In the energy transition context, district heating have great potential for generating low-carbon and cost-effective heat. They can also provide flexibility to the electrical system thanks to sector coupling solutions and thermal energy storage allowing, for instance, better integration of intermittent renewable energy sources. Therefore, assessing the competitiveness of district heating would require a sector-coupled optimisation model with, as an input parameter, the costs of the district heating infrastructure estimated throughout the entire territory (a geographic zone of a given size) at a high spatial resolution, gathered in ready-to-implement clusters. Building on the work from Persson and Werner, we present a methodology to map and cluster district heating network costs on an entire territory. It relies on easy-to-access geospatial key variables such as heat demand, building density and winter temperatures. As a case study, we apply it to France and design two clustering approaches to gather the infrastructure costs: competitiveness-based and territory typology-based-to satisfy different model architectures. We observe, for instance, a 51 TWh annual heat supply potential for district heating in French urban areas for a total investment of 10 b. With this comprehensive and replicable methodology, we aim to pave the way for a new and more accurate competitiveness assessment of district heating in sector-coupled models.

Circular economy strategies for electric vehicle (EV) batteries are gaining importance to reduce dependence on primary raw materials for the energy and mobility transition. Modelling circular economy strategies in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of EV batteries comes with a number of key challenges to ensure sound support to decision-making, including i) solving multifunctionality, whether regarding End-of-Life, processes of secondary raw materials production or product level, ii) capturing material quality aspects and iii) using adequate resource indicators. This study provides a review of LCA guidelines and scientific literature relative to EV batteries. The objective is two-fold: i) identifying key gaps in the guidelines regarding these modelling challenges, and ii) discussing how to fill them based on the state-of-the-art research. The analysis shows that the handling of multifunctionality is addressed in all analysed guidelines but is treated very differently. Major efforts are expected in terms of standardisation and harmonisation, building on the existing state-of-the-art research. A guiding question for standardisation is whether multifunctionality shall be always treated in the same way or whether special rules are appropriate. Instead, material quality and indicators of mineral resource losses are not at all, or to a very limited extent, addressed by existing guidelines. For material quality and mineral resource dissipation and accessibility-based indicators, research developments shall be pursued. Associated research outcomes are ultimately expected to be fed back into the guideline development in a more mid to long-term. The approach for handling these modelling challenges could and should be consistent between different products and sectors of the energy and mobility transition, to avoid double counting and burden shifting.

The electrification of transportation has accelerated greatly in recent years with the support of policymakers. However, this transformation raises the crucial question of the sustainability of such a change. In parallel, the concept of Planetary Boundaries has recently emerged as a framework for quantifying the human pressure on the Earth System. A real interest in applying the Life Cycle Assessment methodology in relation with the Planetary Boundary framework is growing to evaluate the absolute sustainability of products or services. In fact, this could be an opportunity to establish sustainable thresholds for each technology that should not be exceeded. This paper aims to develop a methodology for evaluating the absolute sustainability of the deployment of batteries in the context of the electrification of the French private car fleet. Several sharing principles are used for assigning a Share of the Safe Operating Space, and a prospective LCA is conducted based on different de-carbonization pathways. As a result, this work will provide insights into the development of a go/no-go strategy for the ecodesign and the upscaling of the electric batteries in a prospective perspective. (c) 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

A correlation between the evolution of the KF content in the SEI and the evolution of cycling performance of the non-aqueous potassium-ion hybrid supercapacitor (KIC).

The electrification of vehicles is seen nowadays as a promising way to decarbonize the personal transportation. The assessment of environmental impacts of electric batteries is usually case-specific due to the complex modelling of such systems which present a large variability in designs, in user behavior or in geographic use conditions. A typical example is the battery lifespan which is arbitrarily chosen in most cases, even though it has a decisive influence on lifecycle emissions. Computing the battery lifespan in addition to a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) would enable to highlight new hotspots and new parameters to reduce the environmental impacts of batteries. This paper introduces a new approach, based on a LCA conducted with the open-source software Brightway and built on primary data collected from a complete disassembly of a commercial electric vehicle. An original functional unit has been proposed that better represents the service offered by the battery over its lifetime and a semi-empirical ageing model has been integrated to predict more precisely the battery lifespan depending on design parameters and the use conditions. This innovative methodology is easily parameterized and aims to compare several eco-design strategies.

This paper evaluates the introduction of an Electric Road System on the French motorway network. The starting assumptions are the size of the network concerned, the size of the truck fleet and the truck traffic measured on this network from counting stations. The size of the necessary electrical infrastructure is calculated on the basis of peak traffic and an economic optimum is sought, including the costs of batteries and infrastructure. It follows that an ERS network applied to the French road network reaches the optimum for a size of about 8,700 km if it is limited to heavy goods vehicles and about 16,900 km if it is open to vans and private vehicles.

Hybrid supercapacitors have been developed in the pursuit of increasing the energy density of conventional supercapacitors without affecting the power density or the lifespan. Potassium-ion hybrid supercapacitors (KIC) consist of an activated carbon capacitor-type positive electrode and a graphitic battery-type negative one working in an electrolyte based on potassium salt. Overcoming the inherent potassium problems (irreversible capacity, extensive volume expansion, dendrites formation), the non-reproducibility of the results was a major obstacle to the development of this KIC technology. To remedy this, the development of an adequate formation protocol was necessary. However, this revealed a cell-swelling phenomenon, a well-known issue whether for supercapacitors or Li-ion batteries. This phenomenon in the case of the KIC technology has been investigated through constant voltage (CV) tests and volume measurements. The responsible phenomena seem to be the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation at the negative electrode during the first use of the system and the perpetual decomposition of the electrolyte solvent at high voltage. Thanks to these results, a proper formation protocol for KICs, which offers good energy density (14 Wh·kgelectrochemical core−1) with an excellent stability at fast charging rate, was developed.

Rechargeable batteries play a decisive role in the deployment of low-carbon electric mobility. However, their environmental cost in terms of resource depletion, toxicity, and end-of-life recovery, among others, must not be overlooked. Because of the massive volume of batteries foreseen to be deployed worldwide and the rapid evolution of the battery industry with the emergence of new high-density energy technologies, it is necessary to analyse their technological feasibility according to a lifecycle approach, in order to identify the environmental impacts of these innovations when they are at a low level of maturity. The objective is to integrate environmental performance criteria early in the development of these new generations of batteries. This work aimed at supporting the actors involved in the technological research to incorporate the environmental dimension into their R&D activities. Thus, two technologies (advanced lithium-ion and lithium-sulphur) with different technological maturities were analysed through a multi-criteria environmental assessment approach. The method applied fulfils the support requirements of the upstream actors during the implementation of their R&D activities in the design of future generations of batteries for electric mobility.

The rising share of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) in the electricity generation mix leads to new challenges for the whole energy system. It especially raises technological issues to handle variability and to match electricity load with supply at all times. This study introduces a new methodology to quantify the relevance of different electricity storage technologies, based on a time scale analysis. It additionally provides an understanding of how electricity storages work in combination to handle variable load and intermittent generation. First, we set up a simple model of variable production, fluctuating over a single time-scale. This analysis provides figures of merit for electricity storage and curtailment. Second, we simulate the collaboration and competition behavior of various storages with a dual time-scale signal. Then, results are compared with the optimization of an energy system with real variable electricity supply and consumption time-series. We eventually highlight the trade-off mechanisms between the storage efficiency and its investment cost.

The darker the more relevant a storage device will be to handle the variability of renewable energy sources, from an energy return on investment standpoint.

An energy storage database is developed to enable unbiased comparison of various storage systems on a diversity of criteria, for any type of application. The specificities of energy storage (different sizes and technologies, complex technical evaluation) lead to the development of a versatile hierarchical structure enabling comparison at any level of detail, and allowing access by external software. Today, the battery branch is particularly developed and populated with test data, followed by fuel cells. Examples of data and use cases are shown. The structure should enable easy collaboration and sharing between partners of different domains.