IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v203y2020ics0360544220308756.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Game theoretic production decisions of by-product materials critical for clean energy technologies - Indium as a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Choi, Chul Hun
  • Kim, Sang-Phil
  • Lee, Seokcheon
  • Zhao, Fu

Abstract

Clean energy technologies represent a promising solution to the global warming challenge. However, many of them depend on some minor metals, and concerns about their rapidly increasing demand have been raised recently. Since minor metals are produced along with other materials, called base metals, they are also referred as by-product materials. With this characteristic, their production quantities rely on the production quantities of the base metals. Therefore, the production decisions for the by-product materials are not easy, and the decisions become even more complex under competitive market. This research seeks to find equilibrium production quantities of both base and by-product materials using Cournot model. Then, the model is applied to a case study of indium, which is critical for two emerging clean energy technologies, thin-film solar photovoltaic and light emitting diode lighting. The numerical analysis in the case study suggests some meaningful insights in this market, and the equilibrium production quantities are also compared with the optimal production quantity under monopoly market condition.

Suggested Citation

  • Choi, Chul Hun & Kim, Sang-Phil & Lee, Seokcheon & Zhao, Fu, 2020. "Game theoretic production decisions of by-product materials critical for clean energy technologies - Indium as a case study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:203:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220308756
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.117768
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220308756
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2020.117768?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andersson, B.A & Azar, C & Holmberg, J & Karlsson, S, 1998. "Material constraints for thin-film solar cells," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 407-411.
    2. Campbell, Gary A., 1985. "The role of co-products in stabilizing the metal mining industry," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 267-274, December.
    3. Fizaine, Florian, 2013. "Byproduct production of minor metals: Threat or opportunity for the development of clean technologies? The PV sector as an illustration," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 373-383.
    4. Feltrin, Andrea & Freundlich, Alex, 2008. "Material considerations for terawatt level deployment of photovoltaics," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 180-185.
    5. Davidsson, Simon & Höök, Mikael, 2017. "Material requirements and availability for multi-terawatt deployment of photovoltaics," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 574-582.
    6. Sadorsky, Perry A., 1992. "Industry size and 'destructive competition' in cournot oligopoly models of exhaustible resource exploration and extraction," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 249-257, September.
    7. Elshkaki, Ayman & Shen, Lei, 2019. "Energy-material nexus: The impacts of national and international energy scenarios on critical metals use in China up to 2050 and their global implications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 903-917.
    8. Candelise, Chiara & Speirs, Jamie F. & Gross, Robert J.K., 2011. "Materials availability for thin film (TF) PV technologies development: A real concern?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4972-4981.
    9. Frenzel, Max & Mikolajczak, Claire & Reuter, Markus A. & Gutzmer, Jens, 2017. "Quantifying the relative availability of high-tech by-product metals – The cases of gallium, germanium and indium," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 327-335.
    10. Salo, Seppo & Tahvonen, Olli, 2001. "Oligopoly equilibria in nonrenewable resource markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 671-702, May.
    11. Collier, Jennifer & Wu, Susie & Apul, Defne, 2014. "Life cycle environmental impacts from CZTS (copper zinc tin sulfide) and Zn3P2 (zinc phosphide) thin film PV (photovoltaic) cells," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 314-321.
    12. Goe, Michele & Gaustad, Gabrielle, 2014. "Identifying critical materials for photovoltaics in the US: A multi-metric approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 387-396.
    13. Choi, Chul Hun & Eun, Joonyup & Cao, Jinjian & Lee, Seokcheon & Zhao, Fu, 2018. "Global strategic level supply planning of materials critical to clean energy technologies – A case study on indium," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 950-964.
    14. Volker Steinbach & Friedrich-W. Wellmer, 2010. "Consumption and Use of Non-Renewable Mineral and Energy Raw Materials from an Economic Geology Point of View," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(5), pages 1-23, May.
    15. Bustamante, Michele L. & Gaustad, Gabrielle, 2014. "Challenges in assessment of clean energy supply-chains based on byproduct minerals: A case study of tellurium use in thin film photovoltaics," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 397-414.
    16. Valero, Alicia & Valero, Antonio & Calvo, Guiomar & Ortego, Abel & Ascaso, Sonia & Palacios, Jose-Luis, 2018. "Global material requirements for the energy transition. An exergy flow analysis of decarbonisation pathways," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 1175-1184.
    17. Grandell, Leena & Lehtilä, Antti & Kivinen, Mari & Koljonen, Tiina & Kihlman, Susanna & Lauri, Laura S., 2016. "Role of critical metals in the future markets of clean energy technologies," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 53-62.
    18. Afflerbach, Patrick & Fridgen, Gilbert & Keller, Robert & Rathgeber, Andreas W. & Strobel, Florian, 2014. "The by-product effect on metal markets – New insights to the price behavior of minor metals," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 35-44.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Song, Huiling & Wang, Chang & Sun, Kun & Geng, Hongjun & Zuo, Lyushui, 2023. "Material efficiency strategies across the industrial chain to secure indium availability for global carbon neutrality," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PB).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elshkaki, Ayman & Graedel, T.E., 2015. "Solar cell metals and their hosts: A tale of oversupply and undersupply," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 167-177.
    2. Liang, Yanan & Kleijn, René & Tukker, Arnold & van der Voet, Ester, 2022. "Material requirements for low-carbon energy technologies: A quantitative review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    3. Ren, Kaipeng & Tang, Xu & Höök, Mikael, 2021. "Evaluating metal constraints for photovoltaics: Perspectives from China’s PV development," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(PA).
    4. Kim Maya Yavor & Vanessa Bach & Matthias Finkbeiner, 2021. "Resource Assessment of Renewable Energy Systems—A Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-19, May.
    5. Junne, Tobias & Wulff, Niklas & Breyer, Christian & Naegler, Tobias, 2020. "Critical materials in global low-carbon energy scenarios: The case for neodymium, dysprosium, lithium, and cobalt," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    6. Song, Huiling & Wang, Chang & Lei, Xiaojie & Zhang, Hongwei, 2022. "Dynamic dependence between main-byproduct metals and the role of clean energy market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    7. Le Boulzec, Hugo & Delannoy, Louis & Andrieu, Baptiste & Verzier, François & Vidal, Olivier & Mathy, Sandrine, 2022. "Dynamic modeling of global fossil fuel infrastructure and materials needs: Overcoming a lack of available data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    8. Song, Huiling & Wang, Chang & Sun, Kun & Geng, Hongjun & Zuo, Lyushui, 2023. "Material efficiency strategies across the industrial chain to secure indium availability for global carbon neutrality," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PB).
    9. Li, George Yunxiong & Ascani, Andrea & Iammarino, Simona, 2024. "The material basis of modern technologies. A case study on rare metals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).
    10. Frenzel, Max & Tolosana-Delgado, Raimon & Gutzmer, Jens, 2015. "Assessing the supply potential of high-tech metals – A general method," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(P2), pages 45-58.
    11. Helbig, Christoph & Bradshaw, Alex M. & Kolotzek, Christoph & Thorenz, Andrea & Tuma, Axel, 2016. "Supply risks associated with CdTe and CIGS thin-film photovoltaics," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 422-433.
    12. Wang, Peng & Chen, Li-Yang & Ge, Jian-Ping & Cai, Wenjia & Chen, Wei-Qiang, 2019. "Incorporating critical material cycles into metal-energy nexus of China’s 2050 renewable transition," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Elshkaki, Ayman, 2019. "Material-energy-water-carbon nexus in China’s electricity generation system up to 2050," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    14. Ravikumar, Dwarakanath & Malghan, Deepak, 2013. "Material constraints for indigenous production of CdTe PV: Evidence from a Monte Carlo experiment using India's National Solar Mission Benchmarks," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 393-403.
    15. Kim, Kihyung, 2020. "Jointly produced metal markets are endogenously unstable," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    16. André Månberger, 2021. "Reduced Use of Fossil Fuels can Reduce Supply of Critical Resources," Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 1-15, June.
    17. Islam, Md. Monirul & Sohag, Kazi & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Mariev, Oleg & Samargandi, Nahla, 2022. "Minerals import demands and clean energy transitions: A disaggregated analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    18. Jordan, Brett, 2018. "Economics literature on joint production of minerals: A survey," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 20-28.
    19. Kim, Junbeum & Guillaume, Bertrand & Chung, Jinwook & Hwang, Yongwoo, 2015. "Critical and precious materials consumption and requirement in wind energy system in the EU 27," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 327-334.
    20. Benjamin C. McLellan & Eiji Yamasue & Tetsuo Tezuka & Glen Corder & Artem Golev & Damien Giurco, 2016. "Critical Minerals and Energy–Impacts and Limitations of Moving to Unconventional Resources," Resources, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-40, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:203:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220308756. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.