The Global Footprint of Sectors

Abstract: Studies investigating the footprint of nations have reported significant carbon-leakage between countries and the need to track emissions responsibility under a consumption-based accounting to complement traditional production estimates. Nonetheless, these works have largely ignored the impact of consumption by sectors in generating greenhouse gas emissions, which remained estimated under a production-based system. This, on its turn, only reveals the direct emissions released by a sector, which may be producing goods that are inputs to other sectors, thus allowing some industries to conceal part of their emissions. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to determine the footprint of sectors by taking stock of the pollution embedded in its input requirements in upstream paths in the value chain. The empirical part of this research used a Global Multi-Regional Input-Output table obtained from Exiobase 3. It includes 44 countries, 5 rest of the world regions and 200 sectors. The results provide a new contribution by estimating, for the first time, the footprint of highly detailed sectors at the global level. The findings introduce a different pattern of sectorial responsibility for emissions.