CO2 emissions embodied in international trade: A multiregional Inputoutput model for Spain

Eskinder D. Gemechu, Isabela Butnar, Maria Llop, S. Sangwong and Francesc Castells i Piqué

Working Papers from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics

Abstract: As a result of globalization and free trade agreements, international trade is enormously growing and inevitably putting more pressure on the environment over the last few decades. This has drawn the attention of both environmentalist and economist in response to the ever growing concerns of climate change and urgent need of international action for its mitigation. In this work we aim at analyzing the implication of international trade in terms of CO2 between Spain and its important partners using a multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model. A fully integrated 13 regions MRIO model is constructed to examine the pollution responsibility of Spain both from production and consumption perspectives. The empirical results show that Spain is a net importer of CO2 emissions which is equivalent to 29% of its emission due to production. Even though the leading partner with regard to import values are countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain, the CO2 embodied due to trade with China takes the largest share. This is mainly due to the importation of energy intensive products from China coupled with Chinese poor energy mix which is dominated by coal-power plant. The largest portion (67%) of the global imported CO2 emissions is due to intermediate demand requirements by production sectors. Products such as Motor vehicles, chemicals, a variety of machineries and equipments, textile and leather products, construction materials are the key imports that drive the emissions due to their production in the respective exporting countries. Being at its peak in 2005, the Construction sector is the most responsible activity behind both domestic and imported emissions.

Keywords: Comerç internacional; Medi ambient -- Anàlisi d'impacte; Emissions atmosfèriques -- Espanya; Anhídrid carbònic; 339 - Comerç. Relacions econòmiques internacionals. Economia mundial. Màrqueting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2072/212195

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:urv:wpaper:2072/212195

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ariadna Casals ().