The distributional and nutritional impacts and mitigation potential of emission-based food taxes in the UK

Ariane Kehlbacher,Adam Briggs,Richard Tiffin,Mike Berners-Lee,Peter Scarborough

doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1673-6

Ariane Kehlbacher, Adam Briggs + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1673-6

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Journal: Climatic change	Publication Date: Apr 27, 2016
Citations: 22	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Reading, University of Oxford

Abstract

Agriculture and food production are responsible for a substantial proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. An emission based food tax has been proposed as one option to reduce food related emissions. This study introduces a method to measure the impacts of emission based food taxes at a household level which involves the use of data augmentation to account for the fact that the data record purchases and not consumption. The method is applied to determine the distributional and nutritional impacts of an emission based food tax across socio-economic classes in the UK. We find that a tax of £2.841/tCO2e on all foods would reduce food related emissions by 6.3 % and a tax on foods with above average levels of emissions would reduce emissions by 4.3 %. The tax burden falls disproportionately on households in the lowest socio-economic class because they tend to spend a larger proportion of their food expenditure on emission intensive foods and because they buy cheaper products and therefore experience relatively larger price increases.

Highlights

Agriculture and food production including transport, processing, packaging, marketing, sales, purchasing as well as cooking of food are responsible for substantial emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs)
We find that an emission based food tax in the UK on all foods reduces GHG emissions from food consumed at home by on average 6.3 % (−8.023 MtCO2e) and a tax on foods with above average levels of emission alone would reduce emission on average by 4.3 % (−5.492 MtCO2e)
These differences influence the results in three ways: i) because the emission tax is a levy per unit of food, smaller carbon conversion factors imply lower tax rates; ii) smaller carbon conversion factors imply less emissions computed from the total quantity of food consumed; and iii) for Scenario B different conversion factors imply that different types of foods are classed as having above average levels of emissions

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture and food production including transport, processing, packaging, marketing, sales, purchasing as well as cooking of food are responsible for substantial emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). For example carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use on the farm or in the supply chain, nitrous oxide emissions resulting from. Climatic Change (2016) 137:121–141 fertiliser application, or methane emissions from animals; or indirectly as a result of land use change. In the UK, emissions from food consumption are estimated to contribute 27 % of total GHG (167 Mt. carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)) emissions (Berners-Lee et al 2012). According to Gilbert (2012) agriculture is responsible for up to 86 % (12,000 mt CO2e) of all food-related anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, followed by fertilizer production (575 mt CO2e) and refrigeration (490 mt CO2e). Several studies find that changes in food consumption behaviour, in particular reduced consumption of meat and dairy foods, can be effective in reducing emissions (CCC 2010; Dyhr Edjabou and Smed 2013; Weber and Matthews 2008; Stehfest et al 2009; Garnett 2011; Vieux et al 2012; Scarborough et al 2014)

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