Quantifying material stocks in long-lived products: Challenges and improvements for informing sustainable resource use strategies
Reviewartikel, 2025
Material stocks in long-lived products require over half of the annual global resource extraction for their construction and maintenance, and lock in energy use through their technical and geospatial characteristics. A thorough understanding of material stocks is therefore essential to inform sustainable resource use strategies. However, despite substantial advances in material stock research in recent decades, their robust quantification remains challenging and bears considerable uncertainties. We assess the (dis)agreement of material stock estimates from 32 recent studies across global, national, and urban scales, and propose recommendations for future work. Overall, we observe medium to high divergences between studies estimating the same material stocks. For end-use categories that aggregate multiple material stocks (e.g., buildings), most global-level estimates show divergences within 140 %. At the national level, most estimates for the USA diverge by <210 %, while those for China by <550 %. At the urban level, most estimates for Beijing fall within 90 %, and for Vienna, within 70 %. For low-income countries, non-residential buildings, and individual materials, the differences are often substantially higher, highlighting the need for an improved scientific basis for policy and planning. These disparities arise from differences in system boundaries, methodology, data sources, definitions, and lack of data to capture the diversity of material stock types. To robustly inform sustainable resource use strategies, the scientific community and practitioners should systematically assess and report sensitivity and uncertainty, and reduce the latter through transparent documentation, model intercomparisons, consensus and open-access databases, enhanced data collection, and comprehensive quantification of material stocks.
Socioeconomic metabolism
Material stocks
Sustainable resource management
Material flow analysis
Uncertainty analysis
Författare
Jan Streeck
Universität für Bodenkultur
André Baumgart
Universität für Bodenkultur
H. Haberl
Universität für Bodenkultur
F. Krausmann
Universität für Bodenkultur
Bowen Cai
Wuhan University
Tomer Fishman
Universiteit Leiden
Maud Lanau
Chalmers, Arkitektur och samhällsbyggnadsteknik, Byggnadsteknologi
Peter Berrill
Universiteit Leiden
Technische Universität Berlin
Zhi Cao
Tianjin University
Nankai University
Sebastiaan Deetman
Universiteit Leiden
David Frantz
Universitat Trier
Volker Krey
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Alessio Mastrucci
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Alessio Miatto
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Stefan Pauliuk
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Lola Sylvie Annie Rousseau
Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet
Shoshanna Saxe
University of Toronto
Danielle Densley Tingley
University of Sheffield
Gamze Ünlü
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Dominik Wiedenhofer
Universität für Bodenkultur
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
09213449 (ISSN) 18790658 (eISSN)
Vol. 221 108324Drivkrafter
Hållbar utveckling
Ämneskategorier (SSIF 2025)
Miljövetenskap
DOI
10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108324