Environmental costs of abiotic resource demand for the EU's low-carbon development.

Low-carbon development is one of the main goals of the European Green New Deal, but the European Union relies on many raw materials to realize it. This study quantifies the environmental impact of projected abiotic resource demands for the low-carbon development of the EU in 2050 based on lifecycle assessment coupled with environmental costs. We account for damages caused by greenhouse gasses, land use, non-renewable resource depletion, and freshwater consumption. The total environmental costs of the materials needed for low-carbon development in 2050 range from €13.1 billion to €74.8 billion, with €38.9 billion as the medium estimate. These costs seem substantial, but represent only 3.7% of the costs that the EU generates due to its current territorial carbon emission level. Based on our findings, materials for EV batteries cause 45.8% of the costs. The analysis showed that the damages are dominated by associated carbon emissions in mining and processing (47.5%) and abiotic resource depletion (45.1%), mainly induced by increased demand for nickel, iron, copper, and aluminum. Additionally, we were able to trace the geographical distribution of the impacts. Our model assigns the highest absolute environmental costs of the EU's low-carbon development to China, the U.S.A., India, and Saudi Arabia. The highest relative costs compared to GDP are paid by Guinea and Gabon. We conclude that responsible consumption strategies for the assessed materials should be established to enable low-carbon development with minimum environmental costs. This will be facilitated by the approach developed here. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]