On the basis of a review of existing life cycle assessment studies on lithium‐ion battery recycling, we parametrize process models of state‐of‐the‐art pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical recycling, enabling their application to different cell chemistries, including beyond‐lithium batteries such as sodium‐ion batteries. These processes are used as benchmark for evaluating an advanced hydrometallurgical recycling process, which is modeled on the basis of primary data obtained from a recycling company, quantifying the potential reduction of environmental impacts that can be achieved by the recycling of different cell chemistries. Depending on the cell chemistry, recycling can reduce significantly the potential environmental impacts of battery production. The highest benefit is obtained via advanced hydrometallurgical treatment for lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide and lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide‐type batteries, mainly because of the recovery of cobalt and nickel. Especially under resource depletion aspects, recycling of these cells can reduce their impact to an extent that even leads to a lower “net impact” than that of cells made from majorly abundant and cheap materials like lithium iron phosphate, which shows a more favorable performance when recycling is disregarded. For these cells, recycling does not necessarily provide benefits but can rather cause additional environmental impacts. This indicates that maximum material recovery might not always be favorable under environmental aspects and that, especially for the final hydrometallurgical treatment, the process would need to be adapted to the specific cell chemistry, if one wants to obtain maximum environmental benefit.

Batteries are considered as one of the key flexibility options for future energy storage systems. However, their production is cost‐ and greenhouse‐gas intensive and efforts are made to decrease their price and carbon footprint. We combine life‐cycle assessment, Monte‐Carlo simulation, and size optimization to determine life‐cycle costs and carbon emissions of different battery technologies in stationary applications, which are then compared by calculating a single score. Cycle life is determined as a key factor for cost and CO₂ emissions. This is not only due to the required battery replacements but also due to oversizing needed for battery types with low cycle lives to reduce degradation effects. Most Li‐ion but also the NaNiCl batteries show a good performance in all assessed applications whereas lead‐acid batteries fall behind due to low cycle life and low internal efficiency. For redox‐flow batteries, a high dependence on the desired application field is pointed out.

Sodium‐ion batteries (SIB) are considered as a promising alternative to overcome existing sustainability challenges related to Lithium‐ion batteries (LIB), such as the use of critical and expensive materials with high environmental impacts. In contrast to established LIBs, SIBs are an emerging technology in an early stage of development where a challenge is to identify the most promising and sustainable cathode active materials (CAM) for further research and potential commercialization. Thus, a comprehensive and flexible CAM screening method is developed, providing a fast and comprehensive overview of potential sustainability hotspots for supporting cathode material selection. 42 different SIB cathodes are screened and benchmarked against eight state‐of‐the‐art LIB‐cathodes. Potential impacts are quantified for the following categories: i) Cost as ten‐year average; ii) Criticality, based on existing raw material criticality indicators, and iii) the life cycle carbon footprint. The results reveal that energy density is one of the most important factors in all three categories, determining the overall material demand. Most SIB CAM shows a very promising performance, obtaining better results than the LIB benchmark. Especially the Prussian Blue derivatives and the manganese‐based layered oxides seem to be interesting candidates under the given prospective screening framework.