Carbon footprint and raw material requirement of public procurement and household consumption in Finland : Results from the ENVIMAT-model

The aim of the research was to analyse the carbon footprint (i.e. life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions) and raw material requirements (RMR) for public procurement and household consumption. The main method used was the environmentally extended input-output model ENVIMAT, supplemented with statistics on public procurement. Greenhouse gas emissions for the final domestic demand, i.e. the consumption-based emissions of Finland, amounted to 73.4 million tons carbon dioxide equivalents (Mt CO2e) in 2015. This can also be seen as the carbon footprint of Finland, and it was 33 % bigger than the territorial emissions which form the basis of the official national inventories. The carbon footprint for public procurement in 2015 was 8.3 Mt CO2e. State procurement accounted for 1.78 Mt, municipalities for 4.73 Mt CO2e, and federations of municipalities (FM) for 1.79 Mt CO2e. The carbon footprint of investments made by public organisations amounted to 2.7 Mt CO2e. In state procurement 42 % of the emissions were caused by buying services, 38 % from goods, 12 % from rents, and 8 % were due to other costs. Buying goods caused the largest emission share in the defence administration (55 %), whereas services caused the largest share (81 %) in the traffic and communications sector. In the procurement made by municipalities and federations of municipalities 42–43 % of emissions were caused by the procurement of services and 52 % from goods. Looking at state administration, defence caused the largest share (43 %) of emissions, and next were the traffic and communications (21 %) and the ministry of the interior (10 %). Urban municipalities caused 3.33 Mt of emissions, and semi-urban municipalities caused 0.69 Mt and rural municipalities 0.71 Mt. Hospital districts had the largest emissions (1.03 Mt) among the federations of municipalities. The raw material requirement of public procurement amounted to 19.5 Mt in 2015. The share of state procurement was 34 %, whereas municipalities and FM caused the remaining 66 %. The RMR of investments made by public organisations amounted to 25.7 Mt. The RMR of household consumption in 2015 was 64.8 Mt. The share of other products and services came to 32 %, housing including energy use amounted to 30 %, foodstuffs and non-alcoholic beverages contributed 26 % and transport 12 %. Regarding the carbon footprint of households in 2016, transport caused 30 % of all carbon emission equivalents, housing and energy use 29 %, foodstuffs and non-alcoholic beverages 19 %, and other products and services 22 %. The overall carbon footprint was 53.4 Mt CO2e in 2000 and 60.1 Mt in 2016 (12.5 % growth). Emissions were the largest in 2007 (66.6 Mt). A structural decomposition of the change in the carbon footprint from 2000 to 2016 shows three major factors: change in consumption expenditure (which alone would change the footprint by +30.7 %), change in consumption structure (-5.7 %) and technological change (-12.5 %). The annual average carbon footprint per capita varied between 10.1 and 12.6 tons of CO2e. Statistics Finland’s Household Budget Survey was used to analyse different households. In the lowest income decile the carbon footprint was 7.2 t CO2e per consumption unit, and in the highest income decile it was 19.0. The emission intensity (i.e. emissions per euro consumed) did not have any clear relationship to the income. Regarding types of households, couples without children and couples with children had the largest footprint per consumption unit. When housing was not taken into account, households in inner urban areas had the smallest and households in peri-urban and rural areas close to urban areas had the largest carbon footprint per consumption unit. Of the consumption sectors, transport had the highest emission intensity (0.81 kg CO2e /€). Additionally, food had a high emission intensity (0.76). The two expenditure categories related to housing had smaller intensities (0.51 and 0.45), and other goods and services had the smallest (0.24). The average emission intensity was around 0.5.