Leopold Johannes Florentin Max Peiseler


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Peiseler

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Leopold Johannes Florentin Max

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0000-0002-0273-7052

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Publications 1 - 6 of 6
  • Decarbonizing lithium-ion batteries: environmental, economic and policy insights
    Item type: Doctoral Thesis
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max (2025)
    INTRODUCTION Global warming is accelerating due to greenhouse gas emissions, and decarbonizing two key sectors—power and transport—is vital. Renewables like solar and wind rely on energy storage to balance intermittent supply. Electric vehicles similarly hinge on high-performance batteries to deliver adequate range and affordability. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) dominate these applications, improving performance and scaling potential. Rapid LIB expansion offers economic growth but risks—if unguided—geopolitical dependencies and increased CO2 emissions due to energy-intensive production and high-purity battery materials. GAPS & OBJECTIVES Three themes—LIB decarbonization, industry localization, and innovation—are central to mitigating these potential challenges. While existing decarbonization research quantifies and seeks to reduce carbon footprints (CF) of LIBs, localization studies explore how economic competitiveness and strategic policies can foster domestic LIB production. Innovation literature points to the complexities of transferring knowledge and technologies. Nevertheless, important gaps persist: reliable global CF profiles for key materials remain incomplete, pathways to reduce CFs are fragmented, and the role of human-embodied knowledge in transferring LIB technology is underexplored. This thesis addresses these intertwined gaps in four papers at the intersections of the three themes. In doing that, the thesis provides actionable insights for policy debates and helps mitigate unintended consequences. METHODS To this end, this thesis applies three main methods—life-cycle assessment (LCA), technoeconomic modeling, and social network analysis. LCA quantifies battery CFs and explores reduction paths, techno-economic modeling evaluates production costs and CO2 abatement options (AO), and social network analysis investigates human-centric knowledge transfer mechanisms. Complementary approaches, including expert interviews and regression analysis, support triangulation and broaden the insights of this thesis. PAPER FINDINGS Paper 1 finds that CF policies for LIBs require careful regulatory design due to complex usephase dynamics and heterogeneous battery aging. It argues that a capacity-based CF accounting approach reduces administrative burdens, while throughput-based approaches risk policy gaming. Paper 2 reveals that material sourcing dominates LIB CFs, with significant variability across commodities, mines, and ore types. Integrating these variability profiles into battery-level analyses shows wide global CF ranges for LIBs with both NMC811 and LFP cathodes. Paper 3 demonstrates that imposing CF thresholds is an ineffective means of industry localization. Implementing selected AOs reveals that material sourcing and process innovations can substantially cut CFs, often at negative or modest abatement costs. Paper 4 shows Korea’s rapid LIB catch-up hinged on human-centric knowledge transfer. Patent-based analysis reveals how Japanese expertise propelled Korean innovation, emphasizing inventorlevel collaborations. The findings also suggest that overseas R&D centers and cross-border partnerships can effectively drive industry localization. IMPLICATIONS In sum, this thesis suggests that industry localization moderately affects LIB decarbonization, but decarbonization hardly drives industry localization. Innovation can reinforce both goals, supporting lower emissions and industrial development. Findings also suggest that the current CF article of the EU Battery Regulation is unlikely to promote industry localization and risks delivering limited decarbonization. “Technology-smart” policies, including informed support of AOs and human-centric catch-up strategies, can help accelerate decarbonization and localization simultaneously. OUTLOOK After revisiting the identified knowledge gaps and synthesizing the findings, it is highlighted that technical CF reductions alone do not guarantee broader sustainability gains. Far-reaching decarbonization progress requires levers at higher system levels, but these levers present a trade-off between potential impact and ease of implementation. Additionally, safeguarding environmental and social dimensions beyond GHG emissions is crucial to avoid unintended consequences and ensure long-term sustainability.
  • Globalising innovation through co-inventions the success case of the Korean lithium-ion battery industry
    Item type: Journal Article
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max; Jun, Ye Lin; Schmid, Nicolas; et al. (2024)
    Environmental Research Letters
    Radical innovations can shift the global competitiveness of entire nations. While countries typically struggle to absorb knowledge about novel technologies quickly, in which knowledge tends to be spatially sticky, an important exception is the fast catch-up of the Korean Li-ion battery industry from Japan in the early 2000s. In this paper, we conduct an exploratory case study on this surprising success story. Focussing on patent co-inventions between Korea and Japan, we investigate their significance, as well as underlying types of co-inventions and types of transferred knowledge. To this end, we proceed in four steps: (1) a Poisson regression model; (2) social network analyses; (3) patent inventor tracking and (4) patent coding. Our results indicate that Korean Japanese co-inventions hold significantly greater influence than other cross-country co-inventions, including with patents without cross-country collaboration. We find a pronounced knowledge-Transfer intensity during the early 2000s and observe two types of co-inventions: organisation-level and inventor-level. Predominantly, we observe inventor-level co-inventions, i.e. Korean companies hiring experienced Japanese engineers, that proved important to transferring sticky knowledge. Moreover, while most patents target the design of core battery components, the share of manufacturing patents are contrary to theoretical expectations highest during the first half of the observation period. We also discuss our findings and draw implications for policy, industrial and academic players, including industry localisation policies, technology-inherent catch-up strategies and directions for future research.
  • Reducing the carbon footprint of lithium-ion batteries, what’s next?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max; Wood, Vanessa; Schmidt, Tobias (2023)
    Next Energy
    This commentary provides insights on present and future trends concerning the carbon footprint (CF) of liquid-electrolyte lithium-ion batteries (LIB). While the focus of the battery industry and policymakers was previously on reducing the cost of LIB and their usage reducing CO2 emissions through e-mobility and the integration of more renewables into the energy mix, there is now an increasing focus on reducing the CF of LIB themselves. The production of LIB is highly material- and energy-intensive, resulting in high embedded CO2 emissions. Efforts to reduce the CF of LIB require strong interaction between battery producers, users, and policymakers. Policymakers are instrumental in shaping and regulating the market, while the battery industry can leverage low CF batteries as a unique selling proposition. We categorize current and future CF trends according to the three stakeholder groups, and for the battery industry stakeholder group, we further distinguish between high-level, product, and process trends.
  • Toward a European carbon footprint rule for batteries
    Item type: Journal Article
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max; Bauer, Christian; Beuse, Martin; et al. (2022)
    Science
    Focus on upstream production, not downstream use.
  • How can current German and EU policies be improved to enhance the reduction of CO2 emissions of road transport? Revising policies on electric vehicles informed by stakeholder and technical assessments
    Item type: Journal Article
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max; Cabrera Serrenho, André (2022)
    Energy Policy
    The electrification of the car fleet is an essential transformation to a meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in road transport. This has been a major goal of European transport policies, but other actions can also enhance the effectiveness of EVs to reduce emissions. In this paper we analyse four key European and German transport policies and assess how these could be improved to increase their potential to reduce emissions. Using iterative feedback from 12 interviews across various stakeholder groups, we have developed proposals for revised policies on electric vehicles. The results show that current policies in the EU and Germany are not making use of the full environmental potential of EVs, because they do not differentiate sufficiently between different EVs, and have been designed for the era of combustion vehicles. We suggest that the introduction of a new Bonus-Malus Registration Scheme and the overhaul of the existing Road Tax System are the most promising changes both in terms of their potential to reduce emissions and their likelihood of adoption.
  • Carbon footprint distributions of lithium-ion batteries and their materials
    Item type: Journal Article
    Peiseler, Leopold Johannes Florentin Max; Schenker, Vanessa; Schatzmann, Karin; et al. (2024)
    Nature Communications
    Lithium-ion batteries are pivotal in climate change mitigation. While their own carbon footprint raises concerns, existing studies are scattered, hard to compare and largely overlook the relevance of battery materials. Here, we go beyond traditional carbon footprint analysis and develop a cost-based approach, estimating emission curves for battery materials lithium, nickel and cobalt, based on mining cost data. Combining the emission curves with regionalised battery production announcements, we present carbon footprint distributions (5ᵗʰ, 50ᵗʰ, and 95ᵗʰ percentiles) for lithium-ion batteries with nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC811, 8-1-1 ratio; 59, 74 and 115 kgCO2 kWh⁻¹) and lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP; 54, 62, 69 kgCO2 kWh⁻¹) cathodes. Our findings reveal the dominating impact of material sourcing over production location, with nickel and lithium identified as major contributors to the carbon footprint and its variance. This research moves the field forward by offering a nuanced understanding of battery carbon footprints, aiding in the design of decarbonisation policies and strategies.
Publications 1 - 6 of 6