Emission impacts of supply chain disruptions for COVID and China’s solid waste import ban
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s41467-021-23874-7.pdf
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2.74 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Ryter, John
Fu, Xinkai
Bhuwalka, Karan
Roth, Richard
Olivetti, Elsa A.
Date Issued
November 2020
Journal
Nature Portfolio
Publisher
Research Square
Citation
Ryter, John et al. "Emission impacts of supply chain disruptions for COVID and China’s solid waste import ban." Under review in Nature Portfolio (2021): dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-86991/v1. © 2021 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of supply-chain disruptions and large-scale economic crises, also prompting environmentally-protective local policies. Here we use econometric time series analysis, inventory-driven price formation, dynamic material flow analysis, and gate-to-gate life cycle analysis to model the response of each copper supply chain actor to China’s solid waste import ban and the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that the economic changes associated with China’s solid waste import ban increase primary refining within China, offsetting the environmental benefits of decreased copper scrap refining and generating a cumulative increase in CO2e emissions of up to 35 Mt by 2040. Increasing China’s refined copper imports reverses this trend, decreasing CO2e emissions both in China (up to 300 Mt by 2040) and globally (up to 63 Mt). We test model outcome sensitivity to supply chain disruptions and economic crises using GDP, mining, and refining shocks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, showing the results maintain impact magnitude alongside disruption effects.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Systems Laboratory
MIT Materials Research Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-86991/v1
