Environmental Implications of Resource Use:Environmental Input‐Output Analyses for Germany

Abstract

Summary In a German case study, environmental input‐output analyses (eIOA) combined with NAMEA‐type tables were conducted for eleven selected environmental pressure variables. (NAMEA is an acronym for national accounts matrix including environmental accounts.) The analyses were conducted to derive the production‐cycle‐wide resource use and environmental impact potentials of final‐demand product groups. The methodology permits identification and preliminary ranking of 10 product chains along which about two‐thirds of German production‐born environmental pressures arise. The most relevant product groups are construction work, food, motor vehicles, basic metals, and electricity. The ten product groups are characterized by both high resource requirements and high residual outputs (air emissions, wastes). The EU policy areas of integrated product policy and sustainable use of natural resources may address these product chains as a priority in order to identify and explore the possibility of reducing the environmental impacts from products throughout their life cycles and to decouple environmental impacts from resource use.

Work less, do less?

“…We calculate the marginal propensity to time use by applying a regression analysis of time use. The data on resource use relies on calculations in an environmentally extended input output analysis of the total material requirements induced by the consumption of private households in Germany in 2005 (see Moll and Acosta 2006;Watson et al 2013). The coefficients were derived from a Hausman-Taylor estimation (1981).…”

Methodology and Indicators of Economy‐wide Material Flow Accounting

“…Efforts to understand the material flows in industrial countries and their interdependence with material flows in the rest of the world stimulated methodological development, in particular of physical and hybrid input‐output analysis, which emerged as a major research topic in the field (e.g., Lenzen et al 2004; Suh 2005; Huppes et al 2006; Moll and Acosta 2006; Weisz and Duchin 2006; Weisz 2007; Suh 2010).…”

Environmental Impacts of Products: A Detailed Review of Studies

“…Another source of incompatibility is that expenditures may be combined into functional categories in different ways. For instance, Moll and Acosta (2006) did not combine the purchase of gasoline or electricity with, for example, cars or refrigerators into categories such as "car travel" or "food cooling," whereas other studies do. Nijdam and Wilting (2003) even allocated "car travel" further to final purposes, such as "leisure" (in relation to holidays) and "work" (in relation to commuting).…”

“…Finally, because studies did not always use the same functional unit, some studies reported on expenditure categories that were absent in others. For instance, Moll and Acosta (2006) reported considerable impacts related to purchases of the chemical industry and so forth-because their work includes exported products as a final expenditure. Such expenditures are absent in the work by Tukker and colleagues (2006a) and Nijdam and Wilting (2003), who concentrated on final consumption by private households and/or government.…”

“…Most other studies used a form of life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA), which for a number of impact categories has now become quite uniform (e.g., global warming potential (GWP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), acidification, eutrophication, ozone depletion; see, e.g., Guinée 2002;Hauschild et al 2000). Besides this, Moll and Acosta (2006) distinguish several types of material requirements.…”