ABSTRACT

Clean energy technologies represent a promising solution to the global warming challenge. However, many clean energy technologies depend on some rare materials, and concerns about the demand of the materials have been raised recently. Making the concerns even worse, the materials are usually by-products of base metals, thus the supplies highly rely on the demand and production of the base metals. Indium is one of the rare materials. It is critical for two emerging clean energy applications, that is, copper indium gallium selenide type solar photovoltaic, and light-emitting diode lighting. Like other rare materials, indium is also a by-product of a base metal, mainly zinc. Therefore, demand and supply analysis of indium is essential for the sustainable deployment of the clean energy technologies, which are projected to flourish, because they may either reduce greenhouse gas emission or improve energy efficiency under the severe climate change challenges. In this dissertation, supply risk of indium is examined, and its sustainable supply planning in multiple perspectives are studied for the continuous and sustainable supply of the material.

First, supply and demand gap are projected under different energy and technology development scenarios using a dynamic material flow system approach. A system dynamics model is constructed by considering: i) current and future indium demand sources; and ii) market/price mediated supply and demand relationships of both zinc and indium. The supply shortage is observed in the majority of the scenarios, and the shortage mainly attributes to the solar photovoltaic application. Material intensity reduction by technology development may overcome the shortage to some extent but cannot completely resolve the shortage issue. Having recognized the imbalance of indium supply and demand, global strategic level capacity planning of the materials, as a direct solution to overcome the shortage issue, is proposed using a deterministic mixed integer linear programming model. In addition to capacity expansion planning of indium, other decisions in the indium supply chain, such as production, transportation, and inventory for both zinc and indium are also considered. Finally, indium production quantity decision is analyzed in the producer's perspective under competitive market condition. Since zinc production quantity capacitates the indium production, the indium production decision is highly related to the quantity of zinc production. A Cournot competition model is developed, and equilibrium quantities for both materials are drawn in four cases, which exclusively capture the various possible scenarios. The equilibria are analyzed numerically under different scenarios and compared with the decisions under monopoly market condition.

The findings from this dissertation contribute to suggesting a guidance to the stakeholders for the sustainable supply of indium, and ultimately to lead the stable deployment of cleaner energy technologies.