Material dependence of national energy development plans: The case for Turkey and United Kingdom

Abstract

Due to growing production and consumption worldwide, the energy demand is increasing rapidly, which puts additional burdens on the world's scarce natural resources. Therefore, there is a need for efficient use of scarce materials of the earth to meet the increasing energy demand. With this motivation, material footprints of Turkey's and UK's national energy development plans are investigated by applying a global, multiregional input-output (GMRIO) model. A spatial material footprint analysis is conducted for 10 metallic and 9 nonmetallic minerals to reveal the regional and global material dependence of Turkey and UK related to electricity production from 11 different sources. As a high-resolution GMRIO database, the EXIOBASE v.2 is extended by material extraction data that enabled us to calculate the material footprints tracing the complex global supply chains of electric power generation sectors. The Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is also developed to forecast the material footprints of electricity production until 2050. Three energy development plans such as Business-as-Usual (BAU), Official Plan (OP), and Renewable Energy development (RED) plan are investigated to compare the materials dependence of different national energy development policies. Current research concluded that environmental policies applied for national energy development should consider the different levels of complexities of regional and global supply chains for material footprint analysis.