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”
requirements along the whole production chain of a given final-demand product can be determined.
Furthermore, so-called "hot spots" can be identified – economic sectors with especially high resource
use, or sectors with the greatest potential to increase resource efficiency respectively. 46
One application that could be considered by national governments is to routinely calculate the national
carbon footprint, to present environmental impacts embodied in imports as part of the environmental
pressure connected to national consumption. These consumption-based greenhouse gas accounts
could be presented alongside the usual territorial accounts reported under the UNFCCC. The UK is
leading by way of example and has included a consumption-based time series of CO 2 emissions in its
set of sustainable development indicators (Defra 2008, p.24).
A useful illustration of further examples is provided by Moll and Watson (2009):
Table 6.1:
Research and policy questions that can be answered using environmentally
extended input-output analysis and NAMEA tables (taken from Moll and Watson
(2009), only those questions relating to the 'consumption perspective' are included)
46
For example, research by the Wuppertal Institute (Acosta-Fernández 2007) shows that ten production
sectors account for more than 50 per cent of German Total Material Requirements (TMR). Three areas are
of strategic importance because a large number of technological interactions among production sectors take
place here: (1) stones, construction, and housing, (2) metals and car manufacturing, and (3) agriculture,
food and nutrition. It is, for instance, these three “hot spots” where political action could boost efficiency.
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