Description du sujet de thèse

The goal of this thesis is to assess the potential of exploiting "urban mining" to contribute to the territorial energy transition of the Occitanie Region.
In its most common sense, the term "urban mining" refers to all unused resources contained in waste (household, industrial, agricultural, mining), particularly in the 14 mandatory EPR sectors in Europe and the 11 others provided for by Law No. 2020-105 on the fight against waste and the circular economy. In a broader sense, urban mining includes all resources in use, i.e., the technosphere: buildings and infrastructure constituting, according to their specific temporalities, a gigantic stock of materials in use.
The doctoral research will focus on a limited number of metals (to be defined as iron, carbon, aluminum, copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, manganese) and materials such as concrete, from specific sectors (thermal and electric vehicles, photovoltaic panels, wind turbines).
Depending on the skills of the successful candidate, this research may include: assessing the different statuses of these metals and materials, quantifying the deposits across the Toulouse metropolitan area, mapping the stocks of these metals in urban and rural areas, and/or clarifying the technical, economic, and legal obstacles to their exploitation.
This doctoral research will be conducted:
- in cooperation with another doctoral research project funded by the TIRIS ORES project and focusing on sociotechnical controversies from the perspective of energy and agroecological transition;
- in collaboration with the partners involved in the Défi Clé “Circulades” funded by the Occitanie Region;
- in conjunction with public agents responsible for the REPOS strategy within the Regional Council.

Contexte de travail

The Geosciences Environment Toulouse laboratory (GET) mobilizes a diversity of skills and expertise to advance knowledge in Earth and Environmental Sciences within the Midi-Pyrénées Observatory (OSU OMP). One of GET's major strengths lies in its ability to deploy a resolutely multidisciplinary approach, integrating a wide range of Earth and Environmental Sciences fields—geology, geochemistry, geophysics, geodesy, hydrology, and pedology—enriched by perspectives from geography and sociology within seven complementary research teams.

Contraintes et risques

Nothing to mention