In 2015, the world leaders agreed to combat climate change by taking efforts to keep the global temperature increase well below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels, but the world leaders have not yet achieved a set of rules, regulations and processes that translate the Paris Agreement into specific country actions (Höhne et al. 2017). However, various sets of climate change scenarios exist, that suggest pathways of low-carbon technology deployment to reach the 2-degree target. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarizes a number of global low-carbon scenarios that have been calculated with a variety of different Integrated Assessment Models (IPCC 2012). The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also developed two sets of scenarios, the World Energy Outlook and the Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP), that have been
From the early developments of domestic input-output analysis starting with Leontief (1936), the scope has broadened, both to account for trade relationships across economies (Leontief and Strout 1963) and to extend the framework to enable the attribution of social and environmental impacts, domestic and abroad, to economic activities (Leontief 1970; Miller and Blair 2009). Multiregional input-output (MRIO) models
The European Union (EU) set ambitious goals toward more sustainable use of plastics, but the basis for measuring performance and monitoring progress toward these goals remains inadequate due to a limited understanding of the complex systems behind plastic consumption. In this work, we study the region-wide material flows of plastics related to packaging in 2014 using a hybrid approach that combines data on the production and end-of-life management of plastic packaging with a monetary input-output model for the EU. The approach enables us to gain insight into interindustry flows and the connection between production and final demand. We map supply chains with a relatively high resolution, including polymer types, packaging forms and application categories. Results estimate the total packaging placed on the market (POM) and then discarded amounted to 18,000 kt., excluding a net increase in stocks of 500 kt. This means that waste generation could have been up to 15% higher than accounted in official statistics, reinforcing potential underreporting accounts as well as remaining data gaps. Thirty-five percent of postconsumer packaging waste was directed toward recycling. However, only 5% contributed to new domestic packaging production, a reflection of the broad challenges to plastic circularity. Although first steps are taken in this work, we point to an acute lack of information on industrial streams, compounded by missing policy focus, for example, on transport packaging. We suggest areas for deeper investigation and emphasize the potential of hybrid approaches to establishing baselines and assessment of both production and consumption-side mitigation strategies.
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