Sustainable Energy Transition and Its Demand for Scarce Resources: Insights Into the German Energiewende Through a New Risk Assessment Framework

In this study, we develop a framework to analyse resource-demanding projects in regard to their risk of resource scarcity and apply the framework to the German Energy System. With the interpretation of a commodity's price being an economic scarcity indicator, we define price thresholds, which, once exceeded, determine a commodity to be scarce. The corresponding probability of scarcity is derived via a logistic regression model, given BIC based, pre-selected determinants. Combining this probability with the substitutability of a commodity, as well as the scaled demand per project, results in the commodity-specific expected scarcity, which, aggregated over all commodities, marks our final risk indicator, the expected scarcity per project. The application of the framework to the resource requirements for eight expansion pathways of the German energy system, differing in the climate targets as well as the German societies' acceptance of the required actions, highlights the general high demand for cobalt, mainly used for energy storage. In combination with a relatively high probability of scarcity, this reveals a potential bottleneck for the German Energiewende.