistries, lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) batteries are widely adopted due to their high energy density, performance, and scalability. This study presents a novel, multidimensional life cycle assessment (LCA) of NMC battery manufacturing by combining material level analysis via the bill of materials with a comparative evaluation of leading chemistries, NMC 523, 622, and 811, across 16 environmental impact categories. Using an integrated LCA Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) framework, results are weighted, normalised, and aggregated, enabling cross-category comparisons and ranking of chemistries and materials. A major novelty lies in the extended environmental scope, moving beyond GHG emissions, with resource use, fossil, ecotoxicity, freshwater, land use, water use, and climate change accounting for 99 % of the total PEF score. The analysis identifies cobalt as the most impactful material (PEF score 94/kg), followed by lithium salts (43), aluminium (40), and nickel (36), highlighting key environmental hotspots. Among the chemistries assessed, NMC 811 exhibits 18 % lower overall environmental footprint, and a 42 %, 20 %, and 16 % improvement in water use, climate change, and land use, respectively. These results support shifts toward low-cobalt chemistries while underscoring the role of auxiliary materials in shaping environmental performance. The findings emphasise the need for sustainable sourcing, material substitution, chemistry refinement, and advancements in end-of-life recycling to reduce life cycle burdens and recover high-impact materials. By integrating full-spectrum LCA with PEF and benchmarking across chemistries, this study advances battery sustainability assessment and offers a comprehensive framework to inform future design, manufacturing, recycling strategies, and policy decisions.