IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/14_05.html

Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New Zealand: A Preliminary Consumption-Based Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Carl Romanos

    (Stanford University)

  • Suzi Kerr

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

  • Campbell Will

    (University of Otago)

Abstract

New Zealand's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are usually calculated by taking total emissions as reported under the Kyoto Protocol or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and simply dividing by population. However this focuses on emissions associated with production within New Zealand. From the point of view of individuals, these are not the emissions they control, and hence can mitigate. Individuals can calculate their "carbon footprint" but tools to do this typically focus on a few categories of emissions (mostly electricity, direct fuel use and waste) and emissions footprints are not available for a wide range of households so cannot be used for comparative analysis. This paper explores how the carbon emissions related to the consumption categories of households in New Zealand vary with household characteristics. We use product consumption data from the 2007 Household Economic Survey. Consumption within each category is linked to a carbon intensity multiplier (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per dollar of consumption) which is derived from: the official 2007 input-output table of 106 industries produced by Statistics New Zealand; energy data on carbon dioxide per petajoule of fuel in each industry from the Energy Data File; and the Energy Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report both provided by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Previous literature has used similar methods to calculate the incidence of a carbon tax (e.g. Creedy and Sleeman [2006]). This paper uses these methods in order to study which sectors of household expenditure offer the greatest opportunities for mitigation and how these opportunities vary with household characteristics such as income decile, region and household composition.

Suggested Citation

  • Carl Romanos & Suzi Kerr & Campbell Will, 2014. "Greenhouse Gas Emissions in New Zealand: A Preliminary Consumption-Based Analysis," Motu Working Papers 14_05, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:14_05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/14_05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kerkhof, Annemarie C. & Nonhebel, Sanderine & Moll, Henri C., 2009. "Relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures: An input-output analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 1160-1170, February.
    2. Gough, Ian & Abdallah, Saamah & Johnson, Viki & Ryan-Collins, Josh & Smith, Cindy, 2011. "The distribution of total embodied greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36562, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Kevin A. Hassett & Aparna Mathur & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2009. "The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis," The Energy Journal, , vol. 30(2), pages 155-178, April.
    4. M. S. Common & U. Salma, 1992. "Accounting for Australian Carbon Dioxide Emissions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 68(1), pages 31-42, March.
    5. Corbett Grainger & Charles Kolstad, 2010. "Who Pays a Price on Carbon?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 359-376, July.
    6. Common, M. S. & Salma, U., 1992. "Accounting for changes in Australian carbon dioxide emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 217-225, July.
    7. repec:cep:sticas:/152 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:bla:ecorec:v:68:y:1992:i:200:p:31-42 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Saamah Abdallah & Ian Gough & Victoria Johnson & Josh Ryan-Collins & Cindy Smith, 2011. "The distribution of total greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy," CASE Papers case152, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Corey Allan & Suzi Kerr & Campbell Will, 2015. "Are we turning a brighter shade of green? The relationship between household characteristics and greenhouse gas emissions from consumption in New Zealand," Motu Working Papers 15_06, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carolina Grottera & Franck Nadaud & Carine Barbier & Emmanuel Combet, 2016. "Scale gains in household consumption and their modeling implications in poverty and distribution analyses," Post-Print hal-01694022, HAL.
    2. Heidi Bruderer Enzler & Andreas Diekmann, 2015. "Environmental Impact and Pro-Environmental Behavior: Correlations to Income and Environmental Concern," ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 9, ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology.
    3. Murthy, N. S. & Panda, Manoj & Parikh, Jyoti, 1997. "Economic development, poverty reduction and carbon emissions in India," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 327-354, July.
    4. Erik Dietzenbacher & Jesper Stage, 2006. "Mixing oil and water? Using hybrid input-output tables in a Structural decomposition analysis," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 85-95.
    5. Gui, Shusen & Mu, Hailin & Li, Nan, 2014. "Analysis of impact factors on China's CO2 emissions from the view of supply chain paths," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 405-416.
    6. Linden, Jules & O’Donoghue, Cathal & Sologon, Denisa M., 2024. "The many faces of carbon tax regressivity—Why carbon taxes are not always regressive for the same reason," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    7. de Bruin, Kelly & Yakut, Aykut Mert, 2024. "Efficiency–equity trade-off in the Irish carbon tax: A CGE investigation of mixed revenue recycling schemes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    8. Das, Aparna & Paul, Saikat Kumar, 2014. "CO2 emissions from household consumption in India between 1993–94 and 2006–07: A decomposition analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 90-105.
    9. Dorband, Ira Irina & Jakob, Michael & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Steckel, Jan Christoph, 2019. "Poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low- and middle-income countries – A global comparative analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 246-257.
    10. Zha, Donglan & Yang, Guanglei & Wang, Qunwei, 2019. "Investigating the driving factors of regional CO2 emissions in China using the IDA-PDA-MMI method," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    11. Calver, Philippa & Simcock, Neil, 2021. "Demand response and energy justice: A critical overview of ethical risks and opportunities within digital, decentralised, and decarbonised futures," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    12. Lenzen, Manfred & Murray, Shauna A., 2001. "A modified ecological footprint method and its application to Australia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 229-255, May.
    13. Ironmonger, D S & Aitken, C K & Erbas, B, 1995. "Economies of scale in energy use in adult-only households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 301-310, October.
    14. Niu, Honglei & Lekse, William, 2017. "Carbon emission effect of urbanization at regional level: Empirical evidence from China," Economics Discussion Papers 2017-62, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    15. Wang, Qian & Hubacek, Klaus & Feng, Kuishuang & Wei, Yi-Ming & Liang, Qiao-Mei, 2016. "Distributional effects of carbon taxation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 1123-1131.
    16. Wier, Mette & Hasler, Berit, 1999. "Accounting for nitrogen in Denmark--a structural decomposition analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 317-331, August.
    17. Waltho, Cynthia & Elhedhli, Samir & Gzara, Fatma, 2019. "Green supply chain network design: A review focused on policy adoption and emission quantification," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 305-318.
    18. Parry Ian W. H. & Williams Roberton C., 2010. "What are the Costs of Meeting Distributional Objectives for Climate Policy?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-35, December.
    19. Cathal O’Donoghue & Beenish Amjad & Jules Linden & Nora Lustig & Denisa M Sologon & Yang Wang & Zeynep Gizem Can, 2025. "The Distributional Impact of Inflation in Pakistan: A Case Study of a New Price Focused Microsimulation Framework, PRICES," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 18(3), pages 102-131.
    20. Burgess, Martin, 2016. "Personal carbon allowances: A revised model to alleviate distributional issues," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 316-327.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:14_05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.