Sustainability measurement - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sustainability measurement is a term that denotes the measurements used as the quantitative basis for the informed management of sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

. The metrics used for the measurement of sustainability (involving the sustainability of environmental, social and economic domains, both individually and in various combinations) are still evolving: they include indicator

Ecological indicator

Ecological indicators are used to communicate information about ecosystems and the impact human activity has on ecosystems to groups such as the public or government policy makers. Ecosystems are complex and ecological indicators can help describe them in simpler terms that can be understood and...

s, benchmarks, audits, indexes and accounting, as well as assessment, appraisal and other reporting systems. They are applied over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

Some of the best known and most widely used sustainability measures include corporate sustainability reporting

Sustainability Reporting

Corporate sustainability reporting has a long history going back to environmental reporting. The first environmental reports were published in the late 1980s by companies in the chemical industry which had serious image problems...

, Triple Bottom Line accounting

Triple bottom line

The triple bottom line captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational success: economic, ecological, and social...

, and estimates of the quality of sustainability governance for individual countries using the Environmental Sustainability Index

Environmental Sustainability Index

The Environmental Sustainability Index ' was a composite index published from 1999 to 2005 that tracked 21 elements of environmental sustainability covering natural resource endowments, past and present pollution levels, environmental management efforts, contributions to protection of the global...

and Environmental Performance Index

Environmental Performance Index

The Environmental Performance Index is a method of quantifying and numerically benchmarking the environmental performance of a country's policies. This index was developed from the Pilot Environmental Performance Index, first published in 2002, and designed to supplement the environmental targets...

Sustainability indicators and their function

The principal objective of sustainability indicators is to inform public policy-making as part of the process of sustainability governance.
Sustainability indicators can provide information on any aspect of the interplay between the environment and socio-economic activities. Building strategic indicator sets generally deals with just a few simple questions: what is happening? (descriptive indicators), does it matter and are we reaching targets? (performance indicators), are we improving? (efficiency indicators), are measures working? (policy effectiveness indicators), and are we generally better off? (total welfare indicators). One popular general framework used by The European Environment Agency

European Environment Agency

European Environment Agency is an agency of the European Union. Its task is to provide sound, independent information on the environment. It is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public...

uses a slight modification of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development DPSIR system. This breaks up environmental impact into five stages. Social and economic developments (consumption and production) (D)rive or initiate environmental (P)ressures which, in turn, produces a change in the (S)tate of the environment which leads to (I)mpacts of various kinds. Societal (R)esponses (policy guided by sustainability indicators) can be introduced at any stage of this sequence of events.

United Nations Indicators

The United Nations has developed extensive sustainability measurement tools in relation to sustainable development as well as a System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting

System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting

System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting is a framework to compile statistics linking environmental statistics to economic statistics. SEEA is described as a satellite system to the United Nations System of National Accounts . This means that the definitions, guidelines and...

Benchmarks, indicators, indexes, auditing etc.

In the last couple of decades there has arisen a crowded toolbox of quantitative methods used to assess sustainability — including measures of resource use like life cycle assessment

Life cycle assessment

A life-cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave A life-cycle assessment (LCA, also known as life-cycle analysis, ecobalance, and cradle-to-grave analysis) is a technique to assess environmental impacts...

, measures of consumption like the ecological footprint

Ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to...

and measurements of quality of environmental governance like the Environmental Performance Index

Environmental Performance Index

. The following is a list of quantitative "tools" used by sustainability scientists - the different categories are for convenience only as defining criteria will intergrade. It would be too difficult to list all those methods available at different levels of organisation so those listed here are at for the global level only.

benchmark
Benchmark (surveying)
The term bench mark, or benchmark, originates from the chiseled horizontal marks that surveyors made in stone structures, into which an angle-iron could be placed to form a "bench" for a leveling rod, thus ensuring that a leveling rod could be accurately repositioned in the same place in the future...

s

A benchmark is a point of reference for a measurement. Once a benchmark is established it is possible to assess trends and measure progress. Baseline global data on a range of sustainability parameter

Parameter

Parameter from Ancient Greek παρά also “para” meaning “beside, subsidiary” and μέτρον also “metron” meaning “measure”, can be interpreted in mathematics, logic, linguistics, environmental science and other disciplines....

s is available at list of global sustainability statistics

2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership

The Biodiversity Indicators Partnership brings together a host of international organizations working on indicator development, to provide the best available information on biodiversity trends to the global community. The Partnership was initially established to help monitor progress towards the...

indexes

A sustainability index is an aggregate sustainability indicator that combines multiple sources of data. There is a Consultative Group on Sustainable Development Indices

Air Quality Index

Air quality is defined as a measure of the condition of air relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species or to any human need or purpose. Air quality indices are numbers used by government agencies to characterize the quality of the air at a given location...

Child Development Index

The Child Development Index is an index combining performance measures specific to children - education, health and nutrition - to produce a score on a scale of 0 to 100. A zero score would be the best...

Corruption Perceptions Index

Since 1995, Transparency International publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index annually ranking countries "by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." The CPI generally defines corruption as "the misuse of public power for private...

Democracy Index

The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit that claims to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 165 are UN member states...

Environmental Performance Index

Emergy

Emergy is the available energy of one kind that is used up in transformations directly and indirectly to make a product or service. Emergy accounts for, and in effect, measures quality differences between forms of energy. Emergy is an expression of all the energy used in the work processes that...

Sustainability Index

Education Index

This article contains information based on the pre-2010 Human Development Reports. The HDI and its education component have changed in 2010.The United Nations publishes a Human Development Index every year, which consists of the Education index, GDP Index and Life Expectancy Index...

Environmental Sustainability Index

Environmental Vulnerability Index

The Environmental Vulnerability Index is a measurement devised by the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission , the United Nations Environment Program and others to characterize the relative severity of various types of environmental issues suffered by 243 enumerated individual nations and...

GDP per capita

Gini coefficient

The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variability and Mutability" ....

Gender Parity Index

The Gender Parity Index is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. In its simplest form, it is calculated as the quotient of the number of females by the number of males enrolled in a given stage of education...

Gender-related Development Index

The Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure were introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program. The aim of these measurements was to add a gender-sensitive dimension to the HDI. The first measurement that they...

Gender Empowerment Measure

The United Nation's Development Programme's attempt to measure the extent of gender equality across the globe's countries, based on estimates of women's relative economic income, high-paying positions, and access to professional and parliamentary positions....

Gross national happiness

The assessment of gross national happiness was designed in an attempt to define an indicator that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than only the economic indicator of gross domestic product .-Origins and meaning:The term...

Genuine Progress Indicator

The genuine progress indicator is an alternative metric system which is an addition to the national system of accounts that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product as a metric of economic growth...

(formerly Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare is an economic indicator intended to replace the gross domestic product.Rather than simply adding together all expenditures like the gross domestic product, consumer expenditure is balanced by such factors as income distribution and cost associated with...

)

Gross National Product

Happy Planet Index

The Happy Planet Index is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in July 2006. The index is designed to challenge well-established indices of countries’ development, such as Gross Domestic Product and the Human Development Index...

Human Development Index

The Human Development Index is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate "very high human development", "high human development", "medium human development", and "low human development" countries...

(see List of countries by HDI)

Legatum Prosperity Index

The Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute of 110 countries. The ranking is based according to a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, personal wellbeing, and quality of life. Norway topped the lists of the the last two reports, those of...

Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

Life Expectancy Index

Sustainable Governance Indicators

The Sustainable Governance Indicators , first published in spring 2009 and updated in 2011, analyze and compare the need for reform in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, as well as each country's ability to respond to current social and political challenges...

. The Status Index ranks 30 OECD countries in terms of sustainable reform performance

Sustainable Society Index

The Sustainable Society Index, SSI , shows at a glance the level of sustainability of each of the 151 assessed countries, included in the SSI...

Water Poverty Index

metrics

Many environmental problems ultimately relate to the human effect on those global biogeochemical cycles that are critical to life. Over the last decade monitoring these cycles has become a more urgent target for research:

water cycle
Water cycle
The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or H2O cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. Water can change states among liquid, vapor, and solid at various places in the water cycle...
carbon cycle
Carbon cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth...
phosphorus cycle
Phosphorus cycle
The phosphorus cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that describes the movement of phosphorus through the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Unlike many other biogeochemical cycles, the atmosphere does not play a significant role in the movement of phosphorus, because phosphorus and...

nitrogen cycle
Nitrogen cycle
The nitrogen cycle is the process by which nitrogen is converted between its various chemical forms. This transformation can be carried out by both biological and non-biological processes. Important processes in the nitrogen cycle include fixation, mineralization, nitrification, and denitrification...
sulphur cycle
oxygen cycle
Oxygen cycle
The Oxygen cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that describes the movement of oxygen within its three main reservoirs: the atmosphere , the total content of biological matter within the biosphere , and the lithosphere...

audit
Audit
The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...

ing

Sustainability auditing and reporting are used to evaluate the sustainability performance of a company, organization, or other entity using various performance indicators. Popular auditing procedures available at the global level include:

ISO 14000
ISO 14000
The ISO 14000 environmental management standards exist to help organizations minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment The ISO 14000 environmental management standards exist to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes etc.) negatively affect the...
ISO 14031
ISO 14031
The ISO 14031: 1999 Environmental management - Environmental Performance Evaluation – Guidelines gives guidance on the design and use of environmental performance evaluation, and on identification and selection of environmental performance indicators, for use by all organizations, regardless of...
Natural Step
Triple Bottom Line
Triple bottom line
The triple bottom line captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational success: economic, ecological, and social...

Accounting
input-output analysis can be used for any level of organization with a financial budget. It relates environmental impact to expenditure by calculating the resource intensity
Resource intensity
Resource intensity is a measure of the resources needed for the production, processing and disposal of a unit of good or service, or for the completion of a process or activity; it is therefore a measure of the efficiency of resource use. It is often expressed as the quantity of resource embodied...

of goods and services.

development and NGO project auditing

"Litmus test" type indicators are also used in the development and NGO community to test conformity and compliance with the guidelines of sustainable human development and the international Rio Declaration of 1992.

Sustainable development indicator for NGOs and Other Organizations

report
Report
A report is a textual work made with the specific intention of relaying information or recounting certain events in a widely presentable form....

ing
- Global Reporting Initiative Global Reporting Initiative
  Global Reporting Initiative
  The Global Reporting Initiative produces one of the world's most prevalent standards for sustainability reporting - also known as ecological footprint reporting, Environmental Social Governance reporting, Triple Bottom Line reporting, Corporate Social Responsibility reporting...
  
  modelling and monitoring procedures. Many of these have only just been developed.
- State of the Environment
  State of the Environment
  The term State of the Environment normally relates to an analysis of trends in the environment of a particular place. This analysis can encompass aspects such as water quality, air quality, land use, ecosystem health and function, along with social and cultural matters.- The Pressure-State-Response...
  
  reporting provides general background information on the environment and is progressively including more indicators.
- European sustainability

accounting

Some accounting methods attempt to include environmental costs rather than treating them as externalities

Externality

In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit...

Green accounting
Green accounting
Green accounting is a type of accounting that attempts to factor environmental costs into the financial results of operations. It has been argued that gross domestic product ignores the environment and therefore decisionmakers need a revised model that incorporates green accounting.- Etymology :The...
Sustainable Value
Sustainable Value
Sustainable value is a way of managing and measuring sustainability performance. The concept was developed by researchers who are working today for and the...
Sustainability economics

Resource metrics

Part of this process can relate to resource use such as energy accounting

Energy accounting

Energy accounting is a system used within industry, where measuring and analyzing the energy consumption of different activities is done to improve energy efficiency.-Energy management:...

or to economic metrics or price system

Price system

In economics, a price system is any economic system that affects its distribution of goods and services with prices and employing any form of money. Except for possible remote and primitive communities, all modern societies use price systems to allocate resources...

values as compared to non-market economics potential, for understanding resource use.
An important task for resource theory (energy economics

Energy economics

Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Due to diversity of issues and methods applied and shared with a number of academic disciplines, energy economics does not present itself as a self contained academic...

) is to develop methods to optimize resource conversion processes. These systems are described and analyzed by means of the methods of mathematics and the natural sciences. Human factors, however, have dominated the development of our perspective of the relationship between nature and society since at least the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

, and in particular have influenced how we describe and measure the economic impacts of changes in resource quality. A balanced view of these issues requires an understanding of the physical framework in which all human ideas, institutions, and aspirations must operate.

Energy return on energy investment

When oil production first began in the mid-nineteenth century, the largest oil fields recovered fifty barrels of oil for every barrel used in the extraction, transportation and refining. This ratio is often referred to as the Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI or EROEI

EROEI

In physics, energy economics and ecological energetics, energy returned on energy invested ; or energy return on investment , is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource...

). Currently, between one and five barrels of oil are recovered for each barrel-equivalent of energy used in the recovery process. As the EROEI drops to one, or equivalently the Net energy gain

Net energy gain

Net Energy Gain is a concept used in energy economics that refers to the difference between the energy expended to harvest an energy source and the amount of energy gained from that harvest. The net energy gain, which can be expressed in joules, differs from the net financial gain that may result...

falls to zero, the oil production is no longer a net energy source. This happens long before the resource is physically exhausted.

Note that it is important to understand the distinction between a barrel of oil, which is a measure of oil, and a barrel of oil equivalent

Barrel of oil equivalent

The barrel of oil equivalent is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel of crude oil. The US Internal Revenue Service defines it as equal to 5.8 × 106 BTU...

(BOE), which is a measure of energy. Many sources of energy, such as fission, solar, wind, and coal, are not subject to the same near-term supply restrictions that oil is. Accordingly, even an oil source with an EROEI of 0.5 can be usefully exploited if the energy required to produce that oil comes from a cheap and plentiful energy source. Availability of cheap, but hard to transport, natural gas in some oil fields has led to using natural gas

Natural gas

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

to fuel enhanced oil recovery

Enhanced oil recovery

Enhanced Oil Recovery is a generic term for techniques for increasing the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from an oil field...

. Similarly, natural gas in huge amounts is used to power most Athabasca Tar Sands plants. Cheap natural gas has also led to Ethanol fuel

Ethanol fuel

Ethanol fuel is ethanol , the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline. World ethanol production for transport fuel tripled between 2000 and 2007 from 17 billion to more than 52 billion litres...

produced with a net EROEI of less than 1, although figures in this area are controversial because methods to measure EROEI are in debate.

Growth-based economic models

Insofar as economic growth

Economic growth

In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...

is driven by oil consumption growth, post-peak societies must adapt. M. King Hubbert

M. King Hubbert

Marion King Hubbert was a geoscientist who worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory , with important political ramifications. He was often...

believed:
Some economists describe the problem as uneconomic growth

Uneconomic growth

Uneconomic growth, in human development theory, welfare economics , and some forms of ecological economics, is economic growth that reflects or creates a decline in the quality of life. The concept is attributed to the economist Herman Daly, though other theorists can also be credited for the...

or a false economy

False economy

A false economy is an action that saves money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being wasted than being saved...

. At the political right, Fred Ikle

Fred Ikle

Dr. Fred Charles Iklé was a United States Department of Defense official during the presidency of Ronald Reagan who is credited with a key role in increasing U.S. aid to anti-Soviet rebels in the Soviet War in Afghanistan...

has warned about "conservatives addicted to the Utopia of Perpetual Growth". Brief oil interruptions in 1973 and 1979 markedly slowed - but did not stop - the growth of world GDP.

Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution

Green Revolution

Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s....

transformed agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon

Hydrocarbon

In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....

fueled irrigation

Irrigation

Irrigation may be defined as the science of artificial application of water to the land or soil. It is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops, maintenance of landscapes, and revegetation of disturbed soils in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall...

.

David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture

Agriculture

at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), place in their study Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy

Sustainability

at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy world population

World population

The world population is the total number of living humans on the planet Earth. As of today, it is estimated to be billion by the United States Census Bureau...

will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study. Without population reduction, this study predicts an agricultural crisis beginning in 2020, becoming critical c. 2050. The peaking of global oil

Peak oil

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, projected reserves and the combined production rate of a field...

along with the decline in regional natural gas

Natural gas

production may precipitate this agricultural crisis sooner than generally expected. Dale Allen Pfeiffer

Dale Allen Pfeiffer

Dale Allen Pfeiffer is a geologist and writer from Michigan, U.S. who has investigated and written about energy depletion and potential future resource wars. He has also written about class war, sustainability, direct action and the environment. He is also an anarchist activist and a member of the...

claims that coming decades could see spiraling food

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...

prices without relief and massive starvation

Starvation

Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...

on a global level such as never experienced before.

Hubbert peaks

Although Hubbert peak theory receives most attention in relation to peak oil production

Peak oil

, it has also been applied to other natural resources.

Natural gas

Doug Reynolds predicted in 2005 that the North American peak would occur in 2007. Bentley (p. 189) predicted a world "decline in conventional gas production from about 2020".

Coal

Peak coal is significantly further out than peak oil, but we can observe the example of anthracite

Anthracite coal

Anthracite is a hard, compact variety of mineral coal that has a high luster...

in the USA, a high grade coal whose production peaked in the 1920s. Anthracite was studied by Hubbert, and matches a curve closely. Pennsylvania's coal production also matches Hubbert's curve closely, but this does not mean that coal in Pennsylvania is exhausted—far from it. If production in Pennsylvania returned at its all time high, there are reserves for 190 years. Hubbert had recoverable coal reserves worldwide at 2500 × 10⁹ metric tons and peaking around 2150(depending on usage).

More recent estimates suggest an earlier peak. Coal: Resources and Future Production (PDF 630KB ), published on April 5, 2007 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG), which reports to the German Parliament, found that global coal production could peak in as few as 15 years. Reporting on this Richard Heinberg also notes that the date of peak annual energetic extraction from coal will likely come earlier than the date of peak in quantity of coal (tons per year) extracted as the most energy-dense types of coal have been mined most extensively. A second study,
The Future of Coal by B. Kavalov and S. D. Peteves of the Institute for Energy (IFE), prepared for European Commission Joint Research Centre, reaches similar conclusions and states that
""coal might not be so abundant, widely available and reliable as an energy source in the future".

Work by David Rutledge

David Rutledge

Dr. David B. Rutledge was elected Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology and started his term on September 1, 2005 as such. His research group is currently involved in building circuits and antennas for numerous electronic applications...

of Caltech predicts that the total of world coal production will amount to only about 450 gigatonnes. This
implies that coal is running out faster than usually assumed.

Finally, insofar as global peak oil

Peak oil

and peak in natural gas are expected anywhere from imminently to within decades at most, any increase in coal production (mining) per annum to compensate for declines in oil or NG production, would necessarily translate to an earlier date of peak as compared with peak coal under a scenario in which annual production remains constant.

Fissionable materials

In a paper in 1956, after a review of US fissionable reserves, Hubbert notes of nuclear power:
Technologies such as the thorium fuel cycle

Thorium fuel cycle

The thorium fuel cycle is a nuclear fuel cycle that uses the naturally abundant isotope of thorium, , as the fertile material. In the reactor, is transmuted into the fissile artificial uranium isotope which is the nuclear fuel. Unlike natural uranium, natural thorium contains only trace amounts...

, reprocessing

Nuclear reprocessing

Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Reprocessing serves multiple purposes, whose relative importance has changed over time. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing...

and fast breeders can, in theory, considerably extend the life of uranium

Uranium

Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...

reserves. Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Gardner Bartlett, Ph.D. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party, and a member of the Tea Party Caucus...

claims
Caltech physics professor David Goodstein

David Goodstein

David L. Goodstein is a U.S. physicist and educator. From 1988 to 2007 he served as Vice-provost of the California Institute of Technology , where he is also a professor of physics and applied physics, as well as the Frank J...

has stated that

Metals

Hubbert applied his theory to "rock containing an abnormally high concentration of a given metal" and reasoned that the peak production for metals such as copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

, tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

, lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

, zinc

Zinc

Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...

and others would occur in the time frame of decades and iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

in the time frame of two centuries like coal. The price of copper rose 500% between 2003 and 2007 was by some attributed to peak copper

Peak copper

Peak copper is the point in time at which the maximum global copper production rate is reached. Since copper is a finite resource, at some point in the future new production from within the earth will diminish, and at some earlier time production will reach a maximum. When this will occur is a...

. Copper prices later fell, along with many other commodities and stock prices, as demand shrank from fear of a global recession

Late 2000s recession

The late-2000s recession, sometimes referred to as the Great Recession or Lesser Depression or Long Recession, is a severe ongoing global economic problem that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008. The Great Recession has affected the entire world...

. Lithium

Lithium

Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...

availability is a concern for a fleet of Li-ion battery using cars but a paper published in 1996 estimated that world reserves are adequate for at least 50 years. A similar prediction for platinum

Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...

use in fuel cells notes that the metal could be easily recycled.

Phosphorus

Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...

supplies are essential to farming and depletion of reserves is estimated at somewhere from 60 to 130 years. Individual countries supplies vary widely; without a recycling initiative America's supply is estimated around 30 years. Phosphorus supplies affect total agricultural output which in turn limits alternative fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.

Peak water

Hubbert's original analysis did not apply to renewable resources. However over-exploitation often results in a Hubbert peak nonetheless. A modified Hubbert curve applies to any resource that can be harvested faster than it can be replaced.

For example, a reserve such as the Ogallala Aquifer

Ogallala Aquifer

The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is a vast yet shallow underground water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States...

can be mined at a rate that far exceeds replenishment. This turns much of the world's underground water and lakes into finite resources with peak usage debates similar to oil. These debates usually center around agriculture and suburban water usage but generation of electricity from nuclear energy or coal and tar sands mining mentioned above is also water resource intensive. The term fossil water

Fossil water

Fossil water or paleowater is groundwater that has remained sealed in an aquifer for a long period of time. Water can rest underground in "fossil aquifers" for thousands or even millions of years...

is sometimes used to describe aquifers whose water is not being recharged.

Renewable resources

Fisheries: At least one researcher has attempted to perform Hubbert linearization (Hubbert curve
Hubbert curve
The Hubbert curve is an approximation of the production rate of a resource over time. It is a symmetric logistic distribution curve, often confused with the "normal" gaussian function. It first appeared in "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels," geophysicist M...

) on the whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

industry, as well as charting the transparently dependent price of caviar on sturgeon depletion. Another example is the cod
Cod
Cod is the common name for genus Gadus, belonging to the family Gadidae, and is also used in the common name for various other fishes. Cod is a popular food with a mild flavor, low fat content and a dense, flaky white flesh. Cod livers are processed to make cod liver oil, an important source of...

of the North Sea. The comparison of the cases of fisheries and of mineral extraction tells us that the human pressure on the environment is causing a wide range of resources to go through a depletion cycle which follows a Hubbert curve.

Sustainability indicators and their function

United Nations Indicators

Benchmarks, indicators, indexes, auditing etc.

Resource metrics

Energy return on energy investment

Growth-based economic models

Hubbert peaks

Natural gas

Coal

Fissionable materials

Metals

Phosphorus

Peak water

Renewable resources

See also