Criticality assessment of abiotic resource use for Europe– application of the SCARCE method

Rosalie Arendt, Marco Muhl, Vanessa Bach and Matthias Finkbeiner

Resources Policy, 2020, vol. 67, issue C

Abstract: Due to current consumption patterns and increasing product complexity, the use of abiotic resources has been rising and has led to supply risk (criticality) challenges in many countries and regions including Europe. The SCARCE method, originally developed to assess criticality in Germany, includes several criticality determinants that are missing from the existing European method by Pennington et al. (2017). Specifically it i) considers additional supply risk and vulnerability categories like price fluctuations, long term availability and importance in future technologies ii) takes a sustainability perspective by including environmental and social aspects of resource use iii) enables the comparison of the European supply risk with the global supply risk. Therefore, we have applied the SCARCE method to perform a criticality assessment of European resource use considering eleven supply risk categories (e.g. trade barriers and political stability) and six vulnerability categories (e.g. economic importance and substitutability) for 42 materials (including metals, metalloids and fossil fuels).

Keywords: Resource use; Criticality; Sustainable development; Supply risk; ESSENZ; SCARCE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:67:y:2020:i:c:s0301420719309456

DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2020.101650

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