In this paper, we develop a dynamic stock model and scenario analysis involving a bottom‐up approach to analyze copper demand in China from 2005 to 2050 based on government and related sectoral ...policies. The results show that in the short‐term, China's copper industry cannot achieve a completely circular economy without additional measures. Aggregate and per capita copper demand are both set to increase substantially, especially in infrastructure, transportation, and buildings. Between 2016 and 2050, total copper demand will increase almost threefold. Copper use in buildings will stabilize before 2050, but the copper stock in infrastructure and transportation will not yet have reached saturation in 2050. The continuous growth of copper stock implies that secondary copper will be able to cover just over 50% of demand in 2050, at best, even with an assumed recycling rate of 90%. Finally, future copper demand depends largely on the lifetime of applications. There is therefore an urgent need to prolong the service life of end‐use products to reduce the amount of materials used, especially in large‐scale applications in buildings and infrastructure.
The world is shifting to electric vehicles to mitigate climate change. Here, we quantify the future demand for key battery materials, considering potential electric vehicle fleet and battery ...chemistry developments as well as second-use and recycling of electric vehicle batteries. We find that in a lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide dominated battery scenario, demand is estimated to increase by factors of 18–20 for lithium, 17–19 for cobalt, 28–31 for nickel, and 15–20 for most other materials from 2020 to 2050, requiring a drastic expansion of lithium, cobalt, and nickel supply chains and likely additional resource discovery. However, uncertainties are large. Key factors are the development of the electric vehicles fleet and battery capacity requirements per vehicle. If other battery chemistries were used at large scale, e.g. lithium iron phosphate or novel lithium-sulphur or lithium-air batteries, the demand for cobalt and nickel would be substantially smaller. Closed-loop recycling plays a minor, but increasingly important role for reducing primary material demand until 2050, however, advances in recycling are necessary to economically recover battery-grade materials from end-of-life batteries. Second-use of electric vehicles batteries further delays recycling potentials.
Lithium-ion-based batteries are a key enabler for the global shift towards electric vehicles. Here, considering developments in battery chemistry and number of electric vehicles, analysis reveals the increasing amounts of lithium, cobalt and nickel that could be needed.
Building stock growth around the world drives extensive material consumption and environmental impacts. Future impacts will be dependent on the level and rate of socioeconomic development, along with ...material use and supply strategies. Here we evaluate material-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for residential and commercial buildings along with their reduction potentials in 26 global regions by 2060. For a middle-of-the-road baseline scenario, building material-related emissions see an increase of 3.5 to 4.6 Gt CO2eq yr-1 between 2020-2060. Low- and lower-middle-income regions see rapid emission increase from 750 Mt (22% globally) in 2020 and 2.4 Gt (51%) in 2060, while higher-income regions shrink in both absolute and relative terms. Implementing several material efficiency strategies together in a High Efficiency (HE) scenario could almost half the baseline emissions. Yet, even in this scenario, the building material sector would require double its current proportional share of emissions to meet a 1.5 °C-compatible target.
This review is the introduction to a special issue of Economic Systems Research on the topic of global multiregional input-output (GMRIO) tables, models, and analysis. It provides a short historical ...context of GMRIO development and its applications (many of which deal with environmental extensions) and presents the rationale for the major database projects presented in this special issue. Then the six papers are briefly introduced. This is followed by a concluding comparison of the characteristics of the main GMRIO databases developed thus far and an outlook of potential further developments.
LCA is a well-known assessment tool that identifies and provides insights on the environmental impacts of products and services over their lifecycle. The guidance provided by the existing manuals ...typically applies to modelling and assessing environmental impacts ex-post, meaning that information is available from empirical experience after products have been commercially in use for extended periods of time. This information is not available if LCA is applied in an ex-ante manner before a technology is commercially deployed at scale. We identify the major challenges of applying LCA in an ex-ante manner and propose a route forward in dealing with these challenges that combines intuitions from other disciplinary fields. The first challenge is how to model consistent future foreground systems for the incumbent and new technology systems. Learning curves and scenario approaches are the way forward. The second challenge is how to model future background systems. Here a solution is to transform existing LCI databases towards future contexts, informed by the Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that provide scenarios in line with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Finally, uncertainty in ex-ante LCA is of a different nature as in ex-post LCAs. The main difference with conventional LCA studies is the highly uncertain information for the future. To acknowledge this. considerate attention should be attributed to the discussion on these uncertainties, both in the design of the assessment and the data used. Responsive evaluation can play a supportive role here. This will increase the transparency and efficacy of the results because the relevant stakeholders and experts are involved. In this way technology designers and other stakeholders derive insights on the influence of design choices or contextual factors (that are important, but hard to influence) on the potential environmental impacts of their foreseen technology.
Since the 1990s, Product Service Systems (PSS) have been heralded as one of the most effective instruments for moving society towards a resource-efficient, circular economy and creating a much-needed ...‘resource revolution’. This paper reviews the literature on PSS in the last decade and compares the findings with those from an earlier review in this journal in 2006. Close to 300 relevant papers were identified, over 140 of which have been referenced in this review. Research in the field of PSS has become more prolific, with the output of refereed papers quadrupling since 2000, while on average scientific output has only doubled. PSS has also become embedded in a wider range of science fields (such as manufacturing, ICT, business management, and design) and geographical regions (Asia now produces more papers than Europe). The literature of the last seven years has refined insights with regard to the design of PSS, as well as their business and environmental benefits, and confirmed the definitions and PSS concepts already available in 2006. A major contribution of the recent literature is research into how firms have implemented PSS in their organization and what the key success factors and issues that require special attention are (such as a focus on product availability for clients; an emphasis on diversity in terms of services provided rather than the range of products; and the need for staff to possess both knowledge of the product and relationship management skills). The reasons why PSS have nonetheless still not been widely implemented, particularly in the B2C context, seem to have already been explained fairly well in the literature available in 2006. For consumers, having control over things, artifacts, and life itself is one of the most valued attributes. PSS are often less accessible, or have less intangible value, than the competing product, in part because PSS usually do not allow consumers as much behavioral freedom or even leave them with the impression that the PSS provider could prescribe how they should behave.
In the last decade many researchers, institutes and programs in the EU paid attention to product-service systems (PSS). Given this massive effort, it is time to take stock. Is PSS research a ...theoretical field in its own right? Is the PSS concept indeed the road to the Factor 10 world? Is it the road to enhanced competitiveness? What is needed to really use the potential of the concept? This paper discusses these questions summarizing the analysis done in the PSS review book ‘New Business for Old Europe’, various EU sponsored projects and the conceptual approach chosen in a new research network on Sustainable Consumption and Production, called SCORE!
Summary
Detailed and comprehensive accounts of waste generation and treatment form the quantitative basis of designing and assessing policy instruments for a circular economy (CE). We present a ...harmonized multiregional solid waste account, covering 48 world regions, 11 types of solid waste, and 12 waste treatment processes for the year 2007. The account is part of the physical layer of EXIOBASE v2, a multiregional supply and use table. EXIOBASE v2 was used to build a waste‐input‐output model of the world economy to quantify the solid waste footprint of national consumption. The global amount of recorded solid waste generated in 2007 was approximately 3.2 Gt (gigatonnes1), of which 1 Gt was recycled or reused, 0.7 Gt was incinerated, gasified, composted, or used as aggregates, and 1.5 Gt was landfilled. Patterns of waste generation differ across countries, but a significant potential for closing material cycles exists in both high‐ and low‐income countries. The European Union (EU), for example, needs to increase recycling by approximately 100 megatonnes per year (Mt/yr) and reduce landfilling by approximately 35 Mt/yr by 2030 to meet the targets set by the Action Plan for the Circular Economy. Solid waste footprints are strongly coupled with affluence, with income elasticities of around 1.3 for recycled waste, 2.2 for recovery waste, and 1.5 for landfilled waste, respectively. The EXIOBASE v2 solid waste account is based on statistics of recorded waste flows and therefore likely to underestimate actual waste flows.
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