TADEAS:
We have built the new generation of model that can calculate how many materials we will need to make all products. The smartphone I’m holding now, the computer you’re behind, the door handles in your house, the cutlery in your kitchen. The current models calculate how many materials we’ll need to make all of this. And how much comes back and is recycled. We then see two things. There is an incredible amount of materials in circulation, and we have an increasing number of people achieving a high standard of living. A billion Chinese want the same door handles we have, ten per house. That involves billions of handles and huge quantities of material. We are now in a phase to meet that demand
But not many of those door handles come back for reuse. We usually throw them away. This linear use is fast and wasteful. We burn through our things very quickly. This leads to an enormous accumulation, and means that we will peak for nearly all raw materials between 2030 and 2070.”
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“For some technical applications, the materials used are so specific that they cannot be replaced. It means that if you run out of platinum, you can no longer make a complete product such as a catalyst to convert electricity into hydrogen or hydrogen to electricity in a car afterwards. Or it means that when you can’t make a product with exotic materials anymore, it weighs 14 kilos instead of 140 grams, making production impossible. When your aircraft is broken and your flight is cancelled, that craft is not immediately replaceable by another: it has already been booked. The potential of substitution that economists would like to see as the rescue, is very limited. It can be applied to niche products, but not to bulk products and very large quantities.”
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The generations after 2100 will face serious material shortages. And if they can be extracted anywhere, we will find them in a less pure form than today’s stocks. This means that the extraction will cost more energy, in a world that may have less energy to use. Those energy costs are already increasing every year. The number of available sources in our geological stocks is also decreasing year by year. Iron extraction alone will take up 30 percent of the total energy demand on Earth by 2070. That is a lot! What are we going to do then? Are we saying goodbye to the Iron Age? Are we going back to ... what? We simply cannot let it come to that. We must change our ways.”
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But in Europe we don’t have a resources strategy? “The Germans are working on it. This is a total strategy. Where do we get our resources from? Who has these materials? How do we create efficient use within our own national system? How much service do we get from every kilo of raw material and how do we maintain this level?”
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Harry Lehmann at the German Environmental Protection Agency ... realised that an
Energiewende also included a Resourcewende. To realise the turnaround, Germany needs all those critical materials to be able to build the right technology at the right time. But a Socialwende is also needed, in which our behaviour changes, our business, our society. It will not make our life unpleasant, but it will be a little bit different.”