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Carbon Accounting in Long Supply Chain Industries

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Corporate Carbon and Climate Accounting

Abstract

Accounting for indirect carbon emissions embodied in different stages of the supply chain is increasingly important as supply chains become more and more globalised. Embodied emissions are greater when the supply chains of economic sectors are longer, when goods/services that are created in one sector demand significant input from another sectors and when several industries are involved in the supply chain. Simply monitoring and disclosing indirect emissions might not be adequate if the goals of carbon reduction policies are to be met. The paper presents first an overview of relevant literature on carbon accounting within supply chains. It examines the relevance of using hybrid input-output analysis to reveal the indirect impacts in the supply chains of different economic sectors. The paper presents the empirical research with the example of China, a country where goods are often produced to meet the demands of consumers in developed countries. Long supply chain industries and key indirect emission sources which are responsible for a significant proportion of total emissions are identified. A time-series analysis is presented in which the embodied emissions in exported products are analysed from 1995. Results confirm that the use of input-output models is especially relevant for accounting for indirect impacts in long supply chain industries. Corporations in these economic sectors are strongly advised to monitor and keep track of their indirect emissions.

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Acknowledgements

The research described in this paper was supported by the ‘Sustainable supply chain’ OTKA 50888 project. The author would further like to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of TÁMOP project 4.2.2./B-10/1-2010-0023 of the Doctoral School of Management and Business Administration, Corvinus University of Budapest for proofreading services. The author would like to thank Dr. Maria Csutora for her helpful comments on the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Economics and Technology, Corvinus University of Budapest, Institute for Environmental Science, Fővám tér 8, Budapest, 1093, Hungary

    Zsófia Vetőné Mózner

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  1. Zsófia Vetőné Mózner
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Correspondence to Zsófia Vetőné Mózner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Sustainability Management, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

    Stefan Schaltegger

  2. Friedrich-Alexander University, Nürnberg, Bayern, Germany

    Dimitar Zvezdov

  3. University of Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain

    Igor Alvarez Etxeberria

  4. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Maria Csutora

  5. TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Edeltraud Günther

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Vetőné Mózner, Z. (2015). Carbon Accounting in Long Supply Chain Industries. In: Schaltegger, S., Zvezdov, D., Alvarez Etxeberria, I., Csutora, M., Günther, E. (eds) Corporate Carbon and Climate Accounting. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27718-9_7

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