non-renewable resources

Question 1

Energy flow in the system

Answer 1

Solar in, enters ecosystem (biosphere) -> enters economic subsystem and gets used -> low temperature waste heat outflow

Question 2

Resource chain

Answer 2

Resource -> mining -> processing -> product-in-use -> waste

Question 3

Resource cycle

Answer 3

Resource -> reserve -> resource processing -> resource in the economy -> resource in the environment

Process recycling (in process), reuse (in economy) and primary (after econmy back to processing) and secondary recycling (from environment to processing) are added

Question 4

Types of resources

Answer 4

Identified:
- proven
- probable
- inferred
-possible
Undiscovered
- hypothetical
- speculative

Question 5

Logistic discovery exploitation model

Answer 5

determine the total production by calculating the area under the graph

Question 6

Peak oil

Answer 6

The moment maximum oil production is reached.

Question 7

What does the logistic growth model show

Answer 7

minerals tend to “group” together, this means that often there is a lot in one location, and hardly any in another location

Question 8

Frack gas

Answer 8

has for a long time been in the resource models, they just did not know at what oil/gas price it would finally enter the market

Question 9

2 degree point and depletion

Answer 9

should we allow oil companies to exploit their resources past the 2 degree point?
(if not, that would mean that their reserves would loose their value.)

Question 10

Learning by doing

Answer 10

performance goes up with cumulative production

cost go down with accumulated experience and scale

Question 11

What determines demand?

Answer 11

1. Intensity of use

2. cost and price, supply availability and security, etc.

Question 12

Theory of dematerialization

Answer 12

At some point the correlation between income per capita and resource consumption is decoupled. It will peak, but after that the resource use will stabilize while the gdp can keep on increasing.

Question 13

Why do material matter?

Answer 13

• essential in our economy
• supplies of mineral resources are limited
• environmental impacts

Question 14

The nexus field

Answer 14

The connectinos between parts of the cycle with other parts.

Minerals materials -> energy -> water -> food/fiber -> land & ecosystem services -> minerals/materials

Question 15

impacts of materials

Answer 15

• mining
• production
• end of life

Question 16

New technologies (materials)

Answer 16

often require (rare earth) metals which will lead to scarcity.

• Neodymium in electric motors
  – Cadmium, Tellurium, Indium and other elements in solar PV cells
  – Silver used for PV electrodes

Question 17

Scarcity of materials

Answer 17

• not economic to mine
• limited natural occurrence
• environmental impacts my restrict access
• depletion of existing reserves

Question 18

hitch hiker elements

Answer 18

elements that are mined as a byproduct of a more important ore. These hitch hiker elements are used, but apparently not in quantities that legitimates mining for them.

Question 19

Most rare earth metals

Answer 19

are located in China

Question 20

Concentration of rare earth metals

Answer 20

is the highest if we pile up all our phones

Question 21

Recycling (materials)

Answer 21

recycling of rare earth metals is low.

Question 22

rare earth metals

Answer 22

not rare, just in very low concentrations

Question 23

industrial emissions come from 5 materials

Key materials as Bert calls them

Answer 23

• steel
• cement
• plastic
• paper
• aluminium
  (-other)

Question 24

Challenges for sustainable resource use

Answer 24

• Consumption must not exceed the carrying capacity or break linkages between economic growth and resource use
• reduce negative environmental impacts generated by use of resources in growing economy
• the access to resources

Question 25

Options to decrease emissions while demand doubles

Answer 25

1) efficiency improvements
2) yield improvement
3) recycling
4) CCS
5) Longer lifetime
6) product upgrade
7) component reuse
8) less material for same product

Question 26

What are minerals?

Answer 26

non animal and vegetable sources that can be mined

- often have a replenishing rate of 0 in our lifetime

Question 27

sequestration resevoirs

Answer 27

in these nature stores materials for a long time

Question 28

mobilisation resevoirs

Answer 28

materials are transferred for shorter time

Question 29

natural mobilisation flows

Answer 29

weathering

Question 30

anthropogenic mobilisation flows

Answer 30

mining
fossil fuel combustion
biomass burning

Question 31

non renewable resources

Answer 31

exhaustable or finite stocks which are depleted by exploitation

Question 32

environmental sinks

Answer 32

natural systems that can basorb “waste”material

Question 33

peak oil

Answer 33

uncertainties because of manipulated data and use of unconventionals

Question 34

supply cost curve

Answer 34

shows the marginal costs for given resources

Question 35

even though there are environmental and safety regulations

Answer 35

cost of oil is not increasing through oil discoveries and better technologies

Question 36

Learning effects

Answer 36

price decreases when production increases

Question 37

resource curse

Answer 37

negative correlation between natural resources and GDP

leads to large weapon purchases

Question 38

Resource scarcity rent

Answer 38

extra costs accounting for scarcity on top of hotelling ruse.
are hard to measure and can be really high

Question 39

Hotelling ruse

Answer 39

costs are a function of the depletion

Question 40

3 methods of flow analysis

Answer 40

1) Substance flow analysis (SFA)
2) material flow analysis (MFA)
3) LCA

Question 41

SFA

Answer 41

Substance flow analyis

Question 42

MFA

Answer 42

Material flow analysis

Question 43

LCA

Answer 43

life cycle assesment

Question 44

Substance flow analysis

Answer 44

flow of individual substances through society

Question 45

material flow analysis

Answer 45

flow of bulk material through society

Question 46

LCA is the only methods that

Answer 46

takes impacts into account (of the 3 analysis that we are discussing here)

Question 47

Cradle to (3)

Answer 47

• Factory gate
• grave
• cradle

Question 48

Cradle to factory gate

Answer 48

from extraction to finished product.

so to the point it leaves the factory gate.

Question 49

Cradle to grave

Answer 49

From extraction, through production, to product use and waste management

Question 50

IV curve

Answer 50

intensity of use which plots material intensity against GDP per capita. shows a sharp increase and then a decline (after a peak)

Question 51

3 reasons for the shape of the IV curve

Answer 51

1) structural change in economic activity with higher gdp/cap
2) prices and technology: use is more efficient because of prices
3) recycling: gets more attractive through high prices

Question 52

Why do we see more recycling in high income countries

Answer 52

a better infrastructure is needed which is often more available when the income is higher.

Question 53

(Environmental) kutznet curve is not reality because

Answer 53

• substitutions are necessarily better
• anthropogenic change of the environment
• total number of products increases so the (efficiency) is negatively compensated by new products

Question 54

3 anthropogenic changes of the environment

Answer 54

acid rain
ozone layer
global warming

Question 55

Anthropogenic changes of the environment (preventing)

Answer 55

in the past indicators of harmful chemicals were ignored until the problem really began to show symptoms.

(it is almost impossible to clean up once it is in the environment.)