Abiotic ressources

[6] BP, 2020. BP Statistical Review of World Energy. [online].

[20] EIA, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2016. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Coefficients. [online].

[21] IPCC. 2018. Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development. . P. 82.

• Oil emissions of current reserves

  • Proven reserves :

    -> 1733,9 billions barrels ^[6]

  • 53750,9 billion gallonsAverage on varied oil uses gives ≃ 10 kg CO2 emitted per gallon ^[20]

    -> 537,5 Gt CO2

• World CO2 eq budget, current estimations : ^[21]

  • 1170 Gt CO2 eq to stay <2°C of global warming

  • 420 Gt CO2 eq to stay <1,5°C of global warming

• Consomption of all current proven oil reserves is half of our total 2°C world budget and more than our total 1,5°C budget!

  • Without even considering natural gas, coal, or other emissions (CH4, for example) contributing to radiative forcing...

  • This considered, without changes, the 2°C threshold should be crossed in about 26 years

[3] BIHOUIX, P., GUILLEBON, B. ,2010. Quel futur pour les métaux?

[10] Data & Statistics,. IEA[online]. Available from : https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics

And mining is very dependent of highly carbonated, non renewable energy vectors

Adapted from ^[3] .The values for World averages of Electricity origin were replaced by updated data rom ^[10]

[6] BP, 2020. BP Statistical Review of World Energy. [online].

[15] JANCOVICI, J-M, 2019. Les Energies fossiles. Ecole des Mines [online].

[22] World Energy Outlook 2018. IEA –International Energy Agency.

• Hypothesis: we don’t mind CO_{2 eq} emissions

  • Either we consider it’s not a problem

  • Or we think innovation or start-ups will solve that

  -> Exhaustion of Reserves through Production will still occur!

  • R/P ratio: most simplified model

  • Considering current reserves ^[6]

  • And 2019 rate of consomption ^[6] taken as constant for the years to come (quite unrealistic hypothesis of no flow reduction)

    -> No oil remaining in ≃ 50 years

[23] CALVO, G. et al.., 2017. Assessing maximum production peak and resource availability of non-fuel mineral resources.

[15] JANCOVICI, J-M, 2019. Les Energies fossiles. Ecole des Mines [online].

[22] World Energy Outlook 2018. IEA – International Energy Agency.

• This recent try of systematic assessment is quite interesting to read^[23] and accessible!

  • The time scaling is quite short, even for base metals

Extracted from ^[23]

• Expected peak in the next 50 years : 12 metals over 47 studied: As, Bi, In, Li, Mn, Mo, Ni, Ag, Ta, Te, Zn

• 30 metals over 47 have their expected peak in the next 100 years

• Gold & Antimony peaked arround 2015 (agreement for Gold with ^[3])

Extracted from ^[23]

• Taking into account the interdependencies of metals

  • Bold indicates it is the main production process of said metal

Extracted from ^[3]

[3] BIHOUIX, P., GUILLEBON, B. 2010. Quel futur pour les métaux?

• Nearly a half of metals today exploited are interlinked

Extracted from ^[3]

[26] GRAEDEL, T. et al., 2015. Criticality of metals and metalloids. DOI 10.1073/pnas.1500415112.

• Notion related to the attempt to assess the relative risks concerning the availability of resources

  • Relatively recent preoccupation

  • As availability is an already complex notion, its risk analysis is also complex

    • Geological abondance & concentrations

    • Potential for substitution

    • State of the art of mining technology

    • Amount of regulatory oversight

    • Geopolitical initiatives

    • Governmental instability

    • Economic policy

  • As reserves are part of the assessment, it is also dynamic

• Several methodologies

  • At different scales of organizations

  • For different scales of time

  • With then varied results difficult to compare between each other

Extracted from ^[26]

• Criticality space: a first step is to get an overall idea

  • A number of metals are concentrated on the middle: moderately high on at least 2 axis (rare earths, Cr, Te, etc.)

  • Some are regrouped toward lower left: relatively low criticality (Fe, Mg, Ni, Mn, etc.)

  • The right side: high supply risk (In, Ag, Tl, As, Sb)

  • The particular case of Au & Pt

Extracted from ^[23]

Extracted from ^[23]

[25] HUISMAN, J., PAVEL, C., et al. 2020. Critical Raw Materials in Technologies and Sectors - Foresight [online].

[3] BIHOUIX, P., GUILLEBON, B. 2010. Quel futur pour les métaux?

• Major difference between oil (energy resources) and metals (mineral ressources) :

  • Oil, Coal & Natural Gas -> mostly burned -> The flow is not retrievable

  • Metals -> mostly materially conserved -> The flow is retrievable + there is a stock in circulation!

• Each year, stocks of metals :

  • Increases of the producted quantity

  • Decreases of the lost quantity

    • Dispersive uses (metals used as dyes or fertilizers)

    • No recycling (incineration or landfill disposal)

• Current recycling

  • Precious metals (Au) or with moderately high value (Cu): few losses

  • Less noble metals (Al, Zn) have more important loss rates

  • No data for a lot of metals used in specific applications (electronics...)

• Metals are one of the most interesting category of materials for recycling

  • Theoretically recyclable an infinite amount of time without diminishing their properties

  • Have high yield for stock preservation

    • 40% recycling rate -> 80% recycling rate <-> Reserves x 3

    • 50% recycling rate -> 99,9% recycling rate <-> Reserves x 500

• Rich countries show that recycling rate can reach high levels for base metals

  • France (2010): 85% for Fe ; 80% for Al & Cu ; 70% Pb ; 50% Zn ^[3]

• But it cannot do everything

  • No industrial process have a 100% efficiency -> same for recycling (remelt Al generate a dispersed loss of 1-2%)

  • A lot of our uses are not compatible with recycling

• The trend of higher complexity

  • > 30 metals in a computer

  • > 10 alloys of Steel in a car

  • Prevent us from retrieving the resources: not easy and sometimes techically impossible to detect or separate metals of an allow

• This phenomena exist for a lot of our metarials

  • Glass: mix of transparent & colored glasses -> no more use in most of construction or cars, only bottles

  • Plastic: often reused in less demanding uses (technically or aestetically)

-> Important to rethink life-cycles of products, raw materials, and mostly uses

• -> Integrate less performant or pretty materials & more recycled materials

• -> Organize recovery channels to boost recycling rate

• -> But also question the trend of high tech solutions instead of low tech ones

• -> That is, question the needs

• The trend of direct dispersive uses

  • Dyes (98% of Ti used as TiO₂ for white dyes)

  • Fertilizers (P, Zn, etc.)

  • Additives (Cr in Glass)

  • Pesticides (CuSO₄ in some organic farming plants)

• And « indirecty » dispersive uses (very difficult to recover)

  • 33% of Sn is used in welding

  • 50% of Zn is used in galvanizing

• Some metals like Co or Mb are nearly exclusively used in dispersive uses or alloys

• The socioeconomic limits

  • Economical incentives to constructors are not present or sufficient

  • Lack of reglementation and means to enforce it

  • Complexity of products and recovery channels does not help

• Limit the use in rare or noble metals in favor of abondant metals

  • Critical lens on « innovation »

  • Aim to maximize a low tech approach as much as possible at the level of product and technology

  -> For inorganic solar pannels, Si should be prefered to GaAs, CIGS, and others, even if the conversion efficiency is less important

• For critical cases, possibilities needs to be carefully explored :

  • Cr nearly indispensible for anti-corrosion

    -> Ti can replace Cr in certain cases but its energy footprint is 4-5 times higher

  • Cu nearly indispensible for electrical applications

    -> Al can replace Cu in certain cases but its energy footprint is 2-3 times higher

• Substituate oil by electrification? ^[27]

  • Li-ion batteries represented 37% of Li consumption in 2016 (and 40% of Co)

  • Batteries for electric vehicules were only 10% of Li-ion consumption in 2018

  • Most elements at disposal indicates that strong choices of resources’s uses will have to be made in the years to come :

[27] Responsible minerals sourcing for renewable energy, 2019. University of Technology Sydney [online].

[28] ABDALLA, A. et al., 2018. Hydrogen production, storage, transportation and key challenges with applications: A review. DOI 10.1016/j.enconman.2018.03.088

[29] SCHMIDT, O., et al., 2017. Future cost and performance of water electrolysis: An expert elicitation study. DOI 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.10.045. 

• Substituate oil by « hydrogen »?

  • Currently > 90% of H₂ is produced by steam reforming (10 kg CO₂ per kg of H₂ produced) ^[28]

  • Water electrolysis / fuel cells have problems of their own ^[29]

    • Alkaline electrolysis is not adapted for electric cars

    • New technologies currently depends either on Pt and are not industrially mature (PEM) or rare earths and are at the state of demonstrators (SO)

• In need of a big & new infrastructure for supply of cars

-> We are back to the vicious circle of energy & material footprint

[30] BIHOUIX, Philippe, 2014. L’Age des low techs : vers une civilisation techniquement soutenable. Seuil.

• The often most efficient stategy to preserve abiotic resources stock

  • House thermally isolated + put on a sweater >>> room heating technical solution

  • Most transport on bicycle (short distance) + train (long distance) with minimal use of a car (occasional rental) >>> electric cars replacing current diesel and petrol cars

  • Simple dismountable and repairable electronics >>> computer assembly with glue with digital prints technology

• It is the first of the 7 principles of low-techs [30]

  1. Challenging needs

  2. Design and produce truly sustainable

  3. Orienting knowledge to resources’ savings

  4. Striking a technical balance between performance & conviviality

  5. Relocalize without losing the right scale effects

  6. De-machinizing services

  7. Knowing to remain modest

• Indeed this kind of transition imply numerous socioeconomical consequences

  • As any kind of transition, it is also a matter of flows and their evolution

[31] IPCC. 2014: mitigation of climate change: Working Group III contribution to the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC.

• Trajectories mitigating climate change all require a global limitation of material & energy flows

  • Even with the hypothesis of a high developpment of the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies

[32] HCC, 2020. Maîtriser l’empreinte carbone de la France. Haut Conseil pour le Climat [online].

• The French carbon footprint

  • A large part of our carbon footprint comes from importations

• The French situation

  • Mineral resources: metals & cement

  • Energy resources & chemical products: oil

  • Abiotic resources are a large part of it, metals in particular!

  • In terms of weight of abiotic resources in domestic emissions: oil is dominant through transport (direct emissions), followed by metals & cement (indirect and distributed emissions)

• High mitigation potential in transport <-> Combination of varied measures ^[31]

  • Low-carbon fuels -> higher flows of metals & lower flow of oil

  • Lowering vehicules energy intensities -> lower flows of oil & metals

  • Encouraging modal shift to lower-carbon passenger & freight systems

    -> lower flows of oil + short-to-medium term higher flows of metals for infrastructure investments

  • Avoid journeys where possible -> lower flows of oils

• This kind of configuration apply generally

  • Specific augmentations in flows of metal are required to lower oil flows

  • Competition between uses requiring metals -> priorities will need to be established

[15] JANCOVICI, Jean-Marc, 2019. Les Energies fossiles. Ecole des Mines [online].

[34] HABERL, H., et al, 2020. A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II : synthesizing the insights. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ab842a.

[33] HCC, 2020. Rapport annuel - Redresser le cap, relancer la transition. Haut Conseil pour le Climat [online]. 2020.

• At world scale, there is a historical link between primary energy & material consumption, and economic production (as measured by GDP) ^{[15] & [34]}

  • There is no consensus on the exact nature of the relationship nowadays ^[33]

  • But we know that energy & material availability enables GDP growth

  • And GDP growth, by anticipation of economic growth causes energy & material use

• A lot of ambitious climate target rely on the concept of « decoupling » ^[34]

  • Promotion of economic growth while reducing material & energy footprint (EMF)

  • When theorized as absolute -> EMF reduction & GDP growth

  • When theorized as relative -> EMF slow growth & GDP high growth

• Recent systematic review clarifies that :

  • Relative decoupling is frequent for material use, GHG emissions, but not exergy

  • Relative decoupling of GDP and primary energy use can be caused by energy efficiency (higher ratio of exergy / primary energy use)

  • Absolute decoupling situations are very rare and are related to small short-term reductions of emissions

  • No evidence that absolute decoupling can be generalized

• Degrowth/Sufficiency currently seems indispensible to meet climate target and sustainable use of abiotic resources:

  • Require a contraction of current economics functionning

  • And even fundamental changes in its functionning too

  • A byproduct of this scientific inquiries is that GDP is more & more considered as an irrelevant indicator for these problematics

[35] ECORYS, 2012. Mapping resource prices: the past & the future [online]. Final report to European Comission.

• Base metals’ prices are historically quite constant relatively to each others but individual resource’s price is highly volatile ^[35]

[6] BP, 2020. BP Statistical Review of World Energy. [online].

• Oil’s price is highly volatile too^[6]

• Resources’s prices underlying determinations

  • Percieved availability through control of producers

  • Degree of substitutability

• Resources’s prices mecanisms of formations

  • Over-the-counter (OTC) markets: traditionnal mecanism

  • Annual or multi-year supply contracts: mainly, Fe and Fe allows

  • Pricing on forward markets

  • Special case of precious metals: considered as quasi-money or OTC.

• Historically, numerous resources exchanges were operated by intermediates

  • Contemporary period: developpment of financialization

  • Alignment of Raw materials on securities -> far less intermediaries

  • Developpment of financial product derivatives + capitalistic concentrations of producers

    -> overvalued prices and speculations

[36] MITTEAU, Gilles, 2018. Economie et finance du pétrole - Heu?reka. [online].

• Financial markets’s specific effects

  • Efficiency of market -> Trends of prices themselves tend to diseapear

  • Short-term interest of traders -> Short-term volatility

  • Complexity of the product and implications of prices variations on the economy

    -> Long-term volatility + impossibility to know for sure the causes of prices variations

  -> There is no « natural price-signalling » mecanism that makes a non- renewable resource progressively more expensive overtime

  -> The « natural » functionning of Financial markets seems to impply that the reduction of energy & material flows lead to higher volatility, or maybe higher « volatility of volatility »

For detailed reasonning, strong recommendation of Youtuber Heu?reka on Economy & Finance of oil

• Like recycling, energy efficiency is necessary

  • Allow to reduce flows for a given performance

  • 25% energy yield -> 30% energy yield -> 1/6 of oil flows spared per year

  • 25% energy yield -> 50% energy yield -> 1/2 of oil flows spared per year

  • Same goes for « material efficiency » (diminshing the quantity of material needed to achieve a given functionnality)

• But it is not sufficient, and could even be harmful on the global scale

  • Energy efficiency, when only measure applied, have mainly cost reduction effects

  • Cost reduction could then lead to democratize preexisting uses or create new ones

  • This then would lead to an overall increase in energy consumption

[37] SORRELL, Steve, 2007. The Rebound Effect: an assessment of the evidence for economy-wide energy savings from improved energy efficiency. [online]. UKERC

• This would be called a « rebound effect » ^[37]

  • The « economy-wide » rebound effect is of combination of direct and indirect rebound effects that can interact with each other

• Some basic examples of direct rebound effect :

  • If fuel-efficient vehicules make travel cheaper -> Consumers may choose to drive further / more often -> Offsets the energy savings

  • If a factory uses energy more efficiently -> Becomes more profitable -> May generate further investments -> More production

• Some basic examples of indirect rebound effect :

  • Drivers of fuel-efficient cars may spend the money saved bying petrol on other energy intensive goods or services (ex: overseas flight)

[38] JEVONS, William Stanley, 1865. The Coal Question. . 1865. P. 213.

• Rebound effect concept coms back to the XIXth century

  • Firstly known as « Jevons paradox » from W. J. Jevons ^[38]

  • Steam-engines’ efficiency had been increased by 10-fold at least in a century

  • Consumption of coal had greatly increased anyway (x 6 in 50 years)

• The same considerations could be made about today :

  • Energy efficiency of cars’ engines have never been better

  • Our oil cosumption dedicated to it have never been higher

  -> Could be explained by:

  • The growth of car use driven by low cost of oil

  • And spared cost of cars invested in high-tech supplementary functions which increase car’s weight and maintain oil consumption

  • The increase in heavy vehicules like SUVs

[39] STERN, David I., 2017. How accurate are energy intensity projections?. DOI 10.1007/s10584-017-2003-3.

• Quantified contemporary estimations are complicated :

  • There is indeed a correlation between various measures of energy efficiency and continuing growth of overall energy consumption

  • But the causal links between these trends are not clear

  • Difficulty to assess other things than direct rebound effects

• That being said, evidence suggest that : ^[37]

  • It has the potential to widely vary between technologies, sectors, income groups

  • In OECD countries, automotive transport, household heating & cooling can relatively robustly be considered subjects to a direct rebound effect of 10-30% (microscale)

  • Current energy or material efficiency policies are not up to the task (macroscale)

• Predictions of energy footprint decline itself are generally too optimistic ^[39]

[40] HALL, Charles A. S., et al., 2014. EROI of different fuels and the implications for society. DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.05.049.

• Material & Energy flows will decline anyway due to the physics underlying the production peak

  • We’ve seen that the decline in ores’s grade do lead to an exponential demand in energy for base metals extraction, and that a mineralogical barrier can happen for rarer metals

  • But oil itself needs energy to be extracted!

• Last notion of this course : EROI – Energy return on investment

  • Ratio of energy delivered by a specific energy vector and the energy invested in the capture & delivery of this energy

  • Measures the relative quality of energy vectors

• Varied possible choices of boundaries in systemic assessments, so as much EROI calculations: standard ; point of use ; extended ; societal

  • Estimates re complicated due to oil compagnies low level of transparency

• As oil is often extracted together with natural gas, calculations can be tricky

  • But all estimates tend to show a progressive decrease in EROI for every place where data is available : here in USA

• Is there a trend for oil already?

  • It seems so

  • All estimates tend to show a progressive decrease in EROI for every place where data is available : here in USA

• Is there a trend for oil already?

  • Pretty much so!

  • All estimates tend to show a progressive decrease in EROI for every place where data is available : here in Canada

• Is there a trend for oil already?

  • Undeniably so!

  • All estimates tend to show a progressive decrease in EROI for every place where data is available : here in various other countries

• It is logical from what we’ve seen about the concentration of resources in general. But why does it especially matter here?

  • The decrease of the EROI of conventionnal oil means we’ll need to set aside a growing share of the oil flows just to continue to have a flow

  • This share of oil « lost » will no longer be used to supply other sectors ^[36]

  • Non conventionnal oils have a base EROI quite lower than conventionnal (and will also decrease with their further exploitation) ^[40]

[36] MITTEAU, Gilles, 2018. Economie et finance du pétrole -Heu?reka. [online].

[40] HALL, Charles A. S., et al., 2014. EROI of different fuels and the implications for society. DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.05.049.

[33] HCC, 2020. Rapport annuel -Redresser le cap, relancer la transition. Haut Conseil pour le Climat [online]. 2020. 

• As there is no absolute decoupling, a contraction & instability of economy and as we know it seems unavoidable in the medium-term, regardless of climate change ^{[36] & [40]}

  • By « economy », here, we mean that all socioeconomical & geopolitical relationships will be impacted

  • Social acceptability of dynamics created by contracting flows will be a key component of the success ofmitigating policies ^[33]

  -> Ecological transition is also a social one

• This is were we, as engineers & citizens, have apart to play

• We would gain a lot to take inspiration from the 7 principles of low-techs ^[30]

  1. Challenging needs

  2. Design and produce truly sustainable

  3. Orienting knowledge to resources’ savings

  4. Striking a technical balance between performance & conviviality

  5. Relocalize without losing the right scale effects

  6. De-machinizing services

  7. Knowing to remain modest

[30] BIHOUIX, Philippe, 2014. L’Age des low techs : vers une civilisation techniquement soutenable. Seuil.