Mineral resources are essential for reaching net-zero ambitions by 2050. There is a rising diversity of metals in electricity generation and storage technologies, as well as for mobility technologies. However, little is known about the future supply of minor elements historically mined in low volumes such as indium, tellurium, germanium, or tantalum. Those minor elements are found in lower concentrations in the ores of major elements and therefore rarely form economic deposits on their own. Such elements are often produced as byproducts of a host (or "target commodity", which underpins the bulk of a mine's profitability) in ore, e.g., in porphyry ore, tellurium is a byproduct where copper is the host. As a result, the primary supply of those minor elements depends on the supply of the major elements. Such dependency has not been accounted for in scenarios of the mineral supply. To address this gap, we developed a methodology to harmonize scattered data of mineral resource estimates and to calculate the mass ratio between the byproduct and the host in ores and concentrates, called the byproduct-to-host (BtH) ratio. We collected crude ore tonnage and element grades, among other key data, from the state-of-the-art literature and publicly available mining company reports. Our data set covers 3422 deposits across 141 countries providing 22 275 BtH ratios. The future supply of minor elements can be derived by multiplying the primary production of host elements by the developed BtH ratios, noting the limitations of data representativity. The open-access nature of this work facilitates the enrichment and update of this data set in the coming years.

Worldwide electricity consumption increases by 2.6% each year. Greenhouse gas emissions due to electricity production raise by 2.1% per year on average. The development of efficient low-carbon-footprint renewable energy systems is urgently needed. CPVMatch investigates the feasibility of mirror or lens-based High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) systems. Thanks to innovative four junction solar cells, new glass coatings, Position Sensitive Detectors (PSD), and DC/DC converters, it is possible to reach concentration levels higher than 800× and a module efficiency between 36.7% and 41.6%. From a circular economy’s standpoint, the use of concentration technologies lowers the need in active material, increases recyclability, and reduces the risk of material contamination. By using the Life Cycle Assessment method, it is demonstrated that HCPV presents a carbon footprint ranking between 16.4 and 18.4 g CO₂-eq/kWh. A comparison with other energy means for 16 impact categories including primary energy demand and particle emissions points out that the environmental footprint of HCPV is typically 50 to 100 times lower than fossil fuels footprint. HCPV’s footprint is also three times lower than that of crystalline photovoltaic solutions and is close to the environmental performance of wind power and hydropower.

Purpose The provision of resource services to humans, such as mobility or shelter, is essential for well-being. Dissipation jeopardizes resource services with the consequence of facing additional costs to adapt to dissipation, if feasible. However, if users cannot adapt to dissipation, they may face a deficit in resource provided services. The objective is to derive scenario-specific characterization factors of dissipative flows. Methods We propose two novel complementary characterization methods to assess the potential impact of dissipative flows. The first method, named the Additional energy Cost Potential (ACP), aims to quantify the additional cost for society to adapt to the loss of services induced by dissipative flows of resources. The second method, named Resource Services Deficit Assessment (RESEDA), aims at quantifying a deficit of resources providing services to meet human needs, when users of the resource are unable to adapt to dissipation. Characterization factors (CFs) are computed by conducting simulations of resource stocks and flows, including dissipative flows, at the global level, using the WIthin Limits Flow (WILMFlo) model. CFs are derived for three scenarios: the Decent Living Standards in a Net Zero World (DLS NZ), Net Zero (NZ) scenario and Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS). Results The two methods, ACP and RESEDA, characterize the potential impact of dissipative flows of 50 metals, including iron, copper, lithium and cobalt and 3 fossil resources. The characterization factors derived using the ACP method quantify the additional energy consumption for society relatively to a marginal dissipative flow, expressed in megajoule per kg. The characterization factors obtained with ACP range from 0 to \(1.75 \times 10^{5}\textrm{M}J/kg_{dissipated}\) for the three scenarios. The RESEDA characterization factors quantify the resources deficit, which results in a deficit of services to answer to human needs, induced by a marginal dissipative flow. The characterization factors obtained with RESEDA range from 0 to 1 \(kg_{deficit}/kg_{dissipated}\). Discussions and conclusions The two novel characterization models, namely ACP and RESEDA, provide valuable information on the potential impacts of dissipative flows respectively as the additional effort to provide services to humans in the technosphere and the deficit due to dissipative flows. The estimates of prospective mining capacity of metals, used in the WILMFlo model, is a significant source of uncertainty of developed characterization factors. Another noteworthy source of uncertainty is the mining energy intensity data, used to compute ACP CFs, which may evolve with adoption of new technologies in the future. To fully operationalize the two models, additional efforts are required to fully trace dissipative flows throughout the life cycle inventory (LCI) of a product system through tailored adaptation of LCA databases such as reporting dissipative emissions to the environment of all elements and reporting element composition of materials.