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- Stoffströme und Ressourcenmanagement (487) (remove)
The global demand for timber is increasing, with prognoses for the EU showing particularly high growth to meet renewable energy targets. However, there are limited options to meet rising timber demands within the EU, and global land competition to meet world food, energy and material needs, as well as to conserve high value nature areas, is increasing. This dissertation addresses the knowledge gap between the pressures of increased land use abroad and the underlying drivers of land use change. It argues that there is a high risk of problem shifting if EU policies to increase timber consumption are not accompanied by a monitoring system that accounts for consumption levels and provides a benchmark for sustainability.
The German government has set itself the target of reducing the country's GHG emissions by between 80 and 95% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. Alongside energy efficiency, renewable energy sources are set to play the main role in this transition. However, the large-scale deployment of renewable energies is expected to cause increased demand for critical mineral resources. The aim of this article is therefore to determine whether the transformation of the German energy system by 2050 ("Energiewende") may possibly be restricted by a lack of critical minerals, focusing primarily on the power sector (generating, transporting and storing electricity from renewable sources). For the relevant technologies, we create roadmaps describing a number of conceivable quantitative market developments in Germany. Estimating the current and future specific material demand of the options selected and projecting them along a range of long-term energy scenarios allows us to assess potential medium- or long-term mineral resource restrictions. The main conclusion we draw is that the shift towards an energy system based on renewable sources that is currently being pursued is principally compatible with the geological availability and supply of mineral resources. In fact, we identified certain sub-technologies as being critical with regard to potential supply risks, owing to dependencies on a small number of supplier countries and competing uses. These sub-technologies are certain wind power plants requiring neodymium and dysprosium, thin-film CIGS photovoltaic cells using indium and selenium, and large-scale redox flow batteries using vanadium. However, non-critical alternatives to these technologies do indeed exist. The likelihood of supplies being restricted can be decreased further by cooperating even more closely with companies in the supplier countries and their governments, and by establishing greater resource efficiency and recyclability as key elements of technology development.
Der Verfasser legt eine vergleichende Analyse von Abfallwirtschaftsregimen in drei deutschen Stadtregionen vor. Als Fallbeispiele wurden Frankfurt in der Rhein-Main-Region, Berlin als Kern der Metropolregion Berlin-Brandenburg und Bochum im Ruhrgebiet ausgewählt. Einerseits weisen die drei Stadtregionen eine ganze Reihe von Gemeinsamkeiten auf, die sie für einen solchen Vergleich geeignet erscheinen lassen.
Alle drei Stadtregionen bilden Zentren wichtiger Metropolregionen in Deutschland, denen angesichts ihrer Bevölkerungsdichte sowie der ökonomischen und politischen Bedeutung besondere Relevanz für die Planung von Infrastruktursystemen zukommt. Gleichzeitig unterscheidet sich jedoch die Bedeutung der drei Fallregionen innerhalb ihrer Metropolregion durchaus deutlich, von der absoluten Dominanz in Berlin-Brandenburg bis zur Polyzentralität im Ruhrgebiet, woraus sich auch unterschiedliche Herausforderungen an regionale Planungsverbände und die Gestaltung der Kooperationsbeziehungen mit den Umlandgemeinden ergeben.
Als Bestandteile von Metropolregionen sind sie alle drei intensiv in internationale Geschäfts- und Wissensnetzwerke eingebunden, sind Standort für die Entwicklung soziotechnischer Innovationen und verfügen in vielen Bereichen über hochqualifizierte Humanressourcen. Auch im Hinblick auf die spezielle Situation der Abfallwirtschaft zeigen sich vergleichbare Ausgangsbedingungen: In allen drei Regionen wurde auf eine vollständige Privatisierung der kommunalen Abfallwirtschaft verzichtet, nach wie vor werden mit der Sammlung und Entsorgung von Abfällen Unternehmen beauftragt, die sich überwiegend im kommunalen Besitz befinden.
Poor sustainability and increasing economic shortcomings in fossil raw material use besides further technical developments of substitutes lead to a growing potential for CO2-utilisation. Hence, we balanced CO2-based methane and methanol production in a life cycle assessment and identified CO2-utilisation as a greenhouse gas saving method. However, it requires a lot of renewable energy.
Biodiversity loss is widely recognized as a serious global environmental change process. While large-scale metal mining activities do not belong to the top drivers of such change, these operations exert or may intensify pressures on biodiversity by adversely changing habitats, directly and indirectly, at local and regional scales. So far, analyses of global spatial dynamics of mining and its burden on biodiversity focused on the overlap between mines and protected areas or areas of high value for conservation. However, it is less clear how operating metal mines are globally exerting pressure on zones of different biodiversity richness; a similar gap exists for unmined but known mineral deposits. By using vascular plants' diversity as a proxy to quantify overall biodiversity, this study provides a first examination of the global spatial distribution of mines and deposits for five key metals across different biodiversity zones. The results indicate that mines and deposits are not randomly distributed, but concentrated within intermediate and high diversity zones, especially bauxite and silver. In contrast, iron, gold, and copper mines and deposits are closer to a more proportional distribution while showing a high concentration in the intermediate biodiversity zone. Considering the five metals together, 63% and 61% of available mines and deposits, respectively, are located in intermediate diversity zones, comprising 52% of the global land terrestrial surface. 23% of mines and 20% of ore deposits are located in areas of high plant diversity, covering 17% of the land. 13% of mines and 19% of deposits are in areas of low plant diversity, comprising 31% of the land surface. Thus, there seems to be potential for opening new mines in areas of low biodiversity in the future.
Das Projekt "Ressourcenpolitik" (PolRess) begleitete die Debatte um die anspruchsvolle Ressourcenpolitik, zu der sich Deutschland verpflichtet hat, aus politikwissenschaftlicher, juristischer und ökonomischer Perspektive und setzte dabei auch selbst Impulse.
Der Abschlussbericht fasst Überlegungen des Projektteams für die Weiterentwicklung der Ressourcenpolitik zusammen. Darin heißt es unter anderem, dass das in der Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie erfasste Ziel der Bundesregierung, die Rohstoffproduktivität bis zum Jahr 2020 gegenüber 1994 zu verdoppeln, wohl nicht ohne drastische Maßnahmen (wie einem Ausstieg aus der Braunkohle) erreicht werden kann. Da das hiesige und derzeitige Niveau der Materialnutzung weder global verallgemeinerbar noch langfristig tragfähig ist, müsste die abiotische Materialnutzung Deutschlands (einschließlich der ungenutzten Entnahmen) um bis zu 80 Prozent bis 2050 reduziert werden.
National policies for resource efficiency and waste management : structures, impacts, and deficits
(2015)
The current utilisation of natural resources in Germany and Europe is not sustainable, as inter alia stated by the German government as well as by the European Commission. At the same time, increased resource efficiency could lead to various environmental but also economic benefits. This brief study commissioned by Changing Markets presents developments in the field of resource efficiency policies, analyses the status quo of resource consumption with a special focus on fast moving consumer goods and describes potential effects of resource conservations.