Global socioeconomic carbon stocks in long-lived products 1900–2008

Abstract

A better understanding of the global carbon cycle as well as of climate change mitigation options such as carbon sequestration requires the quantification of natural and socioeconomic stocks and flows of carbon. A so-far under-researched aspect of the global carbon budget is the accumulation of carbon in long-lived products such as buildings and furniture. We present a comprehensive assessment of global socioeconomic carbon stocks and the corresponding inand outflows during the period 1900-2008. These data allowed calculation of the annual carbon sink in socioeconomic stocks during this period. The study covers the most important socioeconomic carbon fractions, i.e. wood, bitumen, plastic and cereals. Our assessment was mainly based on production and consumption data for plastic, bitumen and wood products and the respective fractions remaining in stocks in any given year. Global socioeconomic carbon stocks were 2.3 GtC in 1900 and increased to 11.5 GtC in 2008. The share of wood in total C stocks fell from 97% in 1900 to 60% in 2008, while the shares of plastic and bitumen increased to 16% and 22%, respectively. The rate of gross carbon sequestration in socioeconomic stocks increased from 17 MtC yr −1 in 1900 to a maximum of 247 MtC yr −1 in 2007, corresponding to 2.2%-3.4% of global fossil-fuel-related carbon emissions. We conclude that while socioeconomic carbon stocks are not negligible, their growth over time is not a major climate change mitigation option and there is an only modest potential to mitigate climate change by the increase of socioeconomic carbon stocks.

Global socioeconomic material stocks rise 23-fold over the 20th century and require half of annual resource use

“…We compared our results with available estimates from studies that have quantified stocks of substances or single materials, including steel (23), aluminum (21), copper (30), carbon in timber and plastics (20), and concrete (6). As shown in SI Appendix, Figs.…”

“…In recent years, scientific and policy interest in stocks has been growing, but studies conducted so far have been confined to specific elements, such as metals and other narrowly defined (groups of) substances or products (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Comprehensive MFA-based analyses of the long-term development of material stocks accumulated in built infrastructure and durable goods, their composition and relation to demand for primary materials, and waste production are still rare (24)(25)(26) and have never been attempted at the global scale.…”

The Material Stock–Flow–Service Nexus: A New Approach for Tackling the Decoupling Conundrum

“…Recently much progress has been made by employing dynamic stock-flow models to estimate stock accumulation from material use and lifetime dynamics [26,33,35,108]. Dynamic stock-flow models distinguish cohorts of stocks, e.g., age of passenger cars or efficiency of industrial Sustainability 2017, 9, 1049 6 of 19 plants depending on the time of construction.…”

“…Quantification of uncertainty remains underdeveloped in EW-MEFA [42,50,51], and even more so in regard to material stocks. Few authors have provided sensitivity analyses [30,85,108], multi-method approaches [95] or Monte-Carlo simulations [26,86]. Clearly, uncertainty is a topic of growing importance for MFA research and applications of the socioeconomic metabolism concept in general [31,32,50,51,109].…”

Net land‐atmosphere flows of biogenic carbon related to bioenergy: towards an understanding of systemic feedbacks

“…Humans harvest biomass for food and livestock feed production, raw materials and energy. Harvested biomass is used to build-up socioeconomic C stocks (Lauk et al ., 2012), i.e. C in human bodies and livestock as well as biogenic C in artefacts (e.g.…”