Enhancing the assessment of critical resource use at the country level with the SCARCE method – Case study of Germany

Abstract

The demand for many resources has increased significantly over the last decades due to their growing importance for industrial and technological development. Thus, various methods were developed to assess availability constraints of resources in relation to their vulnerability within countries and/or sectors (criticality). However, these methods display several shortcomings. Thus, the aim of the introduced approach is, to enhance the assessment of critical resource use on country level with the SCARCE method, by considering the two dimensions criticality (with the sub dimensions availability and vulnerability) and societal acceptance (with the sub dimensions compliance with social standards and compliance with environmental standards). For five of the 12 introduced categories measuring availability constraints the country specific import mix is used to determine availability constraints of resources individually for the country under consideration. These results can further be compared with global constraints (which are calculated based on global production data) to determine if the country under consideration performs worse or better than the global average. To measure social aspects the categories small scale mining, geopolitical risk and human rights abuse are introduced. Environmental aspects are considered within the categories sensitivity of the local biodiversity, climate change and water scarcity. Additionally, next to metals also fossil fuels are included allowing a direct comparison of both abiotic resources. The SCARCE method is applied for the case study of Germany for which criticality results are presented and their plausibility is validated. It is shown that for Germany tungsten is the raw material showing high risks in all considered dimensions excluding the sub dimension vulnerability. Its high availability constraints are defined by the categories political stability, primary material use and price fluctuations. Further, due to the countries tungsten is imported from (e.g. Bolivia), its compliance with social and environmental standards is low. To enhance the applicability of the SCARCE method, indicator results are provided for 40 resources to assess their availability constraints as well as their compliance with social and environmental standards.

Empirical Research on the Process of Land Resource-Asset-Capitalization—A Case Study of Yanba, Jiangjin District, Chongqing

“…Rapid economic growth also precipitates a period of a substantial increase in resource consumption. Due to the influence of national macro-control, resource prices cannot reflect real situations of resource scarcity, leading to a serious phenomenon of an unreasonable utilization of resources [2,3], which is particularly reflected in land resources. The contradiction between humans and the land has long been a difficult problem for sustainable development [4,5].…”

Critical raw materials and transportation sector electrification: A detailed bottom-up analysis in world transport

“…The assessment methods, which have been applied to a wide range of raw materials, are mostly snapshot analysis in time with determined and relevant indicators that explain the differences, from year to year, in the list of raw materials considered critical [17]. The dimensions of interest considered are usually vulnerability and supply risk relying on economic [18], geological or technical concerns [19], [20] sometimes extended to cope with environmental impacts [21] or social implications [22]. Several methods relied on past supply disruption events [23] and possible future growth with constant past trends [24] or without including detailed studies of the development of emerging technologies, GDP forecasts, evolution and interactions between all sectors of the economy along with stringent environmental scenarios [25], [26].…”

“…Even though there is no real convergence among these three major countries, their national policies are key to understanding the lithium market in the coming years. Bloomberg 22 calculated that if the price of lithium tripled, it would only lead to a 2% increase in battery prices, while the increase would reach nearly 13% in the case of cobalt.…”

“…Production in the non-ferrous metals market (copper, aluminum, nickel, etc.) totals several Mt 22. Bloomberg 2017.…”

Evaluating Metal Criticality for Low-Carbon Power Generation Technologies in Japan

“…National critical materials have been focused on in various earlier papers [34][35][36][37], since criticality assessment is a driving force of material securement strategy. Although for energy-poor countries such as Japan renewable energy highly contributes to increase in self-sufficiency of energy generations, additional drawbacks of metal-poor situation exacerbate the reliance on resource imports [38][39][40].…”