**6. Concluding remarks: from SEEA to a global system of environmental-thermo-economic accounts**

**5. Do exergy measures accomplish the standards for a good** 

**DTR path**

PGM (average value for all PGM) 2,695,013 175,000 Platinum 4,491,688 291,667 Potassium (Sylvite) 665 2 Praseodymium-Monazite 577 296 REE (Bastnaesite) 348 384 Rhenium 102,931 156 Silicon (Quartz) 1 77 Silver (Argentite) 7371 1566 Sodium (Halite) 17 41 Strontium 4.2 72 Tantalum (Tantalite) 482,828 3091 Tellurium-Tetradymite 2,235,699 589,405 Tin (Cassiterite) 426 27 Titanium (Ilmenite) 5 135 Titanium (Rutile) 9 258 Uranium (Uraninite) 901 189 Vanadium 1055 517 Wolfram (Scheelite) 7429 594 Yttrium-Monazite 159 1198 Zinc (Sphalerite) 1627 56 Zirconium (Zircon) 654 1372

**Exergy replacement costs, GJ/ton**

**OTR path**

**GJ/ton**

**Mining and metallurgical costs,** 

With exergy replacement cost we cannot measure the progress to sustainability but the progress to depletion, ultimate to Thanatia. It can be like a watch measure to death. We can decelerate death, but we cannot avoid it. Nevertheless, it can be a good policy guide since it can quantify the annual depletion of the mineral capital and explain crystal clear, what are the needed measures to stop it or at least to slow it. The only question is to prove that the indica-

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [17, 18] proposed a set of criteria for having a good environmental indicator: policy relevance, analytical sound-

**environmental indicator?**

Updated from Valero and Valero (2015); [15].

**Values in GJ/ton of metal if not** 

72 Sustainability Assessment and Reporting

**specified**

ness, and measurability.

tor undertakes the requirements for a good one.

**Table 1.** Total exergy costs of selected metals: the OTR and DTR paths.

The depletion of a mineral should not be anymore the difference between its world price and its economic cost of production as economists propose. On the contrary, it should be assessed as the loss of reserves quantified through its replacement cost with prevailing

technologies, from the bare rock to the ore grade conditions of the mine. This depletion indicator can be used for all fossil fuels, and minerals no matter their chemical composition and concentration. Fossil fuels must be replaced with renewable energy sources and need to be accounted for such progress. In the same way, stopping depletion of metals will largely come from techniques such as designing for recyclability, reducing the number of alloys used, avoiding the design of monstrous hybrids, designing for disassembly, symbiosing industrial complexes, increasing the efficiency of smelters to avoid metal losses in slags, increasing the throughput of scrap, etc., (see [19, 20]). All these techniques decrease depletion and must be accounted for too.

that the information recovered is rather poor since tons of materials are not sensitive enough for qualifying most of the physical phenomena. Therefore, at the countries level, both monetary accounts and physical accounts are concurrently needed. Monetization runs well from households to companies. At the countries level the money yardstick is proved insufficient for economic-environmental accounts, and at the aggregated global level accounts, money losses weight in favor of physical accounts. To see the planet´s evolution, monetary accounting is not only insufficient but inappropriate. The aggregation level of accounting determines the

Accounting for Mineral Depletion Under the UN-SEEA Framework

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.77290

75

We propose "replacement" as the keyword for re-producing the planetary global accounts, from households to the whole planet in a comprehensive way. Using the exergy cost measured in international. units as a numéraire. The cost of replacement of non-renewable resources and the cost of restoring deteriorated renewable resources may be used just to account how much effort we should need to close the natural and man-made cycles. Some efforts will be done as we pay our debt, but many others will remain as a debt to future generations. Future generations will need to know this. As the former Deputy Secretary-General of OECD, Ásgeirsdóttir [22] said "the luxuries of one generation are often the needs of the next," and "We need to achieve more sustainable consumption and production patterns, to increasingly decouple environmental pressure from economic growth, to ensure sustainable management of natural resources, and to work together in partnership to reduce poverty." This is in effect, achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 12. For achieving it, SEEA must be the starting point and its framework. SEEA would need a step forward to convert them into a SETEA. A major intellectual effort needs to be done from the concepts stated here. At the end, the real overall accounting unit will be the residence time of the human

This chapter has been financed by the TRIDENTE project from the Spanish Ministry of

[1] Valero A, Valero A. From grave to cradle. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 2013;**17**(1):43-52

numéraire to be used in the accounts.

species on the planet.

**Acknowledgements**

Industry and Science.

**Author details**

**References**

Antonio Valero\* and Alicia Valero

\*Address all correspondence to: valero@unizar.es

CIRCE – Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

The idea of replacement, restoration, remediation or repair exergy could easily be extended to indicate the depletion of many other non-renewable resources of biogeological origin like the loss of forests, landscapes, fertile soil, subsoil waters, fisheries, climate change, etc. The amount of work needed to restore what was degraded should be accounted for, even if it will hardly be restored. It is like a debit account for future generations. Each time we learn how to accomplish replacements or recycling or how to live with less, is like slowing the time machine toward Thanatia.

If "prevailing technologies" are a reflection of embodied knowledge, we will see to what extent they decrease our debt with future generations. Nevertheless, it is not clear that any new technology that directly or indirectly improves efficiency in production processes decrease our debt. The rebound effect goes always in the opposite direction; the more efficient we are the more consumption is promoted (see, for instance, [21]).

Valuing our technological improvements is as important as conservation of resources. Conservation is something else than repair, restoration, or replacement. It requires a change in our lifestyle through education. Education is an indispensable tool for technological innovation and conservation. And it is not clear yet, which of both are more important at any historical moment in man´s life on the planet. Conservation and technological improvement can be accounted for with the proposed theory. Consequently, the second law of thermodynamics ought to be placed at the core of economists' literacy.

If replacement can be calculated and registered for almost any action of man on the planet, we need an international framework to provide concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and standard tables for all countries. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) of the United Nations may well provide such statistical framework. As explained previously, the System of National Accounts (SNA) is an established system for producing internationally comparable economic statistics, which imposes the organization and standardization of domestic accounts. It is widely accepted and established worldwide. Bureaus of statistical office (BSO) for data recovering and economic accounting exist in almost any country. Companies and countries report economic and physical data following the established accounting procedure, and BSOs integrate them. It is a huge infrastructure. From households to companies and to countries, these accounts are presented in money values. SEEA follows the accounting structure of the SNA thus facilitating the integration of environmental statistics with economic accounts. Thus, each national BSO needs to take the responsibility for the environmental data recovery and environmental-economic accounting too. However, these offices are mainly composed by economic statisticians, which are used to convert their assets into money values. When describing the physical tables needed for SEEA, we have seen that the information recovered is rather poor since tons of materials are not sensitive enough for qualifying most of the physical phenomena. Therefore, at the countries level, both monetary accounts and physical accounts are concurrently needed. Monetization runs well from households to companies. At the countries level the money yardstick is proved insufficient for economic-environmental accounts, and at the aggregated global level accounts, money losses weight in favor of physical accounts. To see the planet´s evolution, monetary accounting is not only insufficient but inappropriate. The aggregation level of accounting determines the numéraire to be used in the accounts.

We propose "replacement" as the keyword for re-producing the planetary global accounts, from households to the whole planet in a comprehensive way. Using the exergy cost measured in international. units as a numéraire. The cost of replacement of non-renewable resources and the cost of restoring deteriorated renewable resources may be used just to account how much effort we should need to close the natural and man-made cycles. Some efforts will be done as we pay our debt, but many others will remain as a debt to future generations. Future generations will need to know this. As the former Deputy Secretary-General of OECD, Ásgeirsdóttir [22] said "the luxuries of one generation are often the needs of the next," and "We need to achieve more sustainable consumption and production patterns, to increasingly decouple environmental pressure from economic growth, to ensure sustainable management of natural resources, and to work together in partnership to reduce poverty." This is in effect, achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 12. For achieving it, SEEA must be the starting point and its framework. SEEA would need a step forward to convert them into a SETEA. A major intellectual effort needs to be done from the concepts stated here. At the end, the real overall accounting unit will be the residence time of the human species on the planet.
