Consumption-based carbon accounting: sense and sensibility

Figures & data

Table 1. Characteristics of existing GMRIOs (Tukker & Dietzenbacher, 2013; Tukker et al., 2018).

No	Name	References and characteristics
1	Eora	Lenzen et al., (2012); sector detail varying from 25 to 500; about 180 countries
2	EXIOBASE	Tukker et al., (2013); Wood, Hawkins, Hertwich, & Tukker, (2014, 2015); Stadler et al., (2017); 200 products, 160 industries, 48 countries/regions
3	WIOD	Dietzenbacher, Los, Stehrer, Timmer, & de Vries, (2013); 35 sectors, 40 countries plus 1 Rest of World
4	GTAP-MRIO	Peters, Andrew, & Lennox, (2011b); 57 sectors, 140 countries/regions
5	ICIO (Inter-country Input Output table)	OECD, 2015; 34 sectors, 64 countries/regions. Previously, researchers used OECD IO data to build an early GMRIO called GRAM (Bruckner, Giljum, Lutz, & Wiebe, 2012; Wiebe, Bruckner, Giljum, & Lutz, 2012; Wiebe, Bruckner, Giljum, Lutz, & Polzin, 2012; 48 sectors, 53 countries/region)

Figure 1. Example of a MR EE IOT for three regions.

Table 2. Summary of approaches for allocating environmental impacts along value chains to actors operating in these value chains.

Type	Principle in short	Illustrative references
Production-based	Emissions generated during production. Responsibility is fully allocated to producers of goods and services where they occur in the value chain	UNFCCC, (2008)
Consumption-based	Emissions generated for satisfying consumption. Responsibility of life cycle emissions is fully allocated to final consumers of goods and services	Hertwich and Peters (2009); Peters et al. (2011b); Davis and Caldeira (2010)
Extraction based	Emissions related to the full life cycle of extracted resources. Responsibility is fully allocated to those who extract a resource. Usually focused on fossil fuels.	Davis, Peters, and Caldeira (2011); Steininger et al., (2016)
Income based	Emissions in the downstream value chains of products and services put on the market. Responsibility is allocated to the supplier of inputs to polluting production processes (according to the ratio of monetary value of intermediate and primary inputs flowing into that process).	Marques et al., (2012); Liang et al., (2017)
Value-added-based	Emissions related to the share of value added over the life cycle. Responsibility for consumption-based emissions is allocated according to value added created per step in the value chain	Lenzen et al., (2007); Pinero et al., (2018)
Mixes of the above	Average of consumption-based and income-based emissions	Rodrigues et al., (2006); Qian et al., (2019)
	Average of consumption- and production based footprint weighted on the basis of the Human Development Index (HDI, dubbed ‘just footprint’)	Oliveira (2020)
	Technology adjusted consumption-based: As consumption-based, but emissions embodied in exports of producing countries can be in part allocated positively or negatively to the producing country. If a sector in a country produces surplus emissions above the global average, such surplus emissions embodied in exports are allocated to the producer. If sector emissions are below the global average, these lesser emissions embodied in exports are subtracted from the producer.	Kander et al., (2015)

Table 3. Summary of typical reduction actions by accounting perspective.

Type	Target group	Typical reduction mechanism that is supported
Production-based	Producers	Reduction of the direct emissions and resource use in the sector or plant, e.g. supported by policies implemented via permits, Best Available Technology standards, etc.
Consumption-based	(Final) consumers	Shift of expenditure to low-impact products and services (between product categories; or selecting the cleanest supply chain within a product category), e.g. supported by sustainable procurement guidelines, environmental taxation, border tax adjustments, or sustainability labels.
Income-based; extraction-based	Sellers: Earners or extractors	Taking producer responsibility – designing products and services in such a way that downstream impacts are minimal, e.g. by eco-design criteria, producer responsibility schemes, etc.
Value-added-based	All actors in a value chain	Identifying who has most financial gains in the value chain, and as a consequence, who can finance best to reduction of emissions and resource use over the life cycle. In theory a carbon value added tax could be of support here, but in practice this will be difficult to implement due to the fact that value chains cross many borders.

Figure 2. Perspectives on carbon accounting and related mitigation principles in relation to position in the value chain and sphere of influence of economic actors. In part inspired by work of a Greenhouse Gas Protocol Technical Working Group, as available as Figure 4.1 in WRI and WBCSD (2009, p. 15).

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