Modelling the Demand and Access of Mineral Resources in a Changing World

Baptiste Andrieu,François Verzier,Hugo Le Boulzec,Olivier Vidal

doi:10.3390/su14010011

Abstract

Humanity is using mineral resources at an unprecedented level and demand will continue to grow over the next few decades before stabilizing by the end of the century, due to the economic development of populated countries and the energy and digital transitions. The demand for raw materials must be estimated with a bottom-up and regionalised approach and the supply capacity with approaches coupling long-term prices with energy and production costs controlled by the quality of the resource and the rate of technological improvement that depends on thermodynamic limits. Such modelling provides arguments in favour of two classically opposed visions of the future of mineral resources: an unaffordable increase in costs and prices following the depletion of high quality deposits or, on the contrary, a favourable compensation by technological improvements. Both views are true, but not at the same time. After a period of energy and production cost gains, we now appear to be entering a pivotal period of long-term production cost increases as we approach the minimum practical energy and thermodynamic limits for many metals.

Highlights

The per capita consumption of global resources has doubled between 1950 and 2010 [1], and the consumption of raw materials and mineral resources used to build the energy, transportation, and building infrastructures and consumer goods of modern societies has increased at an average rate of 2–5%/year over the past century
This trend gives the misleading impression that perpetual growth is possible in a finite world, the Earth: misleading because there is a thermodynamic limit to the potential of technological improvements, and what was possible in the past will not necessarily be possible in the future
The above overview of some parameters controlling the demand and primary production provides arguments for two classically opposed views of the future of mineral resources: an unaffordable increase in costs and prices following the depletion of high quality deposits or, on the contrary, a favourable compensation by technological improvements

Summary

Introduction

The per capita consumption of global resources has doubled between 1950 and 2010 [1], and the consumption of raw materials and mineral resources (gravel and sand, cement, ores, industrial minerals) used to build the energy, transportation, and building infrastructures and consumer goods of modern societies has increased at an average rate of 2–5%/year over the past century. This assumption, based on an empirical fit of global historical data covering too short a period, is in conflict with the historical evolution in developed countries [57,58,59] It assumes that the future demand for metal per GDP will be the same as in the past, whereas new technologies that did not exist two decades ago are developing fast in the sectors of energy, transport, and information and communications. Before attempting to apply the models to future developments, it must be demonstrated that they are capable of reproducing the historical evolution of the demand for infrastructure and raw materials over long periods of time, by country or geographical region These different points are discussed in the present contribution, along with a brief review of anticipated future needs and production capacities. Our objective is not to provide a single answer to the complex issues raised by the consumption and supply of mineral resources but rather to identify some of the key points that seem important to consider in their modelling

The Base Metals and Cement Consumption from Traditional Applications

The New Applications and High-Tech Metals

Can Future Production Meet the Demand?

Findings

Discussion