Production- and Consumption-Based emissions: An international comparison

Production-based accounting (PBA) and consumption-based accounting (CBA) of emissions differ in how they consider the emissions resulting from the production of internationally traded commodities. This paper applies both approaches to calculate and compare emissions for Ireland and selected countries. We investigate the sources of variations in PBA and CBA emissions across countries. Ireland is observed to have lower PBA and CBA emissions in levels and per gross national income (GNI) terms. Sectoral patterns of PBA and CBA emissions vary across the countries; none of the selected countries have similar PBA and CBA emissions across all sectors compared to Ireland. Ireland’s emissions are clustered in the fuels, transport sector and animal agriculture. This is not the standard pattern for all countries, and a lack of similarity is observed across countries. Ireland diverges from the rest of Europe in terms of the origins of fuel-embedded emissions as well, with the United Kingdom as a major source. Ireland’s export of agricultural emissions is more similar to that of New Zealand than that of other European countries.