Sustainable energy transitions require enhanced resource governance

Takuma Watari,Keisuke Nansai,Kenichi Nakajima,Damien Giurco

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127698

Abstract

The global transition to fundamentally decarbonized electricity and transport systems will alter the existing resource flows of both fossil fuels and metals; however, such a transition may have unintended consequences. Here we show that the decarbonization of both the electricity and transport sectors will curtail fossil fuel production while paradoxically increasing resource extraction associated with metal production by more than a factor of 7 by 2050 relative to 2015 levels. Importantly, approximately 32–40% of this increase in resource extraction is expected to occur in countries with weak, poor, and failing resource governance, indicating that the impending mining boom may result in severe environmental degradation and unequal economic benefits in local communities. A suite of circular economy strategies, including lifetime extension, servitization, and recycling, can mitigate such risks, but they may not fully offset the growth in resource extraction. Our findings underscore the importance of institutional instruments that enhance the resource governance of entire low-carbon technology supply chains, along with circular economy practices. In the absence of such actions, the decarbonization of electricity and transport sectors may pose an ethical conundrum in which global carbon emissions are reduced at the expense of an increase in socio-environmental risks at local mining sites.

Highlights

Avoiding the catastrophic impacts of climate change will require, inter alia, the transformation of both the electricity supply and transport systems on an unprecedented scale in the coming decades (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2017)
Future resource extraction patterns driven by the energy transition show a paradoxical relationship between carbon emissions and resource extraction (Fig. 1)
Decarbonizing electricity and transport systems will reduce resource extraction caused by fossil fuel production by about 75% and 35%, respectively, from 2015 to 2050

Summary

Introduction

Avoiding the catastrophic impacts of climate change will require, inter alia, the transformation of both the electricity supply and transport systems on an unprecedented scale in the coming decades (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2017). The quantities of resources used directly for low-carbon tech nologies is increasingly well understood, previous studies have generally failed to capture hidden resource extraction, such as waste rock and overburden This deficit in our understanding will likely mask the full impact of resource extraction in response to the energy transition (Kosai et al, 2020, 2021), which will lead to insufficient attention being paid to potential trade-offs by government, industry, and the community. Another limitation of previous studies is that they largely lack the geographical resolution to identify which countries will support the global energy transition through resource extraction. The omission of these other possibilities prevents decision makers from understanding the true potential and/or limitations of such strategies

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion