Consumption Compass: a summary of the methods used

The Consumption Compass is a free Excel-based tool launched in April 2022 by the Stockholm Environment Institute to provide consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions estimates (CO2e) at the municipal and postcode levels for all municipalities in Sweden.

• The Consumption Compass utilizes two primary methodological approaches to downscale national greenhouse gas emissions to local levels: a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach is used exclusively for direct emissions from personal vehicles, which account for 14% of total emissions, using detailed postcode-level data on annual distance driven and fuel types.
• The top-down approach distributes emissions based on four different approximations. The largest share, 48% of total emissions across 60 COICOP categories, is downscaled using MOSAIC profile data from InsightOne, which uses 44 consumer profiles based on socio-economic data and survey estimates.
• Food-related emissions are estimated using a combination of MOSAIC expenditure data and diet data from the Klimatkalkylatorn online tool, which contained over 800,000 user profiles across Swedish municipalities as of April 2022.
• Eight percent of total emissions, covering 18 COICOP categories, are downscaled using a 2009 Statistics Sweden (SCB) household expenditure survey. These are distributed to the municipal level based on the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR) classification system, and then to the postcode level using per capita disposable income as a proxy, except for rental costs which are distributed equally per capita.
• Other available datasets are used for 22% of total emissions across four COICOP categories. Electricity and direct heating are downscaled using dwelling size as a proxy, while district heating uses Boverket's Energy declarations. Air transport emissions are distributed based on Klimatkalkylatorn travel behavior data and weighted by postcode disposable income.
• For 29 COICOP categories where no detailed data is available, which contribute to lower levels of consumption-based emissions, per capita disposable income is used as a proxy to downscale emissions to the postcode level, accounting for 8% of total emissions.

APA

Rahmati-Abkenar, M., Axelsson, K., Grah, R., & Dawkins, E. (2022). Consumption Compass: a summary of the methods used. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/method-summary.pdf

Chicago

Rahmati-Abkenar, Mahboubeh, Katarina Axelsson, Rok Grah, and Elena Dawkins. Consumption Compass: a summary of the methods used. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2022. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/method-summary.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Rahmati-Abkenar |first1=Mahboubeh |last2=Axelsson |first2=Katarina |last3=Grah |first3=Rok |last4=Dawkins |first4=Elena |title=Consumption Compass: a summary of the methods used |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=April 2022 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/method-summary.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rahmatiabkenar2022consumption, author = {Rahmati-Abkenar, Mahboubeh and Axelsson, Katarina and Grah, Rok and Dawkins, Elena}, title = {{Consumption Compass: a summary of the methods used}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2022}, month = apr, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/method-summary.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }