Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Carbon Footprint tell us?
Our main motivation for this paper was to better understand the role of consumption in causing climate change. We wanted to understand the importance of different consumption categories across different nations. We were surprised to see a nice pattern with a clear relationship between total consumer expenditure and the carbon footprint in different categories. There is no flattening out, no indication that the carbon footprint stabilizes at some point. This is, I’m afraid, bad news. We cannot expect that emissions are reduced as a part of normal development.

Emissions shift from food to manufactured products and mobility. Is that a surprise?
Not really. It is standard knowledge of consumer economics that poor households spend a larger fraction of their income on basics, especially food. Historically, we have used much more of our income for food as well. The rapid increase in importance of manufactured products with expenditure is significant. Much of the electronic products and toys we consume today come from Asia and were produced using dirty coal power. We have some responsibility for those emissions, and maybe collectively also the possibility for reducing them. Why not demand that they be produced with clean power - and pay a few percent more?

How is the carbon footprint different from emissions inventories as they are tracked by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change?
National emissions inventories contain Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that occur on a nation’s territory. Carbon footprints trace the emissions that occur in the production of all goods consumed in a country. If a country’s higher carbon footprint is higher than its territorial GHG emissions inventory, it means that its imports are more require more carbon to produce than its exports. And vice versa. 

There is a second difference. Carbon Footprints include international transport, in principle ocean freight and aviation. There are not included in the emissions inventories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (www.unfccc.int).

Why would you want to use the Carbon Footprint instead of the UN’s emissions inventories?
The Carbon Footprint concept focuses attention on consumption and hence provides insights into the environmental repercussions of the lifestyles of the countries in question. The conventional inventory focuses attention on production and hence on the performance of industry. Both factors are relevant and should be taken into account. However, we want to avoid policies that shift emissions to other countries and account this as a success for the climate. To ensure that policies really reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, their effect on the carbon footprint needs to be calculated.

What can the Carbon Footprint tell us about the achievement of emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol?
The present calculations are for one year only. We do not have a time series from 1990, which is the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol. Hence we cannot assess how emissions embodied in trade and emissions connected to international transport have changed. The data for such calculations is not available today. We know of only two studies that have looked at changes over time. The most complete study is for the United Kingdom and shows that emissions embodied in imports have increased faster than emissions embodied in exports. The CF of the UK has increased substantially from 1990 to 2004, while the UK government prides itself from being on target achieving the emissions reductions committed under the Kyoto Protocol.                     (See Fig. 9 in http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=EV02033_7332_FRP.pdf)

A similar trend can be seen in Norway. Read article here

The rise in emissions embodied in imports of OECD countries is matched by a rise in emissions embodied in exports for China, as Glen Peters and colleagues have  shown.

How can we reduce our carbon footprint?
Well, there are technological solutions. First, there is not reason we should need as much energy to heat and cool our apartments. Passive houses for everyone!
Second, product policy has been successful in tackling the issue of power use of energy using products, primarily electronics, both during operation and stand-by. However, we are only half-way there, and improvements are still possible. Third, improvements in the fuel efficiency of cars are possible.

These measures focus on the direct energy uses of households. The paper clearly shows that indirect energy is more important. If we really want to reduce climate change, it seems like the consumption of goods needs to be limited.
First, the production of goods can be greatly improved, e.g. by energy efficiency in factories, power systems, and transport networks. Second, renewable power should be used more widely in the production. It remains to be shown that the resulting emissions reductions from such steps are sufficient. A shift of diets – away from animal products – would bring significant gains. Also, the turnover of goods consumed by rich households in both developing and industrialized nations seems to be required, even if this is still perceived as a taboo topic.

So you advocate a sufficiency strategy? Is this feasible?
Consuming less does not necessarily mean voluntary poverty. It can mean more quality, more craftwork, art and personal services. I would enjoy that!

On pollution embodied in trade:

http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0804/full/climate.2008.25.html
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Pollution_embodied_in_trade
 

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