Monetary Impact Factors

Monetary Impact Factors

EXIOBASE data access

• EXIOBASE product version is used.
• Emissions and commodities can be referred to in as EXIOBASE is an Input-Output Model Environmentally Extended, it gives access to environmental stressors generated and exchanged by the different products in the different regions.
• EXIOBASE stressors are of different nature: emissions, commodity flows (raw materials), social and energy linked flows.

Reminder on EXIOBASE matrices

• x : total production
• F : total stressors Scope 1 (quantities of stressors) for total production (dimension 1300 x 10000)
• L: Leontiev matrix
• F/x = S : total stressors Scope 1 per million EUR
• M = S.L : total stressors Scope 1 + 3 per million EUR
• S x A : total stressors for Scope 3 rank 1 per million EUR

Scope 1 (S) and Scope 3 (M - S) requirements are computed and stored to be used for future computation allowing the separation of Scope 1 and Scope 3 stressors.

EXIOBASE stressors mapping into Ecoinvent framework

Among the stressors, we do not map:

• Social stressors.
• Energy linked flows (unit TJ): Nature inputs, emission relevant energy carrier, energy carrier supply, energy carrier used. It would lead to double counting as emissions already include energy production processes.

Emission type mapping

• GHG and pollutants
  • For GHGs and pollutants, we do a mapping based on the molecule/compound (ex: CO2) and emission compartment (ex air or soil). They both have to match in ecoinvent elementary flows table.
  • We do not differentiate combustion and non combustion emissions.
  • For ecoinvent sub compartment, "Unspecified" is chosen by default.
• Water
  • Water account distinguishes extractions of green water (coming from evapotranspiration of the vegetation), blue water (coming from water bodies). Considering that the elementary flows in ecoinvent concern the water abstracted from rivers and wetlands, only blue water is considered.
  • Water account distinguishes withdrawal and consumption. In ecoinvent, as the mapping is done with only one "input" from biosphere, only net flow is considered, ie consumption.

Commodity type mapping

• Only "used domestic extractions" are mapped, not "unused domestic extractions"
  • EXIOBASE distinguishes two types of extractions: the "used domestic extraction" and the "unused domestic extraction". The first type documents the actual quantity of raw material extracted (e.g. tonnes of carrots) while the second one refers to the amounts that come with the raw materials of interest but are not used (e.g. stems, leaves and other residuals of biomass extraction, overburden for mining activities). Ecoinvent activities are set for quantities of used products like cultivated carrots or extracted ores (without the overburden) considering impacts of the full process including used and unused parts of the product). Therefore to capture the pressures and impacts, we only need mapping the used domestic extractions.
• Commodity type stressors are mapped with darwin's proprietary commodity list. Adjustments are made to account for:
  • mismatch on the transformation level, for instance gold ore in EXIOBASE matched with gold unrefined metal with an adjustment factor reflecting the average grade of gold ore,
  • unit mismatch, for instance for wood weight in EXIOBASE needs to be converted into cubic meters to match ecoinvent associated product, therefore density assumptions have to be taken.

Impact factor computation

• Commodity inventory is based only EXIOBASE stressors as described previously.
• Impacts and pressures associated to commodities are computed using the associated product models.
• Total pressures and impacts based on emission type EXIOBASE stressors are done based on the mapping previously described and the pressure and impact models.
• To avoid double accounting, impact and pressures associated to commodities are subtracted to total impacts and pressures.
• At the end of the computation process, as for the product models, results are structured for Scope 1 and Scope 3 upstream as follows:
  • commodity inventory,
  • impacts and pressures linked to commodity inventory. Results are available at commodity level,
  • impacts and pressures ex commodity inventory.