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Increased carbon footprint of materials production driven by rise in investments

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 151–155 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The production of materials is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce emissions, policies aim to enhance material efficiency and the circular economy, but our understanding of the dynamics of material-related greenhouse gas emissions is limited. Here, I quantify the greenhouse gas emissions from material production and the carbon footprint of materials in industries that are the first users of materials, and in final consumption, using a multiregional input–output model of the global economy and the hypothetical extraction method. From 1995 to 2015, greenhouse gas emissions from just material production increased by 120%, with 11 billion tons of CO2-equivalent emitted in 2015. As a proportion of global emissions, material production rose from 15 to 23%. China accounted for 75% of the growth. In terms of the first use of materials, two-fifths of the carbon footprint of materials is attributed to construction, and two-fifths to the manufacturing of machinery, vehicles and other durable products. Overall, the replacement of existing or formation of new capital stocks now accounts for 60% of material-related emissions. Policies that address the rapidly growing capital stocks in emerging economies therefore offer the best prospect for emission reductions from material efficiency.

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Fig. 1: GHG emissions from material production.
Fig. 2: The material-related carbon footprint of final demand.

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Data availability

A public version of EXIOBASE 3 is available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3583071. The public version differs slightly from the version that was used in the present research, which makes use of proprietary third-party energy data from the IEA. The private version of the data is available from the author upon request by anybody who has obtained a licence to the IEA Energy Statistics and Energy Balances. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

MatLab code is available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4280697.

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Acknowledgements

Language editing by A. Devismes. The work was conducted as part of the project ‘Resource efficiency and climate change’ of the International Resource Panel.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

    Edgar G. Hertwich

Authors
  1. Edgar G. Hertwich
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Contributions

E.G.H. designed the research, conducted the calculations, interpreted the findings and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edgar G. Hertwich.

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Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Primary Handling Editor: Rebecca Neely.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Carbon footprint of the production of individual materials, compared to global CO2 emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the production of materials over the period 1995-2015. Materials are listed as represented in the input-output database EXIOBASE. For each material, emissions associated with the input of other materials are included.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Carbon footprint of investment and consumption.

Production of consumer goods and services as well as investment products needs both direct inputs of materials with which these goods and services are produced, and the use of a capital stock in the form of buildings, equipment, machinery, and vehicles which is being depreciated in the process. The use of capital refers to materials that were produced in earlier years. Figure 2 showed the net investment. Here, the focus is in gross fixed capital formation, which is comprised of net investment and reinvestment (replacement of capital that has been depreciated in the given year). The input to consumption has grown by 64%, the input to investment by 170%.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Materials-related GHG emissions according to production- and consumption-based accounts, and net trade.

GHG emissions by the country in which materials or their inputs are produced and emissions occur (a), the country in which final consumption relying on these materials happens (b), and net trade (c) that is, the difference between (a) and (b). China dominates export, followed by Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa (BRITS). Europe and North America are the primary importers. The growth in both the production and consumption of materials was concentrated in China and the developing countries represented in the Rest of World.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Matrices used in the hypothetical extraction method.

Columns represent inputs, and rows outputs of the input-output system.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Data 1

Detailed results of the hypothetical extractions modelling.

Supplementary Table 1

Material required for the production of other materials.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Data points represented in Fig. 1.

Source Data Fig. 2

Entire time series of the data represented in Fig.2.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Data points represented in Fig. ED1.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Data points represented in Fig. ED2.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Data points represented in Fig. ED3.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Drawing represented in Fig. ED4.

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Hertwich, E.G. Increased carbon footprint of materials production driven by rise in investments. Nat. Geosci. 14, 151–155 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00690-8

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