Consumption-based accounting reveals global redistribution of carbon emissions

The document argues that consumption-based accounting provides a more nuanced view of climate responsibility than territorial accounting by attributing emissions to the final consumers of goods and services. Using data from the Eora and IOTA models, it demonstrates that high-income OECD members have increasingly imported emissions from middle-income countries between 1992 and 2010, suggesting that some territorial emission reductions in wealthy nations are the result of 'carbon leakage' to other territories.

• Consumption-based accounting reveals that OECD members' consumption is linked to higher emissions than those released within their own territories, whereas the opposite is true for middle-income countries.
• In high-income countries, consumption-based emissions grew at a faster rate than territorial emissions until 2008. Meanwhile, both metrics rose sharply for middle-income countries since 2007.
• There has been a rapid increase in the international transfer of emissions from 1992 to 2010, primarily from middle-income to high-income countries. For OECD members, emissions imports rose from 2% of total consumption-based emissions in 1992 to 16% by 2010.
• Data from 2007 indicates that most consumption-based emissions for high- and middle-income countries were released within their own income groups. Specifically, 93% of middle-income countries' consumption-based emissions were released within that group, and only 17% of high-income countries' consumption-based emissions were emitted outside their group.
• Russian emissions significantly impact the data for high-income non-OECD countries, representing nearly 60% of that group's total territorial emissions and nearly half of its total consumption-based emissions.

APA

Dawkins, E., & Croft, S. (2017). Consumption-based accounting reveals global redistribution of carbon emissions. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Dawkins-Croft-CBA.pdf

Chicago

Dawkins, Elena, and Simon Croft. Consumption-based accounting reveals global redistribution of carbon emissions. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2017. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Dawkins-Croft-CBA.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Dawkins |first1=Elena |last2=Croft |first2=Simon |title=Consumption-based accounting reveals global redistribution of carbon emissions |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2017 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Dawkins-Croft-CBA.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{dawkins2017consumptionbased, author = {Dawkins, Elena and Croft, Simon}, title = {{Consumption-based accounting reveals global redistribution of carbon emissions}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-2017-DB-Dawkins-Croft-CBA.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }