Consumption-based GHG emission accounting: a UK case study

Abstract

Global GHG emissions continue to rise, with nearly a quarter of it due to trade that is not currently captured within global climate policy. In the context of current trade patterns and limited global cooperation on climate change, the feasibility of consumptionbased emissions accounting to contribute to a more comprehensive (national) policy framework in the UK is investigated. Consumption-based emissions results for the UK from a range of models are presented, their technical robustness is assessed, and their potential application in national climate policy is examined using examples of policies designed to reduce carbon leakage and to address high levels of consumption. It is shown that there is a need to include consumption-based emissions as a complementary indicator to the current approach of measuring territorial emissions. Methods are shown to be robust enough to measure progress on climate change and develop and inform mitigation policy. Finally, some suggestions are made for future policy-oriented research in the area of consumption-based accounting that will facilitate its application to policy. Policy relevanceEmissions embodied in trade are rapidly increasing and there is thus a growing gap between production emissions and the emissions associated with consumption. This is a growing concern due to the absence of a global cap and significant variation in country-level mitigation ambitions. Robust measurements of consumption-based emissions are possible and provide new insights into policy options. This includes trade-related policy (e.g. border carbon adjustments) and domestic policies (e.g. resource efficiency strategies). As climate policy targets deepen, there is a need for a broad range of policy options in addition to production and technological solutions. Consumption-based emissions are complementary to production-based emissions inventories, which are still the most accurate estimate for aggregated emissions at the global level. However, without consumption-based approaches, territorial emissions alone will not provide a complete picture of progress in regional and national emissions reduction.

Impacts Embodied in Global Trade Flows

“…It is well known that impacts have increasingly been shifted abroad (Table 8.1 ). The consumption view provided by national footprints offers consumer information and policy options for the mitigation of emissions and resource use that are complementary to measures based on territorial accounting (Andrew et al 2013 ;Barrett et al 2013 ). Both perspectives, 3 the production (territorial) and the consumption perspective, provide important insights into the sources and drivers of impacts, and both have their pros and cons.…”

“…Evaluating footprints has therefore also been referred to as consumption-based accounting (CBA), in particular in the context of accounting for national GHG emissions and resource use (Barrett et al 2013 ;Kander et al 2015 ;Peters 2008 ). Countries can use CBA to measure both their impact as well as their dependence on foreign economies and environments.…”

Fully integrated modelling for sustainability assessment of resource recovery from waste

“…This lifecycle thinking is central to concepts such as Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) (Lebel and Lorek, 2008) and Circular Economy (Gregson et al, 2015), and to various established methods for environmental impact assessments such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (Guinée et al, 2011), Material Flow Analysis (MFA) (Cencic and Rechberger, 2008), Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis (ECBA) (Atkinson and Mourato, 2008) and Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA) (Barrett et al, 2013).…”

A robust data-driven macro-socioeconomic-energy model

“…Furthermore, either spare production capacity is presumed, or that there are no constraints on capital because it is free to increase as producers are paid more. For the study of energy and resource use in economies, IO models have been used recently for GHG emissions due to consumption (Barrett et al, 2013;Duarte et al, 2013), supply chain life cycle assessment (Chang et al, 2014), and waste analysis (Lenzen and Reynolds, 2014).…”