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Resource efficiency strategies are emerging on policy agendas worldwide. Commonly, resource efficiency policies aim at decreasing losses at the waste management stage and, thus, diverge from public interest in more comprehensive resource efficiency measures that include a focus the earlier material life cycle stages. Just in recent years, improvements in the lifetimes of products and increased repair and reuse ability have become policy objectives in some countries. However, the effectiveness of policy measures is usually not assessed, even though it is crucial to support informed policy-making and efficiently decrease the environmental impact of resource use. In this paper, we provide such an assessment for the copper cycle, the third most consumed metal with sharply increasing demand. Under current practices, in Western Europe and North America, 50% and 44% of the losses by 2050 occur at end-of-life collection, and only 2% of losses take place at the recovery stage; in Middle East and Africa for 19% and 54%, respectively. By 2050, most copper would be lost in China with a proportion of 58%. We evaluate the resource efficiency by quantifying the two key parameters, circularity and longevity, that is, how often and how long the material is in use in the anthroposphere. Our results show that the current global longevity of high-grade copper is 47 ± 2.5 years, and a copper atom is used in 2.1 ± 0.1 applications on average. Ambitious political measures across the life cycle can increase longevity by 85% and circularity by 45%.

Many new and efficient technologies require "critical metals" to function. These metals are often extracted as by-product of another metal, and their future supply is therefore dependent on mining developments of the host metal. Supply of critical metals can also be constrained because of political instability, discouraging mining policies, or trade restrictions. Scenario analyses of future metal supply that take these factors into account would provide policy makers with information about possible supply shortages. We provide a scenario analysis for demand and supply of cobalt, a potentially critical metal mainly used not only in high performance alloys but also in lithium-ion batteries and catalysts. Cobalt is mainly extracted as by-product of copper and nickel. A multiregional input-output (MRIO) model for 20 world regions and 163 commodities was built from the EXIOBASE v2.2.0 multiregional supply and use table with the commodity technology construct. This MRIO model was hybridized by disaggregating cobalt flows from the nonferrous metal sector. Future cobalt demand in different world regions from 2007 to 2050 was then estimated, assuming region- and sector-specific GDP growth, constant technology, and constant background import shares. A dynamic stock model of regional reserves for seven different types of copper, cobalt, and nickel resources, augmented with optimization-based region-specific mining capacity estimates, was used to determine future cobalt supply. The investment attractiveness index developed by the Fraser Institute specifically for mining industry entered the optimization routine as a measure of the regional attractiveness of mining. The baseline scenario shows no cobalt supply constraints over the considered time period 2007-2050, and recovering about 60 % of cobalt content of the copper and nickel ore flows would be sufficient to match global cobalt demand. When simulating a hypothetical sudden supply dropout in Africa during the period 2020-2035, we found that shortages in cobalt supply might occur in such scenarios.

For the European Union to realise its ambition of carbon neutrality, emissions from basic material production need to be reduced through low-carbon production processes, material efficiency and substitution, as well as enhanced recycling. Different reform options for the EU ETS are discussed that ensure a consistent carbon price incentive for all these mitigation options, while avoiding the risk of carbon leakage. This paper offers a first quantification of potential carbon leakage risks, distributional implications and additional revenues associated with different mechanisms: an import- only border carbon adjustment (BCA), a symmetric BCA, and an excise for embodied carbon emissions at a fixed benchmark level in combination with continued free allocation. We estimate the product-level carbon intensities for about 4,400 commodity groups, including basic materials, material products, and manufactured goods and compute implied price changes and cost increases relative to gross value added to assess the scale of carbon leakage risks.

Different options for a reform of the EU Emissions Trading System are discussed to ensure carbon price incentives for mitigation options in the basic materials sector, while minimizing carbon leakage risks. This paper quantifies carbon leakage risks, distributional implications, and additional revenues associated with an import-only border carbon adjustment (BCA), a symmetric (import and export) BCA, and an excise for embodied emissions at a fixed benchmark level in combination with continued free allocation. We estimate the product-level carbon intensities for 4400 commodity groups, compute maximal implied price changes due to full carbon pricing, and calculate cost increases relative to gross value added to assess the scale of carbon leakage risks. We show, first, that around 10% of EU exports and 5% of all domestic manufacturing sales meet the criteria for carbon leakage risk under an incomplete BCA at a carbon price of 30 EUR/t. Second, the distributional implications of consistent carbon pricing of basic materials are small and progressive. Finally, an excise could generate revenues of around 20 billion euros that may be used towards climate action. Our results on potential carbon leakage risks and their mitigation can inform responsible policy making to shape the EU pathway towards climate neutrality.