EIPOT Final Project Report - Stockholm Environment Institute

ERA-NET SKEP Project EIPOT (www.eipot.eu)
“Development of a methodology for the assessment of global environmental impacts of traded goods and services”
leading potentially to double-counting. 18 Strømman et al. (2009) present algorithms for inventory
compilation and identification and adjustment of double-counting in tiered hybrid LCIs. The
identification is performed with structural path analysis (SPA).
Structural path analysis (SPA) (Defourny and Thorbecke 1984, Treloar 1997, Lenzen 2003, Lenzen
2007, Peters and Hertwich 2006) – an analytical technique based on power series expansion of the
Leontief system – is a useful tool in several regards. Not only can it quantify and unravel upstream
production/supply chains, even in multi-region input-output frameworks (Peters and Hertwich 2006,
Lenzen et al. 2007b, Wood 2008, Wood and Lenzen in press), but it can also be used as a vehicle for
hybridisation as it enables the replacement of individual supply path data with bottom-up process and
supply specific data (Treloar 1997, see also Suh and Heijungs 2007).
4.4 Country and sector resolution
In analysing the environmental impacts of trade flows and traded products, the sectoral and regional
detail strongly depends on the application under consideration. In determining the share of exports in
the territorial emissions of a specific country, a single-region IO analysis is sufficient. The same holds
for broadening this application to emissions (impacts) embodied in total bilateral trade between
regions (EEBT) where only export shares of nations need to be calculated. In analysing more detailed
studies on traded goods, such as in consumption (footprint) studies where embodied emissions
(impacts) in trade to final consumption (EEC) of a nation are considered, a full multi-region IO analysis
becomes necessary. 19 Structural path analyses considering complete supply chains of (traded) goods
and services require full MRIO analyses covering all countries and sectors at a detailed level.
4.4.1 Countries
When deciding on the number of countries to be included in the accounting framework, it seems
reasonable to set up criteria for which countries should be chosen. Again, we compare here with the
approach used in EXIOPOL. Here, the criteria selected were:
• share of global GDP;
• share of trade with the EU27;
• environmental impact related to goods imported by the EU27;
• percentage of GDP traded with the EU27 in a specific country.
The last criterion would enable analysis of the impact of EU policies on countries highly dependent on
trade with the EU. This implies that many small countries, mainly in Africa, would have to be included.
The first three criteria lead to roughly the same country sets in EXIOPOL 20 , allowing coverage of over
90 per cent of global GDP and over 80 per cent of imports to EU27 with just 16 additional EU trading
partner countries for which, in most cases, reasonable data is available for recent years.
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Another type of double counting occurs if a full life cycle / supply chain / footprint analysis which has been
developed to quantify the total impact of consumption or consumer items is applied in the same manner to
production or producer items (Lenzen et al. 2007a, Lenzen 2008).
For a distinction and definition of the EEBT and EEC approaches see Peters (2008a).
In EXIOPOL the selected countries are: United States, Japan, China, Canada, South Korea, Brazil, India,
Mexico, Russia, Australia, Switzerland, Turkey, Taiwan, Norway, Indonesia and South Africa. These are
countries from a EU27 perspective; in general, each country will have a set of relevant countries.
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