A Regional Analysis of the Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Tradeoffs of Different Economic Growth Paths

Abstract

Different economic development strategies may result in varied socioeconomic and environmental synergies or tradeoffs, suggesting an opportunity for environmentally conscious planning. To understand such synergies or tradeoffs, a dynamic environmental life cycle assessment was conducted for eleven groups of New Hampshire industries. Historical state level Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-by-industry data was combined with economic input-output analysis to calculate the direct and life cycle energy use, freshwater use, greenhouse gas emissions, and eutrophication potential of each industry on a yearly basis for the period of 1997-2012. The future development of agriculture, traditional manufacturing, high tech, and tourism industries were investigated based on government projections. Total life cycle impacts of the 11 industries were found to represent around three to seven times those of direct impacts, indicating the significance of the supply chain impacts. Traditional manufacturing has the highest life cycle impacts even though it contributes to less than 10% of the state GDP. Future development of high tech was found to be the best strategy to increase GDP while imposing the least additional environmental impacts. Tourism presents relatively high impacts in terms of freshwater use and eutrophication potential, and a change in recreational style might be able to reduce its impacts.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Agricultural and Industrial Sectors—Change Trends, Economic Conditions, and Country Classification: Evidence from the European Union

“…The literature on the assessment of GHG emissions in specific sectors such as agriculture, industry, energy, transport, construction, or tourism is quite extensive [15,46,47], and as can be observed, the methods of analysis are diverse, with authors mainly attempting to analyze the potential for GHG emission reductions [17,24,25,46,48,49], the past changes and future trends in GHG emissions, environmental impacts, and mitigation actions [16,47]. Sector-specific studies have shown that the best strategy to grow GDP with less environmental impact is to develop some advanced technologies [47].…”

Government Support and Market Proximity: Exploring Their Relationship with Supply Chain Agility and Financial performance

“…However, the Government should not only regulate the logistics and sustainable aspects during the procurement of raw materials, production process, and distribution of finished products; it must also regulate the reprocessing of materials after the life of the product has finished [27]. For example, in Shu [20] reported a study in which there are useful components for remanufacturing, which is done with Government subsidies, and Mo [28] presented a study of the analysis of the life of products that have intellectual property rights. Therefore, it is observed that the sustainability of companies and their supply chains is widely associated with regulations given by Government, so it is currently considered that it must be fully committed to the establishment of sustainable standards and monitor their compliance, and for this reason, the Government is declared to be one of the pillars of sustainability, and should be the main promoter of that culture [29].…”