School of something FACULTY OF OTHER !iRI and SRI FACULTIES OF ENGINEERING and ENVIRONMENT!

Undermining Infrastructure: Assessing the critical material constraints on low-carbon infrastructure transitions Katy Roelich, Jonathan Busch, David Dawson, Phil Purnell, Christof Knoeri, Ruairi Revell and Julia Steinberger ISIE-SEM 2014 !

Low carbon transition: Changing material mix !

•  Scale and speed of technology change is unprecedented

•  Low-carbon technologies rely on critical materials in a way that fossil-fuelled technologies do not

Criticality analysis !

•  How do we assess risk to overall infrastructure transition associated with constraints from critical material supply that is introduced as a result of roll out of low-carbon technologies? !

Undermining Infrastructure and Criticality !

Assessing criticality!

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Methodology of Metal Criticality DeterminationT. E. Graedel, Rachel Barr, Chelsea Chandler, Thomas Chase, Joanne Choi, Lee Christoffersen,Elizabeth Friedlander, Claire Henly, Christine Jun, Nedal T. Nassar,* Daniel Schechner, Simon Warren,Man-yu Yang, and Charles Zhu

Center for Industrial Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, 195 Prospect Street, New Haven,Connecticut 06511, United States

*S Supporting Information

ABSTRACT: A comprehensive methodology has been created to quantify the degree ofcriticality of the metals of the periodic table. In this paper, we present and discuss themethodology, which is comprised of three dimensions: supply risk, environmentalimplications, and vulnerability to supply restriction. Supply risk differs with the time scale(medium or long), and at its more complex involves several components, themselvescomposed of a number of distinct indicators drawn from readily available peer-reviewedindexes and public information. Vulnerability to supply restriction differs with theorganizational level (i.e., global, national, and corporate). The criticality methodology, anenhancement of a United States National Research Council template, is designed to helpcorporate, national, and global stakeholders conduct risk evaluation and to inform resourceutilization and strategic decision-making. Although we believe our methodological choiceslead to the most robust results, the framework has been constructed to permit flexibility bythe user. Specific indicators can be deleted or added as desired and weighted as the userdeems appropriate. The value of each indicator will evolve over time, and our future research will focus on this evolution. Themethodology has proven to be sufficiently robust as to make it applicable across the entire spectrum of metals and organizationallevels and provides a structural approach that reflects the multifaceted factors influencing the availability of metals in the 21stcentury.

■ INTRODUCTIONMetals are vital to modern society. Indeed, it is difficult to thinkof a facet of human society that does not incorporate metals inone form or another. Human reliance on metals is not a newphenomenon, of course. What is new is the rate at whichhumans are extracting, processing, and using metals. Thegrowth of materials use during the 20th century is such thatoverall global metal mobilization increased nearly 19-fold from1900 to 2005, with aluminum increasing over 1000-fold.1 Notonly has the quantity of metals utilized by human societiesincreased, but so too have the number and variety of metals. Inthe 1980s, for example, computer chip manufacturing requiredthe use of 12 elements. Today that number has increased toaround 60a sizable fraction of the naturally occurringelements.2

The exponential increase of metal utilization witnessed overthe past century has led to a marked shift of metal stocks.Historically, all available stocks have been in Earth’s crust. Nowa significant portion resides above ground in the anthropo-sphere. This shift, coupled with ever-decreasing ore grades,3

raises important questions such as whether we should beconcerned about the long-term availability of metals andwhether it is possible to recycle our way to sustainability.In 2006, the United States National Research Council

(NRC) undertook a study to address the lack of understanding

and of data on nonfuel minerals important to the Americaneconomy. The report, titled Minerals, Critical Minerals, and theU.S. Economy,2 defined the criticality of minerals as a functionof two variables, importance of uses and availability, effectivelycommunicated by a graphical representation referred tohereafter as the criticality matrix in which the vertical axisreflects importance in use and the horizontal axis is a measureof availability (for more details, see the SupportingInformation).The NRC committee carried out preliminary criticality

analyses for several metals. Of those surveyed, a number fellwithin the region of dangerrhodium, platinum, manganese,niobium, indium, and the rare earths. Copper was considerednot critical, not because of a lack of importance of use (termed“impact of supply restriction” by the committee) but becausesupply risk was judged to be low. A number of other elementswere located between these extremes. The evaluations wereregarded as very preliminary, but served to point out thepotentially great differences in criticality among a number ofthe metals.

Received: October 5, 2011Revised: December 9, 2011Accepted: December 13, 2011Published: December 13, 2011

Article

pubs.acs.org/est

© 2011 American Chemical Society 1063 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es203534z | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2012, 46, 1063−1070

Measuring criticality !

Risk! Severity!Probability! x!=!

Criticality! Exposure!Supply

Disruption Potential!

x!=!

Dynamic Criticality Assessment!

Roelich et al 2014!

Criticality of low carbon electricity !

DECC Carbon Plan!

•  Low carbon transition!

•  Energy technologies!

•  Focus on wind!

•  Neodymium!

Criticality of low carbon electricity !

Benchmark material of interest to iron (arguably lowest criticality metal)!

Roelich et al 2014!

Supply disruption potential !

Roelich et al 2014!

Supply disruption potential !

Roelich et al 2014!

Exposure to Supply Disruption Potential !

Roelich et al 2014!

•  Compare criticality of different pathways!

•  Identify where it would be most effective to intervene!

•  Policy and business focus on exposure (diversify technologies for same goal) rather than supply chain disruption.!

How might we use criticality metric?!

Recycling and Substitution !

School of something FACULTY OF OTHER ! Thank you for your attention! References (Open Access): Roelich, K., D. A. Dawson, P. Purnell, C. Knoeri, R. Revell, J. Busch and J. K. Steinberger (2014) "Assessing the dynamic material criticality of infrastructure transitions: A case of low carbon electricity." Applied Energy, 123, pp. 378-386.!!Dawson D; Purnell P; Roelich K; Busch J; Low Carbon Technology Performance vs Infrastructure Vulnerability: Analysis through the Local and Global Properties Space, Environmental Science and Technology, 48, 12970−12977.!!Busch J; Steinberger JK; Dawson D; Purnell P; Roelich K (2014) Managing Critical Materials with a Technology-Specific Stocks and Flows Model, Environmental Science and Technology, 48 (2), pp. 1298–1305. Contact: k.e.roelich@leeds.ac.uk Website: http://sure-infrastructure.leeds.ac.uk!

2 !The Project: Methodology !

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