Carbon footprint of human settlements in Spain

Abstract

The role of towns and their inhabitants in fighting climate change is becoming increasingly important (Shi et al. in Nat Clim Change 6(2):131–137, 2016). In this context, the aim of this paper is to apply a multi-regional input-output model to study the evolution of the carbon footprint for Spanish households as determined by the different type of settlement. This study analyses the household carbon footprint as a function of the municipality’s population size, whether it is located in a rural or urban environment, and its relation to population density. By using a multi-regional model we are able to calculate the share of that carbon footprint that is generated within the settlement and the share that is produced around the world along global value chains. This methodology has been widely applied to study carbon footprints for households in terms of different characteristics: income levels (Duarte et al. in Energy Policy 44:441–450, 2012), age (Shigetomi et al. in Environ Sci Technol 48(11):6069–6080, 2014), consumption of agriculture products (López et al. in J Clean Prod 103:423–436, 2015), or tourism consumption (Cadarso et al. in J Clean Prod 111(Part B):529–537, 2016). The structure of household consumption as a function of the type of settlement will be used to analyse whether socio-economic features are the greatest influence in the level of carbon footprint, or by the contrary, structural, institutional or geographical factors of the settlement are more relevant. Previous literature has addressed this link in other countries, for instance Fan et al. (J Clean Prod 33:50–59, 2012), Minx et al. (Environ Res Lett 8(3):035039, 2013), Baiocchi et al. (Global Environ Change 34:13–21, 2015) or Ahmad et al. (Environ Sci Technol 49(19):11312–11320, 2015), but not for the Spanish case. Regarding data sources, we propose combining the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) and the Household Budget Survey for the Spanish economy, in order to analyse the carbon footprint from household consumption for 2015.