7. Enabling policy and stakeholder actions

As the preceding analysis has illustrated, material efficiency strategies have the potential to play an important role in achieving global emissions reduction objectives. Various challenges will need to be overcome to ensure effective use of materials, including barriers related to cost, delivery times, behaviour, lack of awareness and the regulatory environment. The combined efforts of governments, industry, the research community and society will be needed to overcome these challenges and accelerate the efficient use of materials.

Challenges and costs of material efficiency

Without any incentive or requirements to pursue material efficiency, or explicit demand from consumers, designers and manufacturing or construction companies may be unaware of the possible benefits of material efficiency; or they may chose not to pursue material efficiency due to real and perceived risks, financial costs or lost revenues and time constraints. In some cases, fragmented supply chains may present challenges for achieving material efficiency, such as when users or demolition contractors are not connected to construction companies to facilitate end-of-life reuse of materials. The regulatory environment may also restrict pursuit of material efficiency, such as when prescriptive design standards prevent uptake of new materials or design methods.

An in-depth cost assessment was not part of this analysis. Further analysis will be required to assess to what degree material efficiency would be more cost-effective than other options to reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and uptake of alternative fuels. A recent circular economy analysis by Material Economics indicates the relative cost of many of the strategies examined in the present analysis (Material Economics, 2018). It suggests that considerable potential exists to reduce emissions through material efficiency while achieving savings in financial costs. Strategies with negative abatement costs include car-sharing, reducing waste in buildings construction and increasing collection rates of aluminium. Strategies that account for a considerable portion of material demand reduction in the Clean Technology Scenario are estimated to have positive although moderate costs, such as EUR 50 (euros) per tonne (t) of carbon dioxide (CO2) abated for buildings reuse and EUR 60/t for reducing steel fabrication losses. Other strategies that account for a substantial portion of the additional material demand reductions in the Material Efficiency variant are at the higher end of the cost curve, such as EUR 85/t abated for material efficiency in buildings design and construction and EUR 100/t for vehicle lightweighting. All strategies in the Material Economics analysis have abatement costs no higher than EUR 100/t. This suggests that while costs of material efficiency may not be negligible in all cases, they are likely to fall within a reasonable range of what will be necessary to achieve low-carbon transition objectives. Thus, in the short term, it would be advantageous to begin pursuit of the lower cost strategies, while also starting to prepare for implementation of a broader range of strategies in the medium to long term.

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