Critical materials embodied in trade MFA TF meeting 2014

Purpose Research project on critical materials in the Dutch economy conducted by TNO Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research One of the results is a conversion table, that in combination with MFA, can provide information on the use of critical materials in a country.

Critical materials Figure taken from publication of European Commission “Critical raw materials for the EU” 2010, Critical is determined on the basis of economic importance and supply risk.

Dutch policy makers How dependent is the Dutch economy of critical materials? Which economical branches are effected? Should government promote investment in the production of goods that contain critical materials like batteries for electric cars or solar panels What strategy can the Netherlands apply to reduce dependency on critical materials: recycling, more efficient material use, development of substitutes, trade relations with countries etc.

Used methodology 2 Key points: First: to link critical materials to 6 digit CN classifications Spend much time using sources to link the certain critical materials to product groups (e.g. ProdChar from Chalmers, EU CRM working group, Yale, CML, Tohoku, NIMS, Maras, Wikipedia, Eurostat, “raw material” organizations (e.g. copper group), scientific papers, import/export sites etc) Quantity does not matter at this stage: linking is based on Y/N basis

Used Methodology Second : assign global production of critical materials to CN groups to calculate the Typical Share: gram of critical material per tonne product group. Distribute annual global production of critical materials over 50 “main applications” (e.g. electronics, metal products etc.) Estimate the share of critical materials for these main applications (e.g. 51% of Titanium in chemical products). Allocate each CN product group to a certain main application, and thereby enabling the share of annual global production used for these applications, to be linked to specific CN product groups Allocate each CN product group to a stage of production and assign 80% of global production to final products and 20% to intermediates to minimize double assigning of critical material to products. A share of critical material per CN group (gram of critical material per tonne product) is obtained when you assign annual global production of critical materials to annual global international traded volume (BACI). Resulting matrix can be combined with MFA data to estimate the apparent consumption of critical materials in a country. Netherlands have PSUTs that make it also possible to look a use of critical materials by industrial branches.

Future work Create common EU methodology to create link between critical materials and detailed product group classifications (HS, CPA on 6 or 8 digits). Come up with alternative or “Typical Share” calculation and (more importantly) validation or Typical Shares per product group from EU research community. Follow up research will be conducted in 2015.