Household Metabolism in the Five Cities.

From this information, we estimated a weighted average transportation distance for
each item relevant for analyses according to the expenditure survey. In this process
we assumed that:
• Goods from Swedish production have been transported 400 km by lorry.
• Goods from Middle Europe 2000 km by lorry.
• Goods from Southern Europe 3500 km by lorry.
• Goods from the rest of the world are transported 1000 km by lorry in the
country of origin, then12 000 km by ship to a European harbor, and then 1500
km by lorry to the Swedish wholesaler.
We also assumed that all goods had to be transported 100 km by a small lorry from
wholesaler to retailer. All the transport distance can be found in Appendix 8.
Since the transport distance and mode constitute a fairly small part of the total energy
of most items analysed in EAP, whatever assumptions we made about transportation
seem to have little influence.
Other assumptions
Regarding weight of products, composition of the basic materials needed to make
products, packing materials and waste processing, Dutch default data have been used
to a large extent. However, for some categories in the Swedish Family Expenditure
Survey there were no suitable Dutch default data. For these items we estimated the
weight and composition of materials ourselves based on descriptions on packages and
other product information.
5.4 Data for analyses made partly outside EAP
Some analyses of the energy intensities for households’ expenditure categories were
not made in EAP but were carried out partly outside the program. Travelling by
public transport or taxi, purchasing cars, going on holiday, buying petrol, electricity
and water, paying the part of the rent related to heating, and spending money on
heating are such examples. Several of these categories are related to the direct energy
use of the households.
We estimated the energy intensity for expenditures on trains and local public transport
by dividing the energy use (MJ per person km) for different vehicles with the cost
(SEK per person km). Dutch data was used for energy intensities (1.07 MJ per person
km for train, 1.87 for local buses and 1.29 for tram/subway). The cost was established
by contacting the main travelling companies relevant to the Stockholm area. For
information about prices for train transport, SJ (2000) gave us a price of 0.82 SEK per
person km and for local public transport 1.25 SEK was considered reasonable by SL
(2000).
For expenditures on cars, a standard EAP analysis was made for determining the
energy use of the product (MJ per car). Then, the energy use for the infrastructure that
the car uses (roads, bridges) was determined by using a default value (0.55 MJ per
km, Dutch calculation). This latter value was multiplied with the numbers of
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