Decarbonization, population disruption and resource inventories in the global energy transition
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Published version
Date
2022-12-15
Authors
Svobodova, Kamila
Owen, John R.
Kemp, Deanna
Moudrý, Vítězslav
Lèbre, Éléonore
Stringer, Martin
Sovacool, Benjamin K.
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Published version
OA Version
Citation
K. Svobodova, J.R. Owen, D. Kemp, V. Moudrý, É. Lèbre, M. Stringer, B.K. Sovacool. 2022. "Decarbonization, population disruption and resource inventories in the global energy transition." Nature Communications, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp.7674-. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35391-2
Abstract
We develop a novel approach to analysing decarbonisation strategies by linking global resource inventories with demographic systems. Our 'mine-town systems' approach establishes an empirical basis for examining the spatial extent of the transition and demographic effects of changing energy systems. The research highlights an urgent need for targeted macro-level planning as global markets see a decline in thermal coal and a ramp up of other mining commodities. Our findings suggest that ramping up energy transition metals (ETM) could be more disruptive to demographic systems than ramping down coal. The data shows asymmetry in the distribution of risks: mine-town systems within the United States are most sensitive to coal phase-out, while systems in Australia and Canada are most sensitive to ETM phase-in. A complete phase-out of coal could disrupt demographic systems with a minimum of 33.5 million people, and another 115.7 million people if all available ETM projects enter production.
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© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.