Carbon Footprint of Battery-Grade Lithium Chemicals in China
Min Liu, Fang Wang, Shaojun Zhang, Yiling Xiong, Ziyu Liu, Xuexing Pan, Guangliang Lin, Daniel J. De Castro Gomez, Xin He, Mohammed A. Almoniee, Ye Wu
Abstract
Lithium-ion batteries serve as a critical pillar in the low-carbon energy transition. China is the largest producer and consumer of battery-grade lithium chemicals, relying on domestic and global supply chains. However, a comprehensive analysis of the carbon footprint (CF) of lithium has not yet been reported, posing a challenge to promoting battery sustainability. Herein, we acquire plant-level production profiles in China, representing 80% of lithium carbonate (Li 2 CO 3 ) and 28% of lithium hydroxide (LiOH·H 2 O) production capacities. We demonstrate that the technical characteristics (e.g., ore quality, extraction technology, refinery efficiency, and fuel type) lead to wide disparities in plant-level CFs of lithium chemicals (6.3 to 36.8 t CO 2eq /t Li 2 CO 3 ), which aggregate the capacity-average CFs to be 13.3, 13.9, and 24.5 t CO 2eq /t Li 2 CO 3 for domestic brine-based, spodumene-based, and lepidolite-based lithium, respectively. We further identify that efficiency improvement, clean energy adoption, and technological advancement (e.g., nanofiltration for brine-based lithium) can lower the pathway-average CFs by 17–67%. For example, including the low-carbon lithium supply from South America, China’s consumption-average CFs of battery-grade lithium can potentially decline from 12.6 t CO 2eq /t Li 2 CO 3 currently to 7.0–8.8 t CO 2eq /t Li 2 CO 3 around 2030.