Criticality assessment of green materials: institutional quality, market concentration and recycling potential

Abstract

The carbon transition and digitalization transformation are tied to a set of critical raw materials (CRM). Energy accumulators, renewable energy modules, and electronic devices all contain a certain amount of these. The versatility and utility of such elements come together with the limited number of countries where their extraction and refining take place. As the demand for these materials is growing globally, main concerns arise regarding the security of the production chain. Several works highlighted the risks associated with these materials without presenting clear interaction between such factors. This article presents a study over the three aspects showed: market concentration, institutional quality, and circularity. The approach will contain the presentation of the main characteristics of recyclability and the institutional status of exporters. A synthetic index is derived and plotted against the potential of recycling per material. In such a manner, we can group minerals according to sourcing vulnerability: one is coming from material recovery and the other via imports. An indicator calculated with a Cartesian distance method provides the synthesis of security versus safety. According to our findings, Electrical Vehicles carry the highest vulnerability for their main components in circularity and human rights violations. Ending remarks highlighted the limitations of our research, where possible interest for future research may lay.

Keywords

• Critical raw materials
• Responsible sourcing
• Market concentration
• Conflict minerals
• Circularity