Open Access

ARTICLE

Win-Win or Trade-off Choices of Integrated Coal and Associated Lithium Resources Utilization from a System Dynamics Analysis

Bing Wang^1,2,*, Feng Lu^1,3, Yaqi Han¹
1 Center for Sustainable Development and Energy Policy Research, School of Energy and Mining Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing, Beijing, China
2 Beijing Key Laboratory for Precise Mining of Intergrown Energy and Resources, China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing, Beijing, China
3 Changsha Nonferrous Metals Design and Research Institute, Changsha, China
* Corresponding Author: Bing Wang. Email:

Energy Engineering https://doi.org/10.32604/ee.2026.088031

Received 26 June 2026; Accepted 07 September 2026; Published online 11 September 2026

Abstract

The boom in low-carbon energy technologies has made lithium one of the world’s indispensable mineral resources. Co-development of coal and associated lithium resources may generate multi-level win-win benefits in efficiency improvement, supply security, resource conservation and environmental protection. This research builds an integrated system dynamics and net present value framework to embed three subsystems of coal and associated lithium resources supply, project cost and net present value modules and employs the integrated model to conduct a techno-economic evaluation on the co-development project of coal and associated lithium resources. The impact mechanism of investment decisions in the co-development of coal and associated lithium resources under different scenarios is analyzed. Results reveal that the co-development of coal and associated lithium resources increases the project net present value by 48.2% and reduces the investment payback period to 14.4 years. The average annual profit increase of the enterprise will amount to 0.63 billion RMB. Scenario analysis indicates that the economic profit growth and policy regulation scenarios improve project investment returns compared with the business-as-usual scenario, whereas the environment-oriented scenario may undermine project economic feasibility due to the increased environmental cost. Under the environment-oriented scenario, the share of annual environmental cost increases markedly, indicating that stricter environmental regulation may weaken project profitability if it is not accompanied by improvements in resource utilization or product revenue. The project after-tax net present value is sensitive to coal production but relatively insensitive to associated lithium production. Based on the above results, policy recommendations are proposed to promote the cooperative and efficient co-development of coal and associated resources in mining areas.

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Keywords

Lithium; coal exploration; system dynamics; investment decisions; co-development

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