The low‐carbon energy transition requires significant increases in production for many mineral commodities. Understanding demand, technological requirements, and prices associated with this production increase requires understanding the supply chain dynamics of many minerals simultaneously, and via a consistent framework. A generalized economics‐informed material flow method, global materials modeling using Bayesian optimizati...

In the United States, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle collection rates have not increased in a decade. Recycling rates remain abysmal while industry commitments and policy targets escalate the demand for recycled plastics. We investigate the PET bottle recycling system, where collection is a critical bottleneck and recycled PET supply is not meeting the expected demand. We characterize demand for recycled PET (R‐PET),...

Raw materials costs form an increasingly significant proportion of the total costs of renewable energy technologies that must be adopted at unprecedented rates to combat climate change. As the affordable deployment of these technologies grows vulnerable to materials price changes, effective strategies must be identified to mitigate the risk of higher input costs faced by manufacturers. To better understand potential threats to...

Predictions of metal consumption are vital for criticality assessments and sustainability analyses. Although demand for a material varies strongly by region and end‐use sector, statistical models of demand typically predict demand using regression analyses at an aggregated global level (“fully pooled models”). “Un‐pooled” regression models that predict demand at a disaggregated country or regional level face challenges due to...

Researchers have proposed a family of electrochemical technologies that incorporate CO 2 as a gas cathode and alkali or alkaline earth metal anodes to exploit the high reactivity of CO 2 with these metals. Such proposed cells operate by converting gaseous CO 2 into solid carbonate, extracting value from CO 2 in the form of electricity, and fixing the CO 2 in solid form. Given the increasing number of these proof‐of‐concept stu...

Summary Many advanced energy and environmentally relevant technologies rely on metals that have been identified as critical, or whose availability may be limited. Several of these elements are produced mostly as by‐products of mining other base metals (carriers). This by‐product dependence has been proposed as a significant supply‐risk indicator by the materials criticality community. This article provides new quantitative evi...

Summary Life cycle thinking plays an important role in sustainable development in the building sector. However, the complexity of data collection and scope definition limits life cycle assessment (LCA) applications. Even if the inventory data have already been collected, tabulated, and indexed, the method is still time‐consuming, which may be discouraging for designers. This study demonstrates how the LCA of buildings can be r...

Summary As design for recycling becomes more broadly applied in material and product design, analytical tools to quantify the environmental implications of design choices will become a necessity. Currently, few systematic methods exist to measure and direct the metallurgical alloy design process to create alloys that are most able to be produced from scrap. This is due, in part, to the difficulty in evaluating such a context‐d...