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The 2nd Edition uses updated examples, statistics and models to explore energy policy, economics, institutions, and production in a global context. It provides a foundation for understanding the global energy industry and is an important classroom resource.

Several large scenario exercises in the last years present decarbonizing transitional energy pathways to 2050 and beyond. This changing energy landscape toward net zero is new territory to explore but is expected to be more intensive in mineral based materials than the current system. Mapping this territory and understanding the critical material needs to support the transition are essential for demanders and suppliers as well as policy makers seeking to orchestrate the transition. Our contribution is to provide such decision makers for electricity markets with a transparent tool that can be easily understood and modified as our transitional knowledge improves. In this tool, we take the International Energy Agency’s conservative Beyond Two Degrees scenario, which projects renewable energy penetration for 15 electricity technologies, supplemented by Bloomberg’s Electrical Vehicle Outlook. Coupling these electricity projections with estimates of material use per GW of new capacity, we estimate resulting needs for 33 materials through 2050. Assuming constant material intensities and recycle rates, our model finds dramatic increases in most included materials from 2021 to 2050. The total projected tonnage increases in materials used for the transition is 294% with a compounded average annual growth rate of 4.8%. However, there is wide heterogeneity across materials (from slightly negative for tungsten to nearly 1300% for lithium). Projected 2050 sales vary from less than 30 tonnes for hafnium and yttrium (with quantity demanded growth of − 4.8% from 2021 to 2050) to more than 17 million tonnes for steel (with growth of 291%) and aluminum (growth 419%). At 2021 prices, 2050 sales revenue varies from less than a million dollars for boron (growth of 164%) to more than $42 billion for aluminum (growth 419%), nickel (growth of 279%), and steel (growth of 291%).

Gasoline demand has been extensively researched, yet there has been no attempt to estimate cross-price elasticities of different grades of gasoline. Such knowledge will allow accurate determination of the impact of a fuel pricing policy that has different rates of tax or subsidy depending on the gasoline grade. Using monthly data on the Mexican gasoline market from 1999 to 2014, regular gasoline demand is estimated with an ARDL model. Endogeneity of the price and structural break are also investigated. The cross-price elasticity between regular and premium gasoline is found to be 0.875, confirming high substitutability among gasoline with different grades.

Advances in science and technology have transformed the health of the populations of the developed world, with substantial increases in life expectancy and reductions in morbidity. These advances have not, however, touched the lives of the poorest people of the world--the billions living in developing countries. This Review Series on global health highlights the key factors contributing to inequity in health across the globe and the scientific questions that remain unanswered but are critical to creating effective and appropriate health solutions. The gaps in knowledge identified in this series point the way for scientists to contribute to a changed world.

Exploiting the structural developments suggested by the geography-of-trade literature, we estimate the elasticity of substitution across regional varieties for six crude grades and seven refined products using fixed-effects gravity regressions. We use unique data, compiled by Al-Qahtani (2008), that include global coverage of bilateral trade and transport costs for the crude grades and refined products. We find that the point estimates of elasticities of substitution across import varieties exceed those commonly reported in the literature and those adopted in simulation analysis. Our estimates indicate that there may be far less hysteresis in the pattern of petroleum trade than previously forecast.

Depletion of minerals and other non-renewable resources has long been a source of worry to industrial economies. This worry waxes when markets are tight and wanes when they are not. However, evidence has continued to mount that there are staggering amounts of minerals in space that are technically within our grasp. Scientific work has considered mineral availability and technical ability to mine on near earth objects. Within the last decade, a number of space related industries have gained attention. While availability and technical feasibility are both necessary conditions for this industry to develop, they are not sufficient. Rather sufficiency also requires financial feasibility. Although studies have considered the costs of mining asteroids, we are aware of no papers that model the effects on terrestrial mineral market structure with the injection of extra-terrestrial minerals. Our contribution is to consider the current state of mineral markets and provide a model of firm entry to derive implications to the market from space mined minerals entering the market. We provide a numerical simulation to demonstrate what prices asteroidal entrants might face for the injection of a variety of metals and provide an online model for others to change inputs to their asteroid and metals of choice.