Material-energy-water nexus: Modelling the long term implications of aluminium demand and supply on global climate change up to 2050

by Elshkaki, A.*; Lei, S.; and Chen, W.-Q.

Environmental Research, 2020, 181: 108964.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2019.108964

Highlights

Four global and regional Al process based scenarios are developed.•

The four scenarios combine material-energy-water nexus with CO₂ emissions.•

Historical resources and emissions data on global and regional levels are used.•

Al production is expected to use between 1.0% and 2.6% of global energy.•

Policy and sustainability scenarios are the best in terms of climate change.•

Increasing material and energy efficiency is necessary to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Abstract

Aluminium is a widely used metal and one of the most energy intensive industries, and therefore it has been included in most energy models and scenarios. Material demand and supply are broadly linked to energy, water, and climate change. In this study, we develop four global and regional process based scenarios for the material-energy-water nexus combined with CO₂ emissions and applied to aluminium. The scenarios used in this study are; Market World (MW), Toward Resilience (TR), Security Foremost (SF), and Equitability World (EW). The results indicate that global CO₂ emissions are expected to increase as a result of increasing aluminium demand, although aluminium secondary supply, energy efficiency, and cleaner energy supply technologies are expected to increase in the next 30 years. Policy and sustainability (TR and EW) scenarios are ultimately the best in terms of global climate change since the two scenarios have the lowest CO₂ emissions, although they also have the highest aluminium demand and energy. It is therefore necessary to implement cleaner energy supply and energy efficiency technologies at high rates in aluminium industry to mitigate possible increase in CO₂ emissions.

Keywords

Material-energy nexusScenario analysisAluminiumWaterWasteCO₂ emissions