Reconciling Diverging Views on Mineral Depletion: A Modified Cumulative Availability Curve Applied to Copper Resources

Emilio Castillo () and Roderick Eggert

No 2019-02, Working Papers from Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business

Abstract: Mineral depletion is a perennial concern in natural resources management. Despite a multiplicity of perspectives, most analyses fall largely into one of two groups. Studies in the first group take the fixed quantity of any material in the earth as the starting point for analysis, focus primarily on physical stocks and flows of mineral resources, and assess when society will run out of a resource or when production and use will peak (the fixed-stock viewpoint). Studies in the second group start by noting the heterogeneous nature of mineral resources and our incomplete knowledge of the quantity and quality of minerals in the earth, focus on the dynamic nature of mineral availability, and assess the ability of society to adjust to mineral depletion at existing mines though mineral exploration and mine development, technological innovation, and substitution (the opportunity-cost viewpoint). This paper seeks to reconcile these diverging perspectives by developing a modified cumulative availability curve (CAC) - which combines physical stocks and flows (from the fixed-stock perspective) with geologic stock uncertainty, different demand scenarios and extraction costs (from the opportunity-cost perspective). When applied to copper resources, the modified CAC suggests that copper demand is likely to be satisfied until about 2075 from known deposits. Thereafter, the ability of mineral explorers to discover previously undiscovered deposits, as well as efforts at substitution and improving recycling and re-use of copper, will importantly influence whether copper demand is satisfied.

Keywords: peak minerals; mineral depletion; cumulative availability curve; copper (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://econbus-papers.mines.edu/working-papers/wp201902.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mns:wpaper:wp201902

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jared Carbone ().