Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI

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The role of industrial actors in the circular economy for critical raw materials: A framework with case studies across a range of industries

2023 , Cimprich, Alexander , Young, Steven B. , Schrijvers, Dieuwertje , Ku, Anthony Y. , Hagelüken, Christian , Christmann, Patrice , Eggert, Roderick , Habib, Komal , Hirohata, Atsufumi , Hurd, Alan J. , Lee, Min-Ha , Peck, David , Petavratzi, Evi , Tercero Espinoza, Luis A. , Wäger, Patrick , Hool, Alessandra

In this article, we explore concrete examples of circularity strategies for critical raw materials (CRMs) in commercial settings. We propose a company-level framework for systematically evaluating circularity strategies (e.g., material recycling, product reuse, and product or component lifetime extension) in specific applications of CRMs from the perspectives of specific industrial actors. This framework is applied in qualitative analyses - informed by relevant literature and expert consultation - of five case studies across a range of industries: (1) rhenium in high-pressure turbine components, (2) platinum group metals in industrial catalysts for chemical processing and oil refining, (3) rare earth permanent magnets in computer hard disk drives, (4) various CRMs in consumer electronics, and (5) helium in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. Drawing from these case studies, three broader observations can be made about company circularity strategies for CRMs. Firstly, there are multiple, partly competing motivations that influence the adoption of circularity strategies, including cost savings, supply security, and external stakeholder pressure. Secondly, business models and value-chain structure play a major role in the implementation of circularity strategies; business-to-business models appear to be more conducive to circularity than business-to-consumer models. Finally, it is important to distinguish between closed-loop circularity, in which material flows are contained within the ""focal"" actor's system boundary, and open-loop circularity, in which material flows cross the system boundary, as the latter has limited potential for mitigating material criticality from the perspective of the focal actor.

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University satellite institutes as exogenous facilitators of technology transfer ecosystem development

2023 , Conlé, Marcus , Kroll, Henning , Storz, Cornelia , Ten Brink, Tobias

Universities can contribute to knowledge-based regional development not only in their home region but also in other regions. In a number of countries, universities have established university satellite institutes in additional (host) regions to promote research and technology transfer there. We investigate the role of university satellite institutes in the industrial development of regions, which, albeit not economically marginal, suffer from a weak knowledge infrastructure, limited absorptive capacities for external knowledge in the business sector and hence a low degree of attractiveness for non-local knowledge actors. Despite policy recommendations in favor of establishing satellite institutes, there has only been limited empirical research on this phenomenon, particularly concerning technology transfer ecosystem development. To fill this gap, we provide an exploratory case study of university satellite institutes in the Pearl River Delta of China's Guangdong province. We show how such institutes can be successful in facilitating the development of their host region's technology transfer ecosystems and demonstrate why they should be conceptually included in our existing understanding of third mission activities. Our research centers on the interplay of geographical proximity and non-spatial, organized proximity in the development of interregional knowledge bridges and entrepreneurial opportunities. We argue that the university's geographical proximity is only successful if the satellite institute, by facilitating organized proximity, promotes the geographical proximity of further knowledge actors, hereby propelling ecosystem development.

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Erfolgsfaktoren für einen effektiven Klimaschutz im Straßengüterverkehr

2022 , Helms, Hinrich

Durch das neue Ziel der Treibhausgasneutralität bis zum Jahr 2045 und den aktuell rasanten Verbrauch des verbleibenden CO2-Budgets für die Einhaltung des Pariser Klimaziels entsteht akuter Handlungsdruck in allen Lebensbereichen. Es ist also bereits kurzfristig eine deutliche Minderung der Emissionen auch im wachsenden Güterverkehr dringend notwendig. Dies kann nur gelingen, wenn Maßnahmen in allen relevanten Handlungsfeldern zügig ergriffen werden, auch im Straßengüterverkehr.

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The role of renewable H2 import & storage to scale up the EU deployment of renewable H2

2022 , Breitschopf, Barbara , Zheng, Lin , Plaisir, Marie , Bard, Jochen , Schröer, Ramona , Kawale, Durgesh , Koornneef, Joris , Melese, Yeshambel , Schaaphok, Marianne , Gorenstein Dedecca, João , Bene, Csinszka , Cerny, Ondrej , Gérard, Frank

The European Commission's hydrogen strategy presented in July 2020 outlines, amongst other elements, how to upscale the demand and supply of renewable hydrogen. It has set the strategic objective to install at least 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyser capacity within the EU (producing about 5 Mt of renewable hydrogen) based upon an estimated demand of up to 10 Mt per year of renewable hydrogen in the EU by 2030. To produce 10 Mt of renewable hydrogen, a substantial amount of additional renewable electricity will be needed to produce renewable hydrogen, on top of the large amounts of renewable electricity that will be needed to electrify end-uses that are currently served by other energy carriers. The characteristics of renewable electricity generation, such as its variability and the time needed to realize additional solar and wind parks, the need to minimise the costs of the energy transition, and security of supply considerations require taking an in-depth look into the role of renewable hydrogen import (infrastructure) as well as into the role of hydrogen storage (infrastructure) to decarbonize the EU economy. At the moment, it is not clear whether domestic production of hydrogen will achieve the strategic EU 2030 goal to cover 10 Mt of renewable hydrogen demand, leading to the potential need for imports. Therefore, this research paper intends to assess the supply gaps and possible options for cost-effective renewable hydrogen carriers imports and transport modes, given the broad diversity of potential supply scenarios.

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An update of challenges and possible solutions related to ICT patents: The perspective of European stakeholders

2023 , Blind, Knut

Patents in information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important instruments for protecting companies' inventions and to appropriate the value of the related inventions. However, the increasing dynamics and complexity in ICTs are challenging the effectiveness of patents. Based on a review of the literature and interviews with relevant stakeholders in Europe, we have identified the most relevant challenges for patents in ICT and possible solutions. These insights have been used as input in framing our broad survey among European stakeholders. The results reveal on the one hand the differences between the patent owners and stakeholders owning no patents, in particular with regards to the various challenges the patent system is facing. On the other hand, the differences disappear in the assessment of the effectiveness of the various solutions. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our main findings.

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Household acceptability of energy efficiency policies in the European Union: Policy characteristics trade-offs and the role of trust in government and environmental identity

2022 , Faure, Corinne , Guetlein, Marie-Charlotte , Schleich, Joachim , Tu, Gengyang , Whitmarsh, Lorraine , Whittle, Colin

This research investigates the acceptability of energy efficiency policies among European households. Based on large-scale surveys in Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK, we use a discrete choice experiment to study the tradeoffs made by households between various policy characteristics including policy target level, dependence on energy imports, policy instruments (education and information programmes, standards, taxation, energy consumption limit), costs to the household, and distribution of costs between households and other sectors. In particular, we investigate the role of trust in government and of environmental identity on the acceptability of these policy characteristics. Across the four countries, we find that households prefer effective policies, dislike personal costs, and prefer non-coercive to coercive instruments; further, trust in government helps make coercive policies such as taxes more acceptable, whereas higher environmental identity makes consumption limits more acceptable.

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Paving the path: drivers of standardization participation at ISO

2022 , Blind, Knut , Laer, Maximilian von

Several studies investigating the trade effects of standardization have found a positive impact of the number of international standards in a country on its trade volumes. While international standards have so far been considered as exogenous, we investigate what drives countries to take over leading roles, i.e. secretariats, in committees of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) using a panel dataset on the ISO participation of 12 countries. Looking at this phenomenon through the perspective of agenda setting in international institutions we expect ISO participation to be a desirable tool for shaping technological trajectories and substantiating global influence via international technology transfer. We find that, while for most countries no systematic pattern can be observed, both China and the US show a close correlation between R&D and standardization work at ISO. For China, we attribute this finding to having a strategic approach toward standardization participation, for the US to the distinct features of the decentralized US standardization system. Finally, we derive implications of findings for both research and practice.

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Exploring the psychological antecedents of private and public sphere behaviours to reduce household plastic consumption

2023 , Heidbreder, Lea Marie , Tröger, Josephine , Schmitt, Manfred

In the last few years, plastic has become an issue of current interest as tremendous ecological effects from plastic littering have become visible. Taking the role of consumers into account, activities comprising purchasing decisions and political engagement are expected to help prevent plastic pollution. The goal of this study was to examine antecedents of three potential plastic reduction activities: purchasing, activism, and policy support. Based on well-established psychological models of pro-environmental behaviour (i.e. theory of planned behaviour, norm activation model), an online survey (N = 648) was administered and analysed via structural equation modelling. Results revealed that personal norms were a relevant predictor of all three intentions. Whereas sufficiency orientation and collective efficacy predicted only activism intention and policy support intention, perceived behavioural control was the strongest predictor of purchasing intentions. Regarding behaviour, people with high activism intentions and sufficiency orientation were more likely to choose a plastic-free incentive instead of the conventional shopping voucher. This study highlights psychological antecedents of plastic reduction. An integrated model showed that rational cost-benefit considerations as well as morality serve as drivers of reducing plastic consumption. Implications for the promotion of plastic-free consumption are discussed.

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Economic optima for buffers in direct reduction steelmaking under increasing shares of renewable hydrogen

2022 , Haendel, Michael , Hirzel, Simon , Süß, Marlene

While current climate targets demand substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the potentials to further reduce carbon dioxide emissions in traditional primary steel-making are limited. One possible solution that is receiving increasing attention is the direct reduction (DR) technology, operated either with renewable hydrogen (H2) from electrolysis or with conventional natural gas (NG). DR technology makes it possible to decouple steel and H2 production by temporarily using overcapacities to produce and store intermediary products during periods of low renewable electricity prices, or by switching between H2 and NG. This paper aims to explore the impact of this decoupling on overall costs and the corresponding dimensioning of production and storage capacities. An optimization model is developed to determine the least-cost operation based on perfect-foresight. This model can determine the minimum costs for optimal production and storage capacities under various assumptions considering fluctuatingH2 and NG prices and increasing H2 shares. The model is applied to a case study for Germany and covers the current situation, the medium term until 2030, and the long term until 2050. Under the assumptions made, direct reduced iron (DRI) storage mainly serves as long-term storage for several weeks, similar to usual balancing storage capacities. Storing H2, on the contrary, is used for short-term fluctuations and could balance H2 demand in the hourly range until 2050. From an economic perspective, DRI production using NG tends to be cheaper than using H2 in the short term, and potential savings from the flexible operation with storages are initially small. However, in the long term until 2050, NG andH2 could achieve similar total costs if buffers are used. Otherwise, temporarily occurring electricity prices pikes imply substantial increases in total costs if high shares of H2 need to be achieved.

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Understanding the macroeconomic effects of public research: An application of a regression-microfounded CGE-model to the case of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany

2022 , Grant, Allan , Figus, Gioele , Schubert, Torben

Estimating the economic returns to public science investments has been a key topic in economics. However, while in particular microeconomic approaches have been proposed, only a few studies have tried estimating the macroeconomic effects of public science investments. In this paper, we propose a micro-rooted macro-modelling framework, which combines the strength of an econometric causal identification of key effects with the power of a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) framework, and provides additional economic structure of the estimates allowing us a fine-grained sectoral differentiation of all effects. Applying our approach to the German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the world's largest publicly funded organization for applied research, we show that macroeconomic returns are - irrespective of econometric specification - a high multitude of the original investment costs. In specific, the activities by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft increase Germany´s GDP by 1.6% and employment by 437,000 jobs. Our CGE analysis further shows that the effects concentrate in the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles and machinery sectors. The substantial size of our estimated effects corroborate recent macroeconomic evidence on the social returns to innovation.

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