Urban carbon footprints: a consumption-based approach for Swiss households

Abstract

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories form the basis of evidence-based climate change planning across the local, regional, national, and international levels. In this letter, we present a consumption-based GHG accounting approach for estimating the carbon footprint (CF) comprising direct and indirect emissions of households in Switzerland for 2008, 2011, and 2014 and examine the impact of urbanity and socioeconomic variables on these estimates. The CF model used herein couples regionalized household budget surveys (HBS) with environmentally-extended input-output analysis (EEIOA). We provide greater insight into the obscure process of combining bottom-up consumption data (i.e., HBS) and top-down input-output tables (IOT) in a CF model. The findings show that urban households tend to have lower direct emissions than rural households whereas indirect emissions are higher. Therefore, the nature of both direct and indirect emissions should be considered when evaluating the role of urbanization, as each has a different focus. Overall, our results indicate that income is the most important driver of household total cf Some local features specific to Switzerland have also been found to be important in shaping the relationship between the household CF and its drivers. We argue that household composition should be the focal point for future study of CF mitigation in Switzerland, and that policies should prioritise measures that target consumer behaviour and lifestyles, rather than solely focus on improving physical infrastructure and adopting new technologies.