Raw materials and energy transformation process. Analysis of supply bottlenecks and implications on metal markets

As Germany commits to environmental and climate goals, the utilization of clean energy technologies is expected to increase significantly. However, the application of technologies like photovoltaics (PV), wind turbines and batteries comes at a price due to their dependency towards scarce metals, such as rare earth elements (REEs) and cobalt. This means that large-scale deployment of these technologies might cause supply bottlenecks of related metals in the future. Under this premise, this thesis aimed at answering two main research questions. Firstly, does the increasing metal demand due to the energy transformation process in Germany lead to supply bottlenecks? Secondly, what are the economic implications of the increasing metal demand due to the energy transformation process on the metal market? In answering the first research question, the metallic raw material demand for photovoltaics, wind turbines and batteries were investigated. Metals such as indium, lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements are identified as critical. However, the supply bottlenecks of the metals can be eased if the energy transformation process is steered in the right direction and efforts of improving material efficiency and recycling are pursued. The second research question was tested using the Toda-Yamamoto approach to Granger-causality testing vector autoregressive analysis in order to test the dynamics of selected metal prices in the investigated technologies and their relationship with demand and supply. It is concluded that large-scale deployment of renewable technologies in the future will only strengthen the price relationships that exist between the metals in the technologies.