Secure and sustainable access to certain raw materials is an important concern for industry and governments. Materials such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, rare earth elements and niobium are used across many value chains and may be associated with risks arising from geographically concentrated supply, availability, and the conditions under which they are extracted and processed.
Life cycle inventories can provide information on the flows of critical raw materials in products and processes. These materials may appear as inputs, components, co-products, or in waste and emission flows. Identifying them therefore requires careful definition of a study's goal and scope, so that relevant materials are not excluded through cut-off criteria.
LCA can also support the assessment of material substitution, resource efficiency and recycling options. Material origin and data quality matter when interpreting results: supply-chain-specific information may reveal risks that generic background data cannot show with the same level of detail.
Since the original article was published, the European Union has updated its approach. The European Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation EU 2024/1252) establishes a framework to strengthen secure and sustainable supply and distinguishes critical raw materials from strategic raw materials. The EU's 2023 assessment identified 34 critical raw materials; the official list and criteria should be consulted for current applications.
LCA does not replace a dedicated supply-risk assessment. It can, however, provide relevant environmental and material-flow information to understand dependencies, compare options and support resource-efficiency strategies.