Assessment of short-term supply disruption impacts for the Swiss mobility, energy and ICT sectors – Application of the SPOTTER approach

In this paper, supply disruption impacts along supply chains within the Swiss mobility, energy and ICT sectors are assessed in the short-term (i.e. the next 5 years) using the recently developed SPOTTER approach with the objective to identify hotspots and technologies associated with comparably low supply risks. SPOTTER has been chosen because, compared to other approaches, it is the only one that allows for an assessment along the full supply chain and it is integrated into the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment framework. To decrease the respective data acquisition efforts for the here-performed supply risk analysis of entire sectors, in a first step, material/product flows that are most influential for an assessment with SPOTTER are identified and considered for the calculation of related impact scores. Our study analyzes critical material and product flows between trade partner countries along relevant supply chains. It thus identifies new hotspots and adds relevant country-specific information to current knowledge. In particular, the identified hotspots refer to volatile prices of solar panels, interrupted trade of oil and gas from Russia, Nigeria and Niger as well as disrupted imports of electronic devices from China. Suggestions for mitigation strategies comprise hedging and/or diversifying the supply chains. Other identified hotspots refer to the critical supply of cobalt and natural graphite along battery supply chains, which could for example be addressed by supporting and/or incentivizing the construction of a circular economy. A third category of identified hotspots indicates risks related to the trade of hafnium and nuclear power plant equipment that could be mitigated by shifting to less risky energy technologies. Our comparisons of overall impacts between relevant technologies suggest higher supply risks for conventional cars, solar panels and Chinese laptops compared to battery electric cars, wind turbines and German laptops. In these comparisons, more details regarding disruptions along full product and fuel supply chains are considered than in current studies. • Supply disruption hotspots are analyzed along global supply chains for the Swiss mobility, energy and ICT sectors. • Identified hotspots suggest supply risks for fossil fuels, battery materials, electronic devices, solar panels and nuclear power equipment. • Flows between Congo, Chile, China and South Korea and imports from China, Russia, Nigeria and Niger are particular critical. • Electric vehicles, wind turbines and German laptops have lower supply risks compared to conventional vehicles, solar panels and Chinese laptops.