The use of steel in the United Kingdom's transport sector: A stock–flow–service nexus case study

Abstract

Energy and material flows and material stocks are key requirements for the supply of goods and services, which in turn support societal development. However, most resource accounting methods restrict the analysis to resource flows, which fails to acknowledge the increasing role of in‐use stocks in service provision. Using the UK transport sector as a case study, we undertook a material flow analysis through the lens of the stock–flow–service (SFS) nexus. We used the latter to identify how steel consumption and accumulation in vehicles contributed to passenger mobility between 1960 and 2015. Our results show that the efficiency of the steel stock contained in cars and motorcycles decreased from 37.5 to 28.0 passenger‐km (pkm)/kg‐year. The steel service for buses decreased from 63.6 to 32.1 pkm/kg‐year, while that of the national railway increased from 23.8 to 70.3 pkm/kg‐year steel. London Underground steel stock–service efficiency improved from 31.5 to 57.0 pkm/kg‐year steel. The annual fraction of flows that maintained the steel stock varied according to vehicle category and was between 3.4% and 8.2%. In terms of the stock expansion rate, the greatest change (on average, an annual increase of 3%) was that of “cars and motorcycles.” This reflects the demographic transitions and the growing consumer demand for car‐based mobility. We discussed how the SFS nexus contributes to a more comprehensive form of resource accounting and reflect upon some of its limitations and how they might be addressed.

Közgazdaságtan és a társadalmi metabolizmus = Economics and material throughput

“…Bár a különböző szintű anyagáramelemzésekkel tele a padlás, és például a makroszintű anyag-, illetve karbonlábnyom már megbízható online interface segítségével egy kattintásra elérhető, 1 pedig ez még két-három éve is komoly számítási kapacitást igényelt. Az általam szűkebben kutatott terület, az anyagállományok vizsgálatának egyre pontosabb és átfogóbb elemzési módszereit ismertük meg az elmúlt 5-10 évben, de azt még mindig alig vizsgálja bárki, hogy ezen állományoknak mi a társadalmigazdasági funkciója és hogyan alakíthatók ezek a funkciók (ellenpéldaként említhetők például Krausmann et al, 2017;Carmona et al, 2020). Talán részben erre gondolhatott Daly, amikor az empirikus eredményeket hiányolja.…”

Resource use and economic development: an exergy perspective on energy and material flows and stocks from 1900 to 2010

“…Although GDP is widely used and accepted as an indicator; it does not capture all aspects that contribute to a person's quality of life because it does not accurately account for externalities such as pollution. This points to the need of future research to address resource consumption and accumulation relative to energy and material service provision rather than wealth creation and incomes flows (see Brand-Correa and Steinberger, 2017;Carmona et al, 2020;Haberl et al, 2017;Whiting et al, 2020).…”

What Can the Stock-Flow-Service Nexus Offer to Corporate Environmental Sustainability?

“…One way to analyse the physical complexity of the socioeconomic system is through the "Stock-Flow-Service Nexus" approach (Figure 1) (Müller 2006;Haberl et al 2017). In addition, Carmona et al, (2020) propose six nexus indicators: "stock efficiency", "flow efficiency", "stock degradation efficiency", "stock maintenance rate", "stock expansion rate" and "specific embodied impact". These indicators take into consideration inflow, stock and outflows, from either a production or consumption perspective, and should be used to quantify various interactions (stock-flow, stock-service or flow-service).…”