The Carbon Footprint of Nations: Wealth and Responsibility

High wealth implies high emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, a new analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a nation’s consumption shows. In the paper �Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global Trade-Linked Analysis�, Edgar Hertwich and Glen Peters investigate the carbon footprint for food, shelter, clothing, construction, mobility, the consumption of manufactured goods, services, and trade across 73 nations and 14 aggregate regions. The paper has been released by Environmental Science & Technology , the top-ranked environmental science journal published by the American Chemical Society, on 15 June 2009.

1. The paper presents the first carbon footprint analysis of the most important economies of the world accounting for greenhouse gas emissions caused by the production of internationally traded goods. A nation is made responsible for the carbon footprint of its imports, but not for its exports. The base year is 2001.

2. The analysis shows that the highest carbon footprint occurs in rich countries in Europe (Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands), North America (the U.S. and Canada) and Asia-Pacific (e.g., Australia). The carbon footprints of most of these countries are higher than the territorial emissions because the carbon footprint of imports is larger than that of exports.

3. There is a strong dependence of CO2 emissions on wealth. With a doubling of per-capita expenditure, the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and industrial processes increase by 81%. The emissions of other greenhouse gases, primarily methane and nitrous oxides, increases less strongly with wealth – only 32%, because they are mostly associated with food production.

4. The paper shows that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with mobility and manufactured goods increase most strongly with increasing wealth. With continued economic growth, mitigation measures directed at these areas of demand will become more important.

5. Food production is the most important cause of greenhouse gas emissions in poor countries, followed by household energy use – mostly for food preparation, hot water and heating.

6. Only extremely few, poor countries such as Bangladesh, Malawi and Mozambique have carbon footprints near the 1 ton per capita required for all nations by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 2oC. For most countries, the carbon footprint of food alone is around 1 ton per capita.

7. National-level results, including the importance of consumption categories and the carbon footprints of imports and exports can be found at
www.carbonfootprintofnations.com

The Journal paper can be found at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es803496a