RICARDO TO WORK ON THE EUROPEAN LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT STANDARD FOR ZERO-EMISSION VEHICLES AND BATTERIES

Ricardo, a global strategic environmental and engineering consulting company, has commenced a European Union-funded project to develop a baseline for a European-wide commonly accepted and applied single life cycle assessment (LCA) approach for zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) and batteries based on evidence and real-world data.

This initiative is a Coordination and Support Action supported under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme and has also received funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Currently, there is no agreed European or international standard on vehicle life cycle assessment, although there are a number of standards in draft or being developed for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Defining a single, harmonised life cycle assessment approach for vehicles and batteries is key to providing transparency and comparability of impacts from these products. This will help to achieve Green Deal targets, making Europe the first digitally-enabled circular, climate-neutral and sustainable economy.

Ricardo is on the core team of the collaborative TranSensus LCA consortium – jointly coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF and the Fraunhofer-Institution of Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST– which comprises 44 stakeholders from industry and research along the full value chain of zero-emission vehicles and batteries including: research institutions, vehicle and battery manufacturers, the supply industry, energy providers and recyclers.