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SummaryThe German government has adopted a law that requires sewage plants to go beyond the recovery of phosphorus from wastewater and to promote recycling. We argue that there is no physical global short‐ or mid‐term phosphorus scarcity. However, we also argue that there are legitimate reasons for policies such as those of Germany, including: precaution as a way to ensure future generations’ long‐term supply security, promotion of technologies for closed‐loop economics in a promising stage of technology development, and decrease in the current supply risk with a new resource pool.

Industrial Biotechnology (IB) is considered as a key technology with a strong potential to generate new growth, spur innovation, increase productivity, and tackle environmental and climate challenges. Industrial Biotechnology is applied in many segments of the bioeconomy ranging from chemicals, biofuels, bioenergy, bio-based plastics, and other biomaterials. However, the segments differ profoundly regarding volume, price, type, and amount of needed feedstock, market condition, societal contributions as well as maturity, etc. This article aims to analyse a set of five different value chains in the technological innovation system (TIS) framework in order to derive adequate policy conclusions. Hereby, we focus on quite distinctive value chains to take into account the high heterogeneity of biotechnological applications. The analysis points out that policy maker have to take into account the fundamental differences in the innovation systems and to implement differentiated innovation policy to address system weaknesses. In particular, market formation is often the key bottleneck innovation systems, but different policy instruments for various application segments needed.

Abstract As a response to climate change, low carbon development has attracted a growing public attention. It is urgent to implement low carbon economy through technological innovation so that carbon emissions can be reduced effectively. The synergy and cooperation amongst the participants is required due to various challenges such as: multi-participants, multi-objectives and multi-technologies. These present significant challenges to the low carbon technology (LCT) innovation development. The objective of this study is to identify the relevant driving forces of LCT innovation and their interaction in the construction industry. This paper firstly analyzes the interrelationships of the participants via a methodology of system dynamics (SD) and questionnaire survey. The main driving forces and related influential factors are highlighted by means of a deductive method. Moreover, a SD model is established to examine the driving forces where government and private firms all play a role. The results show that LCT integration driving forces are significantly influenced by the continuous changes of a particular low carbon project as well as the number of participating enterprises. All the driving forces reflect an increasingly level of effectiveness. According to the model simulation, it will take a long period of time to transform traditional projects to low carbon projects. China needs at least 21 years that the quantity of low carbon buildings exceeds that of traditional ones. As a result, the building and construction industry is facing a significant challenge in terms of carbon emissions reduction. The numbers of enterprises participating in LCT innovation will not always increase with the enhancement of driving forces. Rather, it will keep at a stable level after a certain growth. A particular one single driving force has limited impact on the growth of low carbon projects and participating enterprises. System integration plays a crucial role to achieve the low carbon development.

Technological breakthroughs and policy measures targeting energy efficiency and clean energy alone will not suffice to deliver Paris Agreement-compliant greenhouse gas emissions trajectories in the next decades. Strong cases have recently been made for acknowledging the decarbonisation potential lying in transforming linear economic models into closed-loop industrial ecosystems and in shifting lifestyle patterns towards this direction. This perspective highlights the research capacity needed to inform on the role and potential of the circular economy for climate change mitigation and to enhance the scientific capabilities to quantitatively explore their synergies and trade-offs. This begins with establishing conceptual and methodological bridges amongst the relevant and currently fragmented research communities, thereby allowing an interdisciplinary integration and assessment of circularity, decarbonisation, and sustainable development. Following similar calls for science in support of climate action, a transdisciplinary scientific agenda is needed to co-create the goals and scientific processes underpinning the transition pathways towards a circular, net-zero economy with representatives from policy, industry, and civil society. Here, it is argued that such integration of disciplines, methods, and communities can then lead to new and/or structurally enhanced quantitative systems models that better represent critical industrial value chains, consumption patterns, and mitigation technologies. This will be a crucial advancement towards assessing the material implications of, and the contribution of enhanced circularity performance to, mitigation pathways that are compatible with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement and the transition to a circular economy. © 2021 The Authors This work was supported by the H2020 European Commis- sion projects “PARIS REINFORCE”(Grant Agreement No. 820846), “LOCOMOTION”(Grant Agreement No. 821105), “NDC ASPECTS”(Grant Agreement No. 101003866), and “newTRENDS”(Grant Agreement No. 893311); the European Research Council (ERC) project “FINEPRINT”(Grant Agreement No. 725525); the Hel- lenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) project “ATOM”(Grant Agreement No. HFRI-FM17–2566); the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities projects RTI2018–099858- A-I00 and RTI2018–093352-B-I00; the María de Maeztu excel- lence accreditation 2018–2022 (Ref. MDM-2017–0714), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110 0 011033; and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018–2021 program and BIDERATU project (KK- 2021/0 0 050, ELKARTEK programme 2021). The sole responsibility for the content of this paper lies with the authors; the paper does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the European Commission, the Basque Government, or the Spanish Government.

A product made from virgin raw materials that ends up in a landfill presents a linear supply chain model. Today's photovoltaic (PV) industry is still largely based on this model. With the increasing volume of production, the raw materials required for it, and consequently the volume of waste, the application of circular economy principles in the PV sector can significantly increase its environmental efficiency. This study analyzes the impact of circularity on the supply chain of PV silicon used for PV module production. Four scenarios based on the combination of technological pathways and circularity options are created. Their evaluation is carried out by the methodologies of Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The State-of-art case of the PV polysilicon supply chain corresponds to the MCI score of 0.54. Closed-loop circularity solutions provide the MCI score of 0.80 presenting the potential for a circular economy approach in the industry. LCA results show the reduction of environmental impact by 12% with improved circularity. The study presents the benefits of potential circularity options within the supply chain as well as the impact of technological development on the polysilicon demand.

Decentralized systems seeking to balance electricity supply and demand regionally are increasingly being discussed. Regional flexibility concepts, however, require spatially and temporally highly resolved knowledge. To provide this, we investigate the 2030 demand, supply, and demand-side flexibility for the German NUTS-3 regions. We (1) model the hourly regional electricity demand and supply, (2) cluster regions with regard to the regional demand and supply fit and (3) evaluate demand response for the identified clusters. While in windy or industrialized regions, the impact of demand response is low, in urban regions on the other hand, the effectiveness of flexible end uses is higher and residual load is flattened. Regions with medium-sized cities or those with smaller energy-intensive industries show a good regional fit. Here, demand response can be used very effectively to increase the regionally consumed share of electricity.

The amount of materials used worldwide in production and consumption increased by 56 per cent from 1995 to 2008. Using an index decomposition analysis based on the logarithmic mean divisia index, we investigate the drivers of material use, both on a global and a country scale. We exploit a panel dataset of 40 countries, accounting for 75 per cent of worldwide material extraction and 88 per cent of GDP, from 1995 to 2008. The results show that economic growth and structural change towards material-intensive countries explain most of the growth in global material use. Slight gains in material efficiency and falling importance of material-intensive sectors have decelerating effects. The country-level analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity. Some nations exhibit stable or falling material use, while it increases notably in most countries. Improving material efficiency is able to dampen growth of material use in important industrializing nations like China or India.

Industrial processes are associated with high amounts of energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted, stressing the urgent need for low-carbon sectoral transitions. This research reviews the energy-intensive iron and steel, cement and chemicals industries of Germany and the United Kingdom, two major emitting countries with significant activity, yet with different recent orientation. Our socio-technical analysis, based on the Sectoral Innovation Systems and the Systems Failure framework, aims to capture existing and potential drivers of or barriers to diffusion of sustainable industrial technologies and extract implications for policy. Results indicate that actor structures and inconsistent policies have limited low-carbon innovation. A critical factor for the successful decarbonisation of German industry lies in overcoming lobbying and resistance to technological innovation caused by strong networks. By contrast, a key to UK industrial decarbonisation is to drive innovation and investment in the context of an industry in decline and in light of Brexit-related uncertainty.