IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v94y2015icp110-117.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using thermodynamics to improve the resource efficiency indicator GDP/DMC

Author

Listed:
  • Valero, Alicia
  • Valero, Antonio
  • Calvo, Guiomar

Abstract

This paper analyzes the drawbacks of using the lead indicator Gross Domestic Product divided by Domestic Material Consumption (GDP/DMC) proposed by the European Commission as part of the Resource Efficiency Roadmap. As an alternative, we propose to assess mineral resource efficiency through exergy replacement costs instead of using mass terms. Exergy replacement costs represent the useful energy that would be required to return minerals from the most dispersed state (the bedrock) to their original conditions (of composition and concentration in the mineral deposits). Dispersing a scarce mineral such as gold or oil has a much higher replacement cost than that of iron or limestone and in the final accounting, the first minerals have a greater weighting. Consequently, the tonnage produced and dispersion degree are considered in the proposed index. This new index would lead to more developed policies that could reduce the consumption of scarce materials with higher replacement costs. The suitability of the proposed indicator is evaluated through the case study of mineral balance in Spain.

Suggested Citation

  • Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Calvo, Guiomar, 2015. "Using thermodynamics to improve the resource efficiency indicator GDP/DMC," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 110-117.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:94:y:2015:i:c:p:110-117
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344914002638
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yabar, Helmut & Hara, Keishiro & Uwasu, Michinori, 2012. "Comparative assessment of the co-evolution of environmental indicator systems in Japan and China," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 43-51.
    2. Moss, R.L. & Tzimas, E. & Kara, H. & Willis, P. & Kooroshy, J., 2013. "The potential risks from metals bottlenecks to the deployment of Strategic Energy Technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 556-564.
    3. Ayres, Robert U., 1998. "Eco-thermodynamics: economics and the second law," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 189-209, August.
    4. Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Gómez, Javier B., 2011. "The crepuscular planet. A model for the exhausted continental crust," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 694-707.
    5. Bringezu, Stefan & Schutz, Helmut & Steger, Soren & Baudisch, Jan, 2004. "International comparison of resource use and its relation to economic growth: The development of total material requirement, direct material inputs and hidden flows and the structure of TMR," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 97-124, November.
    6. Giljum, Stefan & Burger, Eva & Hinterberger, Friedrich & Lutter, Stephan & Bruckner, Martin, 2011. "A comprehensive set of resource use indicators from the micro to the macro level," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 300-308.
    7. Baldi, Lucia & Peri, Massimo & Vandone, Daniela, 2014. "Clean energy industries and rare earth materials: Economic and financial issues," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 53-61.
    8. Stefan Bringezu & Helmut Schütz & Stephan Moll, 2003. "Rationale for and Interpretation of Economy‐Wide Materials Flow Analysis and Derived Indicators," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 7(2), pages 43-64, April.
    9. Valero, Antonio & Agudelo, Andrés & Valero, Alicia, 2011. "The crepuscular planet. A model for the exhausted atmosphere and hydrosphere," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 3745-3753.
    10. Finnveden, Göran & Östlund, Per, 1997. "Exergies of natural resources in life-cycle assessment and other applications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 22(9), pages 923-931.
    11. Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio, 2010. "Physical geonomics: Combining the exergy and Hubbert peak analysis for predicting mineral resources depletion," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 1074-1083.
    12. Raupova, Ozoda & Kamahara, Hirotsugu & Goto, Naohiro, 2014. "Assessment of physical economy through economy-wide material flow analysis in developing Uzbekistan," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 76-85.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guiomar Calvo & Alicia Valero & Luis Gabriel Carmona & Kai Whiting, 2015. "Physical Assessment of the Mineral Capital of a Nation: The Case of an Importing and an Exporting Country," Resources, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Jia, Hongxiang & Li, Tianjiao & Wang, Anjian & Liu, Guwang & Guo, Xiaoqian, 2021. "Decoupling analysis of economic growth and mineral resources consumption in China from 1992 to 2017: A comparison between tonnage and exergy perspective," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jia, Hongxiang & Li, Tianjiao & Wang, Anjian & Liu, Guwang & Guo, Xiaoqian, 2021. "Decoupling analysis of economic growth and mineral resources consumption in China from 1992 to 2017: A comparison between tonnage and exergy perspective," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Domínguez, Adriana & Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio, 2013. "Exergy accounting applied to metallurgical systems: The case of nickel processing," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 37-45.
    3. Guiomar Calvo & Alicia Valero & Luis Gabriel Carmona & Kai Whiting, 2015. "Physical Assessment of the Mineral Capital of a Nation: The Case of an Importing and an Exporting Country," Resources, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-14, November.
    4. Stanek, Wojciech & Czarnowska, Lucyna, 2018. "Thermo-ecological cost – Szargut's proposal on exergy and ecology connection," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(PB), pages 1050-1059.
    5. Hache, Emmanuel & Seck, Gondia Sokhna & Simoen, Marine & Bonnet, Clément & Carcanague, Samuel, 2019. "Critical raw materials and transportation sector electrification: A detailed bottom-up analysis in world transport," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 240(C), pages 6-25.
    6. Hache, Emmanuel & Simoën, Marine & Seck, Gondia Sokhna & Bonnet, Clément & Jabberi, Aymen & Carcanague, Samuel, 2020. "The impact of future power generation on cement demand: An international and regional assessment based on climate scenarios," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 114-133.
    7. Abel Ortego & Alicia Valero & Antonio Valero & Eliette Restrepo, 2018. "Vehicles and Critical Raw Materials: A Sustainability Assessment Using Thermodynamic Rarity," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 22(5), pages 1005-1015, October.
    8. Huysman, Sofie & Sala, Serenella & Mancini, Lucia & Ardente, Fulvio & Alvarenga, Rodrigo A.F. & De Meester, Steven & Mathieux, Fabrice & Dewulf, Jo, 2015. "Toward a systematized framework for resource efficiency indicators," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 68-76.
    9. Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Stanek, Wojciech, 2018. "Assessing the exergy degradation of the natural capital: From Szargut's updated reference environment to the new thermoecological-cost methodology," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 1140-1149.
    10. Jose-Luis Palacios & Guiomar Calvo & Alicia Valero & Antonio Valero, 2018. "Exergoecology Assessment of Mineral Exports from Latin America: Beyond a Tonnage Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-18, March.
    11. Jamali-Zghal, N. & Le Corre, O. & Lacarrière, B., 2014. "Mineral resource assessment: Compliance between emergy and exergy respecting Odum's hierarchy concept," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 272(C), pages 208-219.
    12. Andrew Adewale Alola & Seyi Saint Akadiri & Ojonugwa Usman, 2021. "Domestic material consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the EU‐28 countries: Implications for environmental sustainability targets," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 388-397, March.
    13. Zhou, Mei-Jing & Huang, Jian-Bai & Chen, Jin-Yu, 2022. "Time and frequency spillovers between political risk and the stock returns of China's rare earths," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    14. Hu, Yun & Wen, Zongguo & Lee, Jason C.K. & Luo, Enhua, 2017. "Assessing resource productivity for industrial parks using adjusted raw material consumption (ARMC)," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 42-49.
    15. Hugh Miller & Simon Dikau & Romain Svartzman & Stéphane Dees, 2023. "The Stumbling Block in ‘the Race of our Lives’: Transition-Critical Materials, Financial Risks and the NGFS Climate Scenarios," Working papers 907, Banque de France.
    16. Calvo, Guiomar & Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Carpintero, Óscar, 2015. "An exergoecological analysis of the mineral economy in Spain," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 2-8.
    17. Rechberger, H. & Graedel, T. E., 2002. "The contemporary European copper cycle: statistical entropy analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 59-72, August.
    18. Huang, Chu-Long & Vause, Jonathan & Ma, Hwong-Wen & Yu, Chang-Ping, 2012. "Using material/substance flow analysis to support sustainable development assessment: A literature review and outlook," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 104-116.
    19. Zheng, Biao & Zhang, Yuquan & Chen, Yufeng, 2021. "Asymmetric connectedness and dynamic spillovers between renewable energy and rare earth markets in China: Evidence from firms’ high-frequency data," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Vieillard, Philippe, 2012. "The thermodynamic properties of the upper continental crust: Exergy, Gibbs free energy and enthalpy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 121-127.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:94:y:2015:i:c:p:110-117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.