Albermarle supports lithium product carbon footprint guidance

The International Lithium Association (ILiA) has published a guide on product carbon footprint (PCF) assessment, with support from global miner Albermarle.

Growth in production and demands from regulators and customers for information on greenhouse gas emissions has meant the release of this information is timely for the industry.

The publication covers assessments for key lithium intermediaries and battery-grade lithium carbonate and hydroxide specialty chemicals produced from brine or rock minerals in a standardised way.

Albermarle vice president of sustainability Mark de Boer, who also leads the group’s Sustainable Lithium Subcommittee and managed the PCF project, comments on this.

“We encourage anyone who intends to create a PCF of a lithium product to use this guidance because it will increase the comparability of studies,” he said.

“We also invite users to reference this guidance in order to create a common baseline and provide us with feedback.”

As the first PCF guidance specific to the lithium industry, it provides clear instructions and examples in a short, practical document on how to manage the contribution of co-products.

It is agnostic to the production route, such as brine, rock, etc., and complies with all relevant standards.

ILiA founding chair Anand Sheth says “the standardised guidance on how to measure the product environmental footprint of carbon use in lithium mining and refining will have a major impact in streamlining how lithium PCFs are done”.

The next project for the Sustainable Lithium Subcommittee is product environmental footprint guidance that focuses on water use.