Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

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Resources Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resourpol

Colombian mineral resources: An analysis from a Thermodynamic

Second Law perspective
Luis Gabriel Carmona a, Kai Whiting b,n, Alicia Valero c, Antonio Valero c
a

School of Environmental Science, Universidad Piloto de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia

Engineering Faculty, Universidad EAN, Bogota, Colombia
c
CIRCE. Research Centre for Energy Resources and Consumption, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
b

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 8 September 2014
Received in revised form
8 March 2015
Accepted 9 March 2015
Available online 31 March 2015

Natural non-renewable resources, such as minerals, are becoming increasingly depleted against a
backdrop of intense industrialisation. Through the exergy analysis and thermoeconomic tools it is
possible to assign a gure to the degree of depletion. This is because the exergy replacement cost
represents the effort needed by humankind to return minerals to their original conditions from the
commercially dead state, Thanatia. The authors undertake an evaluation of the ten most signicantly
produced minerals in Colombia, since 1990. Via the 2011 mineral balance, this paper shows that the
highest exergetic losses are in the extraction for export and not national consumption rates. The loss in
mineral wealth, quantied in exergy terms for 2011 is 119.2 Mtoe (4.99
109 GJ) and has, since 1990,
accumulated to 1,543.4 Mtoe (6.46
1010 GJ). In converting these losses into economic terms, it becomes
clear that the nation must re-think its mineral export strategy, if it is develop sustainably.
& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Exergy
Thermoeconomics
Mineral depletion
Colombia
Thanatia

Introduction
This paper's principal idea is to provide a quantitative assessment with which to ascertain the gain or loss of annual GDP,
should those mineral resources extracted be evaluated with exergy
and not through global market prices. The results divulged are the
rst of their kind for an emerging country and represent an
improvement and national advance in mineral management and
accountability. It should be noted that exergy is one way to
physically assess mineral resources but it is not the only one. In
addition, while exergy is able to measure physical facts, related to
the composition, concentration or cohesion of minerals, it is
incapable of quantifying social or certain environmental aspects
that are also crucial in the mining industry.
The physical costs of mineral resources, as well as their scarcity,
are natural outcomes of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This
paper, through the lens of exergy, a unit used in thermoeconomics,
looks at mineral wealth and extraction in Colombia in the late
20th and early 21st centuries. Specically it looks at those
elements considered, since 2000, to be drivers for the Colombian
economy into 2020. It then goes on to describe how exergy
replacement costs can be used to evaluate the nation's mineral

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lugacapa@gmail.com (L. Gabriel Carmona),
whitingke@yahoo.co.uk (K. Whiting), aliciavd@unizar.es (A. Valero).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2015.03.005
0301-4207/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

wealth and its depletion. Using the exergy balance, the authors
determine the role Colombia plays in terms of mineral dependence or provision.

Methodology
This paper contextualises both a descriptive and deductive
methodological process by obtaining the secondary data previously
provided by other authors and institutions (such as those associated
with the provision of a reference environment and the non-fuel and
fuel mineral national statistics of Colombia). This data is then used to
support the analysis published here. It is also hoped to lead to a
thorough understanding of the problem of mineral scarcity and
depletion. Such data are benecial in helping the authors and
subsequently the government of the Republic of Colombia arrive at
potential solutions, by making use of the most important variables. At
the same time, such data are used to develop the theoretical knowledge that aids the practical application of the tools readily used in
Exergoecology (Valero, 1998) and more specically Physical Geonomics (Valero and Valero, 2010).
The evaluation predominantly involved the consultation of secondary data produced by research institutions in the form of special
reports or academic articles or that published by the Colombian
Government, in the form of ofcial statistics for the extractive sector
and the national geological department. The data of particular interest

24

L. Gabriel Carmona et al. / Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

included measured and indicated reserves, production, import, export

and recycling gures for gold, silver, platinum, nickel (ferronickel),
copper, iron, limestone, coal, oil and gas. The selected minerals are
those which are considered priority minerals by the Colombian
National Government, due to their contribution to GDP and the
growth of the economy. The principal sources consulted were those
stemming from the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Colombia
(Infogeominas), the Mining System of Information of Colombia
(SIMCO), the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and
British Petroleum (BP). It is worth calling attention to the lack of
information regarding non-fuel mineral reserves, given the 2013
admission by the Mining and Energy Ministry that only nickel (which
incidentally has the same gure as the 1987 record) and coal reserve
data have been updated (MME Ministerio de Minas y Energa,
2013). The production data used for all other non-fuel minerals have
been consolidated since 1990, whilst exports and imports gures have
been compiled since 2003 by SIMCO Sistema de Informacin
Minero Colombiano (2013).
The evaluation of Colombia's fuel and non-fuel mineral production is based on a standard process dened as an exergy analysis,
which involves the following steps:

 The provision of a description of the system to be analysed and





its reference baseline, along with the mining and energy

consuming processes involved. Specically, for this paper, the
reference baseline corresponds to Thanatia (Valero et al., 2010,
2011).
A denition of the idealisations and the necessary assumptions
made in order to develop a manageable model, which considers the complexities involved in using the reference baseline
and developing an understanding of the mining and energy
process involved.
The calculation of mass and energy through a First Law analysis
and the exergy replacement cost of each mineral.
Perform an analysis regarding mineral resource loss between
1990 and 2011, in terms of percentage extracted during this
timeframe.
Elaborate an exergy ow diagram and evaluate the localisation
and magnitude of the principal exergy losses. Note: For this
analysis the authors use 2011 production data.
For the balance the following statement will be used:

Extraction Imports Recycling Exports Consumption

Note: Recycling comes as a derivation of consumption, while the

remaining consumption refers to the mineral which is stored or
used for humankind, or disposed of. Mineral storage from previous
extractions were not considered.

 Approximation of the exergy replacement cost of both fuels



and non-fuels to the monetary value (average global prices) of

the mineral studied for 2011.
Evaluate recycling's ability to reduce the loss of mineral capital,
according to technical innovation and national/regional waste
management tendencies.

Colombia in context
Colombia holds signicant quantities of minerals due to the
geological conuence of the Andean system and that of Guyana
which generate good conditions for mineral extraction. The country is
the number one producer of emeralds in the world, the number one

producer of nickel and coal in South America and the tenth largest
producer of gold in the world (Peace Brigade International, 2011).
The national territory of Colombia is 114 million hectares of
which some 8.7 million, were as of 2011, licensed for non-fuel
mineral deposit exploration. A further 37 million has been
assigned to crude oil (Gonzlez, 2011). In total, 40% of the land
has either been licensed or solicited for mining concessions
(Sanchez-Garzoli, 2012). This boom is a relatively recent phenomenon and has led to an extensive mineral and hydrocarbon large
scale mining sector with the biggest names in the mining industry
having set-up there due to export opportunities.
The $3.2 billion (USD) paid in royalties in 2010 jumped to $4.3
billion (USD) in 2011 (Rudas, 2012a). That said, money from royalties
does not reach the people it should with many of the municipalities
with natural resources also being among the poorest (Rudas, 2012b).
This may mean that even should coal export double and mining
production triple as the government aims by 2019, a weak tax regime
and a lack of transparency could cost Colombians more in terms of
social, environmental and human right violations than mining generates. Hence the signicance of the candidacy status within the
international standard, the Extractive Industries Transparency Index
(EITI) to address some of those issues relating to transparency and
accountability or at least provide a platform for the initiation of
dialogue. This paper uses exergy to see the physical cost of extraction.
Exergy could in the future be used as an indicator to bring about
progressive and sustainable policies and decision-making.

Exergy and resource scarcity

According to Valero, modern society is based on an inefcient use
of energy and materials (Valero, 2008). This inefciency has created a
natural resource scarcity, something which is crystallising into some
of the most complex and urgent issues facing the world in the 21st
century (WFF World Foresight Forum, 2011). Kooroshy et al., for
example, highlight the fact that global mineral production multiplied
vefold from 1950 to 2000 (Kooroshy et al., 2009). This has obvious
effects on the environment, geopolitics and socioeconomics. It is thus
important to carefully measure the extent of the shadow cast by
mineral extraction and depletion on society.
Exergy, once a reference environment has been provided, can be
used measure all resources with a single unit. It is thus a quantitative
expression of how much useful energy is needed to replace the
mineral wealth that has been dispersed and irreversibly lost through
extractive activities. This because any quantity of matter with a given
composition, a concentration and a mass relative to that of the Planet
Earth (i.e. scarcity or abundance) has an exergy replacement cost that
can be calculated by simply evaluating the effort needed to obtain it
either with reversible processes (in which case one speaks of exergy)
or with the best available technology. The latter, measured in energy
terms, is a good candidate for the assessment of regional, national or
global mineral wealth. This is because as with any good indicator, it is
as absolute as possible, universal and relatively easy to operate.
Furthermore it provides a sense of objectivity to mineral wealth
calculations, a role traditionally given over to money which is itself
intrinsically awed by the relativity of price and thus does not reect
the physical cost paid by Nature to form and concentrate mineral
deposits.
In terms of materials, the Earth can be considered as a closed
system containing a nite number of substances, except for the very
occasional contribution of meteorites. The intense extraction and use
of minerals by society is transforming it into what the authors call
Thanatia, a theoretical planet modelled on the present Earth but
having had all its mineral deposits mined and all fossil fuels burned. It
is thus a commercially dead planet and represents the reference
baseline used in this paper. Exergy costs can subsequently be used to

L. Gabriel Carmona et al. / Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

give an estimate of the Earth's current level of degradation as it

approaches Thanatia. They can also indicate the useful energy
required to restore extracted, used and subsequently dispersed
minerals in Thanatia back to their original conditions. Exergy replacement costs is a term which refers to the additional cost humanity
must bear in returning the unfavourable circumstances typically
found in the average slice of bedrock (Thanatia) to those bonus
conditions Nature gives humankind freely in concentrating and
providing enough quantity and the optimal communition conditions
in mineral deposits. The authors evaluate the exergy replacement cost
of a given set of minerals such as the ten considered in this paper,
through what Valero and Valero termed the grave-to-cradle approach,
leading to a closed material cycle: cradle-grave-cradle (Valero and
Valero, 2014). The detailed methodology and the formulas applied for
the calculation of exergy replacement costs are described in Valero
et al. (2014).

Exergy analysis for the loss of Colombian mineral wealth

Fossil fuels
Colombian fuel mineral production has increased by 180% in
the last 20 years due to the political decisions of the Administrations who consecutively made moves to push forward the Colombian economy and used mining and hydrocarbons as a means to
do so. Fig. 1 shows the percentage breakdown of those conventional fossil fuels extracted nationally from an exergy perspective:
48% coal, 44% oil, and 8% of gas. Based on these gures, it is
currently not possible to assign a stabilisation curve for the
exploitation of non-renewable resources. This is because of the
projected mineral production for 2020, which involves a doubling
of coal export, an increase of gas production to 994 kpd and an
increase in that of oil to 1,200,000 kpd which would mean that the
collective percentage of 39% for oil and gas would rise to 57%
(Ecopetrol, 2011).
For fossil fuels, since their use involves their burning which
effectively makes their replacement impossible, only their chemical exergy and not their replacement cost were considered.
Non-fuel minerals
Colombian non-fuel mineral extraction for the last 20 years has
increased by 15%. There is no stabilised tendency. This volatility is

Fig. 1. Exergy lost in fossil fuel extraction .

Source: by the authors

25

due to the lack of clarity in the Colombian mining sector: issues of

mining licences, access to information, legislative stability,
national security and public sector corruption (Revenue Watch
Institute, 2013). Of important note, is the substantial increase in
extractive activity since 2002 (Figs. 1 and 2).
Applying the methodology described above, one can calculate
the exergy replacement costs i.e. that required to restore, with
available technology, those resources which have been extracted,
from the common bedrock (Thanatia), back to those conditions in
which they were originally found (natural deposit). Accordingly,
the cumulative exergy replacement cost calculated from 1990 to
2011 is equivalent to 41,460 ktoe. This amount represents 12.7
times the national annual average coal consumption. It is thus a
useful indication of the huge wealth that is being lost through
mineral extraction in Colombia.
Once the exergy replacement costs for the principal resources
have been considered, the next step is to analyse the implications
of restoring the previously extracted material (Fig. 2). For the nonfuel minerals there are two, limestone and iron, that hold a
particular relevance in mass terms. However, if one instead looks
at those factors which have a bearing on exergy replacement costs
it is gold and nickel that become more important.
The peak in Figs. 1 and 2 results from the boom in economic
growth on the back of mineral consumption, a situation powered
by the 2019 Mining Development Plan (UPME, 2006), in which
non-renewable resource export is signicant.

2011 Mineral balance

The balance permits an accounting of national resource governance for a determined period. It can also be used as a tool to
determine the relation between national resource consumption
and the impacts on the geosphere when Colombia is compared to
other countries. In this way, one can state whether or not a
country is self-sufcient, a supplier or import dependent.
The mineral balance in function of tonnes for the ten elements
analysed is presented in Table 1. It identies the signicance of
coal and oil, which represent 55% and 31% respectively. Limestone
is also important and is used almost exclusively for national
demand. A mineral balance is also indicative of the most important elements from an export perspective. The present balance
indicates that export drives mineral capital loss more so than
national consumption. Import levels are negligible. In excluding

26

L. Gabriel Carmona et al. / Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

Fig. 2. Exergy replacement cost of extracted non-fuel minerals. .

Source: by the authors

Table 1
Colombian mineral mass balance in 2011 (Unit: Tonnes)..
Source: by the authors
Balance

Input

Process

Extraction

Copper
Gold
Iron
Limestone
Nickel
Platinum
Silver
Coal
Crude Oil
Nat. gas
Total

Table 2
Colombian mineral balance in 2011 for the exergy replacement cost (Unit: ktoe). .
Source: by the authors

Output

4.04
10
55.9
1.74
105
1.34
107
1.26
105
1.23
24.0
8.58
107
4.82
107
7.12
106
1.55
108

Import
73.4
0.66
2.83
104
18.5
3.36
102
24
16.0
8.35
103


3.71
104

Recycling
2

6.17
10
6.80

6.20
10  2

6.24
102

Export

Consumption
3

3.87
10
60.1
5.38
2.48
104
1.12
105
1.16
19.2
8.12
107
2.95
107
1.42
103
1.11
108

8.64
10
3.22
2.03
105
1.33
107
1.47
104
0.32
20.9
4.59
106
1.88
107
7.12
106
4.40
107

Most of the values are from 2011, except copper recycling (2004).

fossil fuel data, the national dependence on iron becomes noticeable whilst nickel becomes the most important export.
In analysing the same minerals in exergy terms (Table 2), oil
and coal once more are the most signicant. Oil extraction,
measured in percentage mass represents 31.1% of the total. This
percentage increases to 43.3%, if oil extraction is measured using
exergy replacement costs. The same thing happens for gas extraction (going from 4.6% to 7.2%), and coal extraction changes too
(dropping from 55.4% to 47.6%, but remaining the most extracted
of all minerals). Exports, for their part, correspond to 73% of all
mineral resources mined nationally. The fraction of imported
products remains unsubstantial. Recycling rates are low as such
practices are underdeveloped.
If the role of fossil fuels is disregarded, the iron, which played
an important role in mass terms, is not exergetically signicant.
Gold becomes much more important with its relevance going from
negligible to 38%, not only because it has a greater exergy
replacement cost but also because almost all of its production is
destined for export. Furthermore, in this exergy analysis, nickel
increases in importance from 0.9% to 22% whilst that of limestone
drops from 96% to 36%.
The exergy replacement costs for the mineral balance of 2011,
collectively represent a mineral loss of approximately 121.5 Mtoe,
if one considers both the import and recycling values. Such a loss

Balance

Input

Process

Production Import

Recycling

Export

Consumption

Copper
Gold
Iron
Limestone
Nickel
Platinuma
Silver
Coal
Oil
Nat. gas
Total

11.0
8.01
102
76.0
8.58
102
5.18
102
N/A
4.35
5.79
104
5.26
104
8.72
103
1.21
105

1.66
97.4

1.12
10  2

99.1

10.5
8.62
102
2.34
10  3
1.59
4.59
102
N/A
3.47
5.48
104
3.21
104
1.74
8.82
104

2.33
46.2
88.3
8.57
102
60.6
N/A
3.79
3.09
103
2.05
104
8.72
103
3.33
104

Output

0.20
9.46
12.3
1.19
10  3
1.38
N/A
2.90
5.63


31.9

The exergy replacement cost factor for platinum was not available.

is equivalent to 37 years of national coal consumption or 7 years of

oil (based on consumption patterns for the period 20042011). A
way to reduce this degradation trend is through the enhancement
of recycling practices. In 2011, the recycling rates of non-fuel
minerals in Colombia led to a saving of 0.005% in terms of exergy
replacement cost. An important consideration is however that this
level of recycling in Colombia is likely to be considerably more
given the gaps in technology and legislation which could guarantee proper reporting and processing of secondary metals. That
said, even should Colombia reach the average level of recycling
reported globally (32%) (Graedel et al., 2011), at best a 20% exergy
replacement cost saving could occur (Fig. 3).
Furthermore, the loss of energy bonus (provided by the Earth)
would only be reduced by 0.4%. This is because the biggest
contributors to mineral capital losses relate to fossil fuel extraction
and non-fuel mineral smelting and rening. This percentage is
obviously not high enough to guarantee resource availability into
the future. As such, it is evident that a group of integrated
strategies need to be dened to improve extractive practices and
increment mineral reserves.
A Sankey diagram of input and output ows is a tool that the
Colombian Government, or any other for that matter, could use to
evaluate the availability of and accessibility to mineral resources
in the future. It permits the user to view, with relative ease, the

L. Gabriel Carmona et al. / Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

differences in magnitudes, in this case for mass versus exergy

replacement costs.
Considering that the large volumes of fossil fuel export obscure
those of copper, gold and silver, which are not comparatively large
enough, in mass terms to register on the global account 2011, Fig. 4
was created taking into consideration only non-fuel minerals.
If this same mineral balance is represented in exergy terms
through a Grassman diagram, it has the added benet of being able
to identify the exergy degradation experienced by a given mineral
(equivalent to a direct consumption). It also permits the accounting of
replacement costs for Colombian minerals (which equates to indirect
consumption). This latter value must be taken into account in order to
make mineral resources more available, especially given the fact that
many of them end up in landll or in the case of fossil fuels, are
converted to greenhouse gas upon being burned.

27

Conversion of exergy costs into monetary costs

The conversion of exergy costs into monetary ones is a rather
simple task involving the use of conventional energy prices. It must
be stated though, that this activity should not be, necessarily, the nal
objective, as the physical information is valuable in and of its own
right. The monetary value of fuel minerals, can thus be directly
calculated via their corresponding market prices in the year under
consideration. For non-fuel minerals, two boundary conditions are
considered. The lower bound is calculated assuming that the monetary costs for recovering the exergy replacement cost are derived from
the burning of bituminous coal. The upper bound assumes that this
same activity is carried out with electricity.
Table 3 shows an estimation of those monetary costs associated
with the 2011 import and export of the studied mineral resources.

Fig. 3. Exergy replacement costs due to raw-material production and imports in 2011 .
Source: By authors

Fig. 4. Comparison of Colombian mineral balance in 2011 between mass and the exergy replacement cost without fossil fuels. .
Source: by the authors
Table 3
Monetary costs of the main mineral reserves depletion in Colombia due to mineral production in 2011. .
Source: by the authors
Mineral

ERC (ktoe)

Market price
Lower bound

Non fuels
Coal
Oil
Gas
Total

2.269
57.882
52.577
8.723
121.451

970.16
97
111
0.24

Note: ERC: Exergy Replacement Cost.

Upper bound

Price ($US/toe)

Monetary cost ($US)

(%) GDP

1792.645
179
746
216

405,832,4756,000,606,218
10,352,682,397
39,241,707,833
1,884,211,588
51,884,434,29357,479,208,036

0.11.2
3.3
12.6
0.4
16.717.7

Unit
$US/tonne$US/kW h
$US/tonne
$US/barrel
$US/m3

28

L. Gabriel Carmona et al. / Resources Policy 45 (2015) 2328

In summary, Colombia lost the equivalent of $5157 billion (USD)

at the hands of extractive activities, which on comparing the GDP
generated by the mining sector of $35 billion (USD), is a cost much
higher than any prot generated by the high level of export. Quite
simply, the sale of Colombian minerals on the global markets does
in no way compensate for the exhaustion of national resources nor
the loss of national reserves. Furthermore the costs correspond to
between 1618% of the 2011 Colombian GDP which is higher than
that provided by the mining and hydrocarbon sectors at 11.3%.
Conclusion
Through the exergy replacement cost one becomes more aware
of the price that Nature had to pay to produce a given mineral
deposit and thus learns to appreciate that which to a certain
extent can never be recuperated. The physical value of minerals
and elements should be reected in their market prices. Such a
price should take into consideration the full cost of natural
resource exploitation not only their role in product design and
manufacture but also their transport, and disposal.
This paper should serve as a basis for future investigations once
information has been updated. This analysis, on the publication of
greater information, should be extended to encompass all other
minerals exploited in Colombian mines. It should also support the
reforming of development plans and public policy associated with
resource management. Indeed, the tools proposed could be used to
evaluate the management of non-renewable resources and for the
establishment of those strategies which push a nation onto the
path of sustainable development, especially because this paper has
quantitatively demonstrated that Colombia is losing all its mineral
heritage to exports sold too cheaply on the global markets for
the practice to be sustainable and benecial, in the long term, for
national development.
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