PhD defence
Future Environmental Impacts of Metals
- C.I. Harpprecht
- Date
- Friday 23 January 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
- Prof.dr. A. Tukker
- dr. B.R.P. Steubing
- dr. T. Naegler
Summary
Metal production is not only energy-intensive and a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but is also associated with other impacts affecting human health and ecosystems. In the future, metal supply and its environmental impacts are likely to change, e.g., due to potentially declining ore grades or decarbonization measures required to meet climate targets.
This thesis aimed to assess the future environmental impacts of metal supply, focusing on the effects of future ore grades, decarbonization pathways of steel production, and developments in interrelated sectors, particularly electricity supply. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate environmental impacts of entire supply chains. Specifically, prospective LCA (pLCA) is applied to analyze future systems by integrating scenarios.
The results revealed that life cycle impacts on a per-kilogram basis are likely to decrease for most metals and impact categories. Key measures are a greener electricity supply, increased recycling shares, and shifting to novel, electrified production technologies, provided that decarbonized electricity is used. The effects of declining ore grades may be compensated by such improvements.
Nevertheless, emission reductions per kilogram of metal produced may be insufficient to fully compensate for the effect of growing global metal demand. Demand-related impacts are thus likely to increase for many metals across several impact categories. The analysis furthermore showed that global steel production is likely to consume disproportionately large shares of the carbon budgets even under optimistic decarbonization scenarios. Ultimately, reducing both climate and non-climate impacts of metal supply will require a broad and system-wide portfolio of strategies.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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