Surplus Ore Potential as a Scarcity Indicator for Resource Extraction

Vieira, Marisa; Ponsioen, Tommie; Goedkoop, Mark; Huijbregts, Mark A. J.

doi:10.1111/jiec.12444

Cited by 45 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…can be interpreted as proxy for the question posed here, depending on modeling choices. For instance, the ore requirement indicator (Swart and Dewulf 2013) and the surplus ore potential (Vieira et al 2017) methods quantify the amount of surplus ore required to mine the same amount of metalwhich can be considered a consequence of a quality change.…”

Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recommended method: SOP URR (Ultimate Recoverable Resource) (Vieira 2018) Level of recommendation: interim recommended The surplus ore potential (SOP) (Vieira et al 2017) method measures the average additional ore required to produce the resource in the future, based on resource grade-tonnage distributions and the assumption that higher grade ores are preferentially extracted.…”

Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the total remaining extraction is unknown, it is approximated by demonstrated economic reserves and ultimate recoverable resources (URR, approximated as 0.01% of the resource within 3 km) to provide two sets of characterization factors (SOP reserves and SOP URR ). In the recommended version of the method (Vieira 2018), the set of CFs for 18 resources based on the approach described above (Vieira et al 2017) was extended to 75 resources through the extrapolation of SOP values using a correlation between SOP and resource prices.…”

Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mineral resources in life cycle impact assessment: part II – recommendations on application-dependent use of existing methods and on future method development needs

Berger

Sonderegger²,

Alvarenga

et al. 2020

Int J Life Cycle Assess

104

121

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Purpose Assessing impacts of abiotic resource use has been a topic of persistent debate among life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developers and a source of confusion for life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners considering the different interpretations of the safeguard subject for mineral resources and the resulting variety of LCIA methods to choose from. Based on the review and assessment of 27 existing LCIA methods, accomplished in the first part of this paper series (Sonderegger et al. 2020), this paper provides recommendations regarding the application-dependent use of existing methods and areas for future method development. Method Within the “global guidance for LCIA indicators and methods” project of the Life Cycle Initiative hosted by UN Environment, 62 members of the “task force mineral resources” representing different stakeholders discussed the strengths and limitations of existing LCIA methods and developed initial conclusions. These were used by a subgroup of eight members at the Pellston Workshop® held in Valencia, Spain, to derive recommendations on the application-dependent use and future development of impact assessment methods. Results and discussion First, the safeguard subject for mineral resources within the area of protection (AoP) natural resources was defined. Subsequently, seven key questions regarding the consequences of mineral resource use were formulated, grouped into “inside-out” related questions (i.e., current resource use leading to changes in opportunities for future users to use resources) and “outside-in” related questions (i.e., potential restrictions of resource availability for current resource users). Existing LCIA methods were assigned to these questions, and seven methods (ADPultimate reserves, SOPURR, LIME2endpoint, CEENE, ADPeconomic reserves, ESSENZ, and GeoPolRisk) are recommended for use in current LCA studies at different levels of recommendation. All 27 identified LCIA methods were tested on an LCA case study of an electric vehicle, and yielded divergent results due to their modeling of impact mechanisms that address different questions related to mineral resource use. Besides method-specific recommendations, we recommend that all methods increase the number of minerals covered, regularly update their characterization factors, and consider the inclusion of secondary resources and anthropogenic stocks. Furthermore, the concept of dissipative resource use should be defined and integrated in future method developments. Conclusion In an international consensus-finding process, the current challenges of assessing impacts of resource use in LCA have been addressed by defining the safeguard subject for mineral resources, formulating key questions related to this safeguard subject, recommending existing LCIA methods in relation to these questions, and highlighting areas for future method development.

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Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recommendation Of Methods For Current Use In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Mineral resources in life cycle impact assessment: part II – recommendations on application-dependent use of existing methods and on future method development needs

Berger

Sonderegger²,

Alvarenga

et al. 2020

Int J Life Cycle Assess

104

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…More ore will need to be extracted, as ore grades will decline due to mining higher‐ore grades (Mudd, 2007; Prior, Giurco, Mudd, Mason, & Behrish, 2012). Global endpoint factors are available for 70 minerals (Vieira, Ponsioen, Goedkoop, & Huijbregts, 2016; Vieira, 2018).…”

Section: Lc‐impact Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

LC‐IMPACT: A regionalized life cycle damage assessment method

Verones¹,

Hellweg

Antón

et al. 2020

J of Industrial Ecology

Self Cite

130

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Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many of these advancements are scattered throughout the scientific literature, making it difficult for practitioners to apply the new models. Here, we present the LC‐IMPACT method that provides characterization factors at the damage level for 11 impact categories related to three areas of protection (human health, ecosystem quality, natural resources). Human health damage is quantified as disability adjusted life years, damage to ecosystem quality as global species extinction equivalents (based on potentially disappeared fraction of species), and damage to mineral resources as kilogram of extra ore extracted. Seven of the impact categories include spatial differentiation at various levels of spatial scale. The influence of value choices related to the time horizon and the level of scientific evidence of the impacts considered is quantified with four distinct sets of characterization factors. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method with an illustrative life cycle assessment example of different fuel options in Europe (petrol or biofuel). Differences between generic and regionalized impacts vary up to two orders of magnitude for some of the selected impact categories, highlighting the importance of spatial detail in LCIA. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges.

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“…Besides such variations within the P/R 2 framework, completely different methods were proposed and applied to assess resource depletion issues. For instance, the future efforts were addressed by taking into account the decrease of ore grade and corresponding surplus energy requirement (Goedkoop and Spriensma, 2001;Müllerwenk, 1998), associated cost increase (Goedkoop et al, 2013), or the extra amount of ore mined per additional unit of resource extracted (Vieira et al, 2017). Another example of a completely different principle is based on thermodynamic accounting (Dewulf et al, 2007) in term of exergy.…”

Section: Depletion Potentials As Derivatives (1997)mentioning

confidence: 99%