Ecological Indicators 36 (2014) 640–643 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Indicators jou rn al hom epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind On the feasibility of a consumer-based allocation method in national GHG inventories Dario Caro a , Simone Bastianoni a,∗ , Simone Borghesi b , Federico Maria Pulselli a a Department of Earth, Environmental and Physical Sciences, Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena, Pian dei Mantellini 44, 53100 Siena, Italy b Department of Political and International Sciences, University of Siena, Via Mattioli 10, 53100 Siena, Italy a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 4 July 2013 Received in revised form 16 September 2013 Accepted 18 September 2013 Keywords: Consumer-based perspective Carbon intensity GHG emissions accounting International trade. a b s t r a c t The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has defined a comprehensive method for taking into account greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions released from different countries. The geographical or producer-based perspective currently used in the IPCC framework does not consider (and may therefore encourage) delocalization of production from industrialized to other countries, thus allocating responsi- bility for emissions associated with goods and services, consumed in one country but produced elsewhere, exclusively to the producer. The Environmentally Extended Input–Output (EEIO) analysis has long been recognized as a useful tool for attributing GHG emissions or resource use to final consumers in a consis- tent accounting framework. While it is clear that there are several advantages to using a consumer-based perspective with the EEIO analysis, questions regarding the implementation of this methodology have arisen, and its adoption in dealing with GHGs inventory has so far been limited. Here, we propose a formalization, in order to evaluate GHG emissions associated with goods and services that are traded internationally, based on a systemic approach that places the responsibility on consumer countries, and weighs imported and exported goods by applying national carbon intensity factors. The use of these aggregate indicators is appropriate to have a reference point for a worldwide application of this tool in order to implement policies for GHG emission reduction. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The Kyoto Protocol was an important step for the challenge of international climate change. However, it has brought about weak results for a number of reasons, including insufficient GHG reduc- tion, application to a limited number of nations, pros and cons in the use of flexible mechanisms (see, for example, Barrett, 1998; Cooper, 2001; Prins and Rayner, 2007; Brook et al., 2007; den Elzen and Höhne, 2008). As a consequence, national economies, companies and single producers have often found solutions to limit their costs, to the detriment of the overall effectiveness of the protocol. One of these consequences, for example, has been the progressive delo- calization of industrial activity in developing countries, which also depends on the way in which emission responsibility is assigned at the national level. The debate on how to monitor greenhouse gases (GHGs) released from countries has become more and more relevant in recent years, and is focused on the implications of the producer- and consumer-based perspective on emissions allocation (Munksgaard and Pedersen, 2001; Peters and Hertwich, 2008a). The Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has defined a ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0577234358; fax: +39 0577232004. E-mail addresses: simone.bastianoni@unisi.it, bastianoni@unisi.it (S. Bastianoni). comprehensive method to standardize GHG inventories in order to account for GHGs released and absorbed in national systems (IPCC, 2006). The method adopts a geographical or producer-based perspective, which considers emissions produced within system boundaries. The IPCC method is widely used and provides punctual measures of GHG emissions at national level. However it shows an incomplete picture of the emissions that can be attributed to the economy (Ghertner and Fripp, 2007), and a real problem emerges for the allocation of emissions related to products involved in international trade (i.e. produced in one country but consumed elsewhere). In short, the geographical (i.e. producer) perspective implies that the countries where the finished products are actually consumed take no responsibility for the environmental impacts generated by the producer countries, thus ignoring the interna- tional trade effect (Bastianoni et al., 2004). Consequently, the scientific community has focused on an alter- native consumer-based perspective that could complement the geographical/producer-based one by including all driving forces for GHG emissions associated with consumption (consumer per- spective) (Davis et al., 2011). In particular, several authors have highlighted the need to include an import-export evaluation in emission inventories focusing on the localization of emissions, especially those embodied in international trade (e.g. Bastianoni et al., 2004; Liu and Wang, 2009; Peters et al., 2012). 1470-160X/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.09.021