Closing the Infrastructure Gap for Decarbonization: The Case for an Integrated Mineral Supply Agreement
Date
2022-11-15
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Environmental Science and Technology
Abstract
Significant amounts of feedstock metals will be required to build the infrastructure for the green energy transition. It is currently estimated, however, that the world may be facing an “infrastructure gap” that could prevent us from meeting United Nations Sustainable Development Goal targets. Prior investigations have focused on the extractive aspects of the mining industry to meet these targets and on looming bottlenecks and regional challenges in these upstream market segments. Scant attention has been paid to the downstream processing segments of the raw materials value chain, which also has a high degree of market concentration. Growing international tensions and geopolitical events have resulted in a shift toward “reshoring” and “near-shoring” of mining processing capabilities as regional powers attempt to make metal supply chains more secure. While increasing resilience, these shifts can also dilute the overall effectiveness of the global mining supply network and subsequently hamper the world’s ability to close the green energy infrastructure gap. We argue that broadening the remit of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to include coordinating these mission-critical metal processing functions can mitigate these issues. The G20 is one potential forum for enabling an integrated mineral processing agreement under the auspices of IRENA.
Description
This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Environmental Science and Technology, copyright © 2022 American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c05413. This article will be embargoed until 11/15/2023.
Keywords
critical materials, energy transition, climate change, decarbonization, infrastructure gap
Citation
Ali, Saleem H., Sophia Kalantzakos, Roderick Eggert, Roland Gauss, Constantine Karayannopoulos, Julie Klinger, Xiaoyu Pu, Kristin Vekasi, and Robert K. Perrons. “Closing the Infrastructure Gap for Decarbonization: The Case for an Integrated Mineral Supply Agreement.” Environmental Science & Technology 56, no. 22 (November 15, 2022): 15280–89. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c05413.