Approaching battery raw material sourcing through a material criticality lens

Abstract

In recent years, several approaches have been established to enhance greater sustainability in the supply chains of raw materials. These approaches investigate various sustainability dimensions, including raw material criticality, social, and environmental compliance indicators. To contribute to the growing interest in this topic, this paper investigates how material criticality can shape and enhance the understanding of drivers, complexities, and considerations in the responsible sourcing of battery minerals. For this case study, we use ten battery minerals, nine supply regions, and the integrated method to address resource efficiency (abbreviated ESSENZ), a criticality method developed to address the socioeconomic availability, the social, and the environmental dimensions of sustainability. To measure the performance of a supply region compared to other alternatives for a selected battery mineral, results per indicator are evaluated as relative scores ranging from 0 to 100, with 0 signifying the lowest relative criticality and 100 as the highest relative criticality. These relative scores, which provide increased resolution compared to globally aggregated criticality scores, show the strengths and weaknesses of supply regions for different criticality indicators while highlighting where efforts should be directed to address and alleviate outstanding criticality issues. Additionally, the resolution of the scores in this study is employed to classify supply regions into two primary categories: reserve-dominant regions, characterised by high reserves and productive activity but overall low socioeconomic and environmental compliance, and policy & governance-dominant regions, characterised by adherence to socioeconomic and environmental compliance but overall low reserves and production activity. This study underscores the complexity of identifying ideal sourcing alternatives with relatively low scores across all indicators, highlighting potential challenges to the sustainable sourcing of battery minerals.