non-renewable resources Flashcards
Energy flow in the system
Solar in, enters ecosystem (biosphere) -> enters economic subsystem and gets used -> low temperature waste heat outflow
Resource chain
Resource -> mining -> processing -> product-in-use -> waste
Resource cycle
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
Types of resources
Identified: - proven - probable - inferred -possible Undiscovered - hypothetical - speculative
Logistic discovery exploitation model
determine the total production by calculating the area under the graph
Peak oil
The moment maximum oil production is reached.
What does the logistic growth model show
minerals tend to “group” together, this means that often there is a lot in one location, and hardly any in another location
Frack gas
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
2 degree point and depletion
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.)
Learning by doing
performance goes up with cumulative production
cost go down with accumulated experience and scale
What determines demand?
- Intensity of use
2. cost and price, supply availability and security, etc.
Theory of dematerialization
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.
Why do material matter?
- essential in our economy
- supplies of mineral resources are limited
- environmental impacts
The nexus field
The connectinos between parts of the cycle with other parts.
Minerals materials -> energy -> water -> food/fiber -> land & ecosystem services -> minerals/materials
impacts of materials
- mining
- production
- end of life
New technologies (materials)
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
Scarcity of materials
- not economic to mine
- limited natural occurrence
- environmental impacts my restrict access
- depletion of existing reserves
hitch hiker elements
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.
Most rare earth metals
are located in China
Concentration of rare earth metals
is the highest if we pile up all our phones
Recycling (materials)
recycling of rare earth metals is low.
rare earth metals
not rare, just in very low concentrations
industrial emissions come from 5 materials
Key materials as Bert calls them
- steel
- cement
- plastic
- paper
- aluminium
(-other)
Challenges for sustainable resource use
- 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
Options to decrease emissions while demand doubles
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
What are minerals?
non animal and vegetable sources that can be mined
- often have a replenishing rate of 0 in our lifetime
sequestration resevoirs
in these nature stores materials for a long time
mobilisation resevoirs
materials are transferred for shorter time
natural mobilisation flows
weathering
anthropogenic mobilisation flows
mining
fossil fuel combustion
biomass burning
non renewable resources
exhaustable or finite stocks which are depleted by exploitation
environmental sinks
natural systems that can basorb “waste”material
peak oil
uncertainties because of manipulated data and use of unconventionals
supply cost curve
shows the marginal costs for given resources
even though there are environmental and safety regulations
cost of oil is not increasing through oil discoveries and better technologies
Learning effects
price decreases when production increases
resource curse
negative correlation between natural resources and GDP
leads to large weapon purchases
Resource scarcity rent
extra costs accounting for scarcity on top of hotelling ruse.
are hard to measure and can be really high
Hotelling ruse
costs are a function of the depletion
3 methods of flow analysis
1) Substance flow analysis (SFA)
2) material flow analysis (MFA)
3) LCA
SFA
Substance flow analyis
MFA
Material flow analysis
LCA
life cycle assesment
Substance flow analysis
flow of individual substances through society
material flow analysis
flow of bulk material through society
LCA is the only methods that
takes impacts into account (of the 3 analysis that we are discussing here)
Cradle to (3)
- Factory gate
- grave
- cradle
Cradle to factory gate
from extraction to finished product.
so to the point it leaves the factory gate.
Cradle to grave
From extraction, through production, to product use and waste management
IV curve
intensity of use which plots material intensity against GDP per capita. shows a sharp increase and then a decline (after a peak)
3 reasons for the shape of the IV curve
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
Why do we see more recycling in high income countries
a better infrastructure is needed which is often more available when the income is higher.
(Environmental) kutznet curve is not reality because
- substitutions are necessarily better
- anthropogenic change of the environment
- total number of products increases so the (efficiency) is negatively compensated by new products
3 anthropogenic changes of the environment
acid rain
ozone layer
global warming
Anthropogenic changes of the environment (preventing)
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.)
