Critical Raw Materials in Life Cycle Assessment: Innovative Approach for Abiotic Resource Depletion and Supply Risk in the Energy Transition

Achieving a low-carbon energy future requires scaling up the supply of minerals and metals essential for renewable-energy technologies, many of which are classified as Critical Raw Materials (CRMs). Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods insufficiently address their depletion and criticality. This study introduces two novel indicators, the Raw Material Extraction/Reserve Index (RERI) and a Gini-based metric, to quantify depletion pressure and supply concentration, integrated into SimaPro v10.2 for practical use in LCA. The proposed framework is tested on a comparative case study of electric and diesel vehicles, showing that electric models, while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, entail higher CRM-related impacts. A complementary multi-criteria analysis (TOPSIS) confirms that electric vehicles remain the more sustainable long-term option, highlighting the need to integrate CRM indicators into LCA for robust sustainability assessments.