Exploring rare earths supply constraints for the emerging clean energy technologies and the role of recycling

Habib, Komal; Wenzel, Henrik

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.04.035

Cited by 225 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…According to the study, much higher increases in production will be necessary in order to meet the expected future demand [3]. However, according to another study, geological reserves of Nd and Dy will likely not deplete for many hundred years ahead [4]. Worldwide annual demand of REEs currently lies around 136,000 tons [5].…”

Section: Rarity Scarcity and Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the criteria used to term a metal "critical" can vary from study to study [11]. As scientific publications on demand, supply and need for REEs are rapidly increasing, we also see a growth of scientific articles that see recycling of REEs as a significant (secondary) supply option ( [12,13,4,14]. Other studies are more critical, such as [15] who found that during the next decade, recycling of neodymium is unlikely to substantially contribute to global REE supply security.…”

Section: Rarity Scarcity and Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Current global supply of REE comes mainly from China (around 87%, although estimates also vary per study). The remaining 13% is supplied by the USA, Australia, India, Brazil, Malaysia, and other countries [4]. Antimony (Sb) and indium are two examples of REEsthat are strategically critical [32].…”

Section: Strategic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rare earth element criticality and sustainable management

Drost¹,

Wang²

2016

Proceedings of the 2015 4th International Conference on Sensors, Measurement and Intelligent Materials

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Abstract. Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical for their functions in many clean energy technologies, but many of these technologies use REEs which are at risk of supply disruption. For this reason, scientific research on the problems surrounding the supply side of these rare earth elements (REE) has recently bloomed. Concerns about tighter supplies that might increase costs for producing the necessary green technology take the "criticality" of some of these elements as a warning sign. In many papers, a cursory explanation of this criticality is given at most. In order to come up with management strategies that are able to help address the criticality of some of these elements, a scientific plausible picture should be given. The aim of this paper is do so by basing itself on a literature review of recent work.

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Section: Rarity Scarcity and Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rarity Scarcity and Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rare earth element criticality and sustainable management

Drost¹,

Wang²

2016

Proceedings of the 2015 4th International Conference on Sensors, Measurement and Intelligent Materials

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“…The described interdependency is illustrated in Figure 2. While thermal nuclear power plants presently use uranium fuel (and in the future possibly thorium fuel), present day renewable energy sources require relevant amounts of rare earth elements (REE) for their production [21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. These REEs may also be (at least partly) provided as a byproduct from primary ore processing.…”

Section: Motivation Behind Energy Neutral Mineral Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

et al. 2018

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A number of primary ores such as phosphate rock, gold-, copper-and rare earth ores contain considerable amounts of accompanying uranium and other critical materials. Energy neutral mineral processing is the extraction of unconventional uranium during primary ore processing to use it, after enrichment and fuel production, to generate greenhouse gas lean energy in a nuclear reactor. Energy neutrality is reached if the energy produced from the extracted uranium is equal to or larger than the energy required for primary ore processing, uranium extraction, -conversion, -enrichment and -fuel production. This work discusses the sustainability of energy neutral mineral processing and provides an overview of the current progress of a multinational research project on that topic conducted under the umbrella of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

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“…University of Southern Denmark [10,48] "Assessing the dynamic material criticality of infrastructure transitions: A case of low carbon electricity" (2014) University of Leeds [49] "Raw Materials for Future Technologies" (2009, 2016) BMWI, BGR, DERA [50,51] "Assessing the long-term supply risks for mineral raw materials" (2009) "Evaluating supply risk patterns and supply and demand trends" (2012) Volkswagen AG/BGR [4,52] "Critical Metals for Future Sustainable Technologies and their Recycling Potential" (2009) UNEP [53] "Trends in supply and demand of mineral raw materials" (2008) BMWI, BGR [54] Abbreviations in Table 1 In this paper, we present a simple indicator based method to assess raw material dependency and supply risks at the national level over a period of time using trade statistics and production data. This method is demonstrated and evaluated on the example of Germany and Japan-two established economies with low domestic mineral deposits, a high share of the manufacturing sector regarding total value added and specialized industries depending on imported high-tech metals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the Step towards a More Dynamic View on Raw Material Criticality: An Indicator Based Analysis for Germany and Japan

et al. 2016

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Due to mounting concerns about the security of raw material supplies, numerous studies dealing with the quantification of supply risks and material criticality at the national level have been carried out in previous years. Regarding these studies, most approaches are indicator based static screening methods analyzing large numbers of raw materials and identifying those which are most critical for an economy. The majority of these screening methods quantify supply risks and vulnerabilities for one base year without taking into account temporal changes. Dynamic approaches for specific raw materials analyzing affected value chains in detail have been introduced recently; however, these studies do not intend to provide a screening of larger numbers of commodities. In this paper, we present a simple dynamic screening approach to assess raw material criticality at the country level building upon methods from innovation economics. The indicators applied in this study are only based on broadly available production and trade data, which makes this approach relatively easy to apply. We test our methodology on the example of Germany and Japan-two economies with highly specialized industries and low domestic raw material deposits, and, hence, high import dependency. The results are comparable to those of previously conducted multi indicator based static screening methods. However, they provide additional insight into temporal developments over the previous decade.

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Exploring rare earths supply constraints for the emerging clean energy technologies and the role of recycling

Cited by 225 publications

References 15 publications

Rare earth element criticality and sustainable management

Rare earth element criticality and sustainable management

On the Sustainability and Progress of Energy Neutral Mineral Processing

Taking the Step towards a More Dynamic View on Raw Material Criticality: An Indicator Based Analysis for Germany and Japan

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