Material efficiency in clean energy transitions
Materials are the building blocks of society, making up the buildings, infrastructure,
equipment and goods that enable businesses and people to carry out their daily activities.
Economic development has historically coincided with increasing demand for materials,
resulting in growing energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from materials
production. Clean energy transitions must decouple these trends. Material efficiency
strategies can contribute to CO2 emissions reduction throughout value chains. Despite
being an often overlooked emissions mitigation lever, opportunities for material efficiency
exist at each lifecycle stage, from design and fabrication, through use and finally
to end of life. Pushing these strategies to their practical yet achievable limits
could enable considerable reductions in the demand for several key materials. Conversely,
the demand for some materials may moderately increase while delivering favourable
emissions benefits at other points in the value chain. As a result, improved material
efficiency can reduce some of the deployment needs for other CO2 emissions mitigation
options while achieving the same emissions reduction, thus contributing to clean energy
transitions. This analysis examines the potential for material efficiency and the
resulting energy and emissions impact for key energy-intensive materials: steel, cement
and aluminium. It includes deep dives on the buildings construction and vehicles value
chains, and outlines key policy and stakeholder actions to improve material efficiency.
Important actions include: increasing material use data collection and benchmarking;
improving consideration of the life-cycle impact in climate regulations and at the
design stage; and promoting repurposing, reuse and recycling at end of product and
buildings lifetimes.
Published on April 11, 2019