Papers by Kjartan Steen-olsen
Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) are an important tool for analysing environmental impacts of p... more Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) are an important tool for analysing environmental impacts of production and consumption taking into account regional differences in production techniques. Hereby most emphasis is placed on covering most of global GDP and in the utilisation of high quality data. The remaining countries are sometimes aggregated into a so called rest of the world (RoW) section. Despite their minor share of the global GDP, the RoW plays an important part in providing resources to the global production chain. Consequently, estimated environmental footprints of trade heavily depend on the accuracy of data in the RoW. Here we examine the contribution of the RoW through three completed projects (EXIOPOL,WIOD and GTAP/OPEN-EU project) which provide different levels of detail in representing RoW. This reveals the importance of providing regional detail in the RoW and the impact of using different methodologies in order to cover the unavoidable data gap. We present an approac...
Global Shifts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Requirements for Water and Bio-Productive Land: The Case of Norway
EFFECTS OF SECTOR AGGREGATION ON CO 2 MULTIPLIERS IN MULTIREGIONAL INPUT–OUTPUT ANALYSES
Economic Systems Research, 2014
ABSTRACT The past few years have seen the emergence of several global multiregional input–output ... more ABSTRACT The past few years have seen the emergence of several global multiregional input–output (MRIO) databases. Due to the cost and complexity of developing such extensive tables, industry sectors are generally represented at a rather aggregate level. Currently, one of the most important applications of input–output analysis is environmental assessments, for which highly aggregate sectors may not be sufficient to yield accurate results. We experiment with four of the most important global MRIO systems available, analyzing the sensitivity of a set of aggregate CO2 multipliers to aggregations in the MRIO tables used to calculate them. Across databases, we find (a) significant sensitivity to background system detail and (b) that sub-sectors contained within the same aggregate MRIO sector may exhibit highly different carbon multipliers. We conclude that the additional information provided by the extra sector detail may warrant the additional costs of compilation, due to the heterogeneous nature of economic sectors in terms of their environmental characteristics.
THE 'REST OF THE WORLD' - ESTIMATING THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF MISSING REGIONS IN GLOBAL MULTI-REGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT TABLES
ABSTRACT Incomplete data for the economic structure of numerous countries hamper the compilation ... more ABSTRACT Incomplete data for the economic structure of numerous countries hamper the compilation of global multi-regional input–output (MRIO) tables. By themselves, most of these countries are of only limited importance for the global economy and incumbent environmental issues. Hence, in most recent global MRIO tables these countries are either roughly estimated or summarised in one rest of the world (RoW) region. Combining a wide range of countries, this RoW region may play a significant role in global economic and environmental accounts. We conceptualise the importance of RoW in several environmental footprint accounts and present algorithms to estimate the structure of RoW. The approach utilises the information of the economic structure within known parts of the MRIO table to estimate the unknown structure. Using this method, global warming potential and employment footprints remain stable irrespective of the chosen initial estimates, whereas natural land use footprints and individual product impacts vary significantly.
Global Environmental Change, 2013
Increasing affluence is often postulated as a main driver for the human footprint on biologically... more Increasing affluence is often postulated as a main driver for the human footprint on biologically productive areas, identified among the main causes of biodiversity loss, but causal relationships are obscured by international trade. Here, we trace the use of land and ocean area through international supply chains to final consumption, modeling agricultural, food, and forestry products on a high level of resolution while also including the land requirements of manufactured goods and services. In 2004, high-income countries required more biologically productive land per capita than low-income countries, but this connection could only be identified when land used to produce internationally traded products was taken into account, because higher-income countries tend to displace a larger fraction of land use. The equivalent land and ocean area footprint of nations increased by a third for each doubling of income, with all variables analyzed on a per capita basis. This increase came largely from imports, which increased proportionally to income. Export depended mostly on the capacity of countries to produce useful biomass, the biocapacity. Our analysis clearly shows that countries with a high biocapacity per capita tend to spare more land for nature. Biocapacity per capita can be increased through more intensive production or by reducing population density. The net displacement of land use from high-income to low-income countries amounted to 6% of the global land demand, even though high-income countries had more land available per capita than low-income countries. In particular, Europe and Japan placed high pressure on ecosystems in lower-income countries.
Carbon, Land, and Water Footprint Accounts for the European Union: Consumption, Production, and Displacements through International Trade
Environmental Science & Technology, 2012
A nation&... more A nation's consumption of goods and services causes various environmental pressures all over the world due to international trade. We use a multiregional input-output model to assess three kinds of environmental footprints for the member states of the European Union. Footprints are indicators that take the consumer responsibility approach to account for the total direct and indirect effects of a product or consumption activity. We quantify the total environmental pressures (greenhouse gas emissions: carbon footprint; appropriation of biologically productive land and water area: land footprint; and freshwater consumption: water footprint) caused by consumption in the EU. We find that the consumption activities by an average EU citizen in 2004 led to 13.3 tCO(2)e of induced greenhouse gas emissions, appropriation of 2.53 gha (hectares of land with global-average biological productivity), and consumption of 179 m(3) of blue water (ground and surface water). By comparison, the global averages were 5.7 tCO(2)e, 1.23 gha, and 163 m(3) blue water, respectively. Overall, the EU displaced all three types of environmental pressures to the rest of the world, through imports of products with embodied pressures. Looking at intra-EU displacements only, the UK was the most important displacer overall, while the largest net exporters of embodied environmental pressures were Poland (greenhouse gases), France (land), and Spain (freshwater).
Integrating ecological and water footprint accounting in a multi-regional input–output framework
Ecological Indicators, 2012
Ecological Economics, 2014
The ecological footprint (EF) is an indicator of human requirements on bio-productive land, an es... more The ecological footprint (EF) is an indicator of human requirements on bio-productive land, an essential but limited resource, which use is related to environmental burden. In this article, we compare three methods for calculating national EF: a) the process analysis represented by Global Footprint Network (GFN) accounts; b) a standard environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model (EE-MRIOM); and c) a hybrid EE-MRIOM. The process analysis accounts for total domestic production and international trade of selected products. A standard EE-MRIOM further accounts for the upstream footprint of all traded products, but has a low resolution of relevant products in available datasets. The hybrid EE-MRIO method assessed here traces the primary biomass products in physical units through environmental extensions. Our results show that the standard MRIO model might introduce a significant error due to low resolution and poor data quality. The hybrid MRIO approach provides more accurate results than the standard MRIO method since it applies data from additional sources on a more detailed level. The process analysis underestimates the footprint of imports and exports as it ignores trade in services and other products as well as the upstream flows of products included in the analysis.
Footprint family technical report: Integration into MRIO model
A STRUCTURAL DECOMPOSITION APPROACH TO COMPARING MRIO DATABASES
Economic Systems Research, 2014
ABSTRACT The construction of multi-regional input–output tables is complex, and databases produce... more ABSTRACT The construction of multi-regional input–output tables is complex, and databases produced using different approaches lead to different analytical outcomes. We outline a decomposition methodology for investigating the variations that exist when using different multiregional input–output (MRIO) systems to calculate a region's consumption-based account. Structural decomposition analysis attributes the change in emissions to a set of dependent determinants, such as technical coefficients, the Leontief inverse and final demands. We apply our methodology to three MRIO databases – Eora, GTAP and WIOD. Findings reveal that the variation between Eora and GTAP can be attributed to differences in the Leontief inverse and emissions’ data, whereas the variation between Eora and WIOD is due to differences in final demand and the Leontief inverse. For the majority of regions, GTAP and WIOD produce similar results. The approach in this study could help move MRIO databases from the academic arena to a useful policy instrument.
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Papers by Kjartan Steen-olsen