The distributional and nutritional impacts and mitigation potential of emission-based food taxes in the UK

Agriculture and food production are responsible for a substantial proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. An emission based food tax has been proposed as one option to reduce food related emissions. This study introduces a method to measure the impacts of emission based food taxes at a household level which involves the use of data augmentation to account for the fact that the data record purchases and not consumption. The method is applied to determine the distributional and nutritional impacts of an emission based food tax across socio-economic classes in the UK. We find that a tax of £2.841/tCO2e on all foods would reduce food related emissions by 6.3% and a tax on foods with above average levels of emissions would reduce emissions by 4.3%. The tax burden falls disproportionately on households in the lowest socio-economic class because they tend to spend a larger proportion of their food expenditure on emission intensive foods and because they buy cheaper products and therefore experience relatively larger price increases

Hybrid life-cycle assessment for robust, best-practice carbon accounting

In order to meet internationally agreed targets for avoiding dangerous anthropogenic climate change, an absolute priority for global society is to rapidly stabilise and then reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Any entity, be it individual, company, or nation state, is more able to reduce its carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions if these can be quantified and attributed and the effects of interventions estimated. The current state of product and supply chain carbon accounting methods does not consistently meet the standards required to tackle this global challenge. This study therefore aims to identify key methodological practices affecting the accuracy of carbon accounting models and in particular to assess the effects of the system boundaries they employ. Models currently available for estimating carbon emissions are either input-output based (using macro-economic analysis), process-based (using specific carbon emissions attributes through the life-cycle of a product, service or event), or a hybrid of the two. Here, a detailed comparison has been made between various input-output and process-based models and the results compared with those from a hybrid model that was taken to represent ‘best practice’ in carbon accounting. Key factors affecting accuracy were found to lie in: the detail of methodological decisions for input-output models, the economic region or regions upon which the model is based, and the quality, disaggregation and, especially for price-volatile products, the temporal alignment of the data. The relative significance of these factors is explored. For copper wire, a system boundary gap analysis was conducted on an industry-leading process-based model (GREET.net) compared with a complete system as described by the best performing input-output model. GREET.net was found to suffer a 60% truncation error. The copper wire example demonstrates the practicality of substituting process-based analysis into input-output based supply chain emissions assessments

The climate impact of ICT:A review of estimates, trends and regulations

In this report, we examine the available evidence regarding ICT's current and projected climate impacts. We examine peer-reviewed studies which estimate ICT's current share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be 1.8-2.8% of global GHG emissions. Our findings indicate that published estimates all underestimate the carbon footprint of ICT, possibly by as much as 25%, by failing to account for all of ICT's supply chains and full lifecycle (i.e. emissions scopes 1, 2 and fully inclusive 3). Adjusting for truncation of supply chain pathways, we estimate that ICT's share of emissions could actually be as high as 2.1-3.9%. There are pronounced differences between available projections of ICT's future emissions. These projections are dependent on underlying assumptions that are sometimes, but not always, made explicit - and we explore these in the report. Whatever assumptions analysts take, they agree that ICT will not reduce its emissions without a major concerted effort involving broad political and industrial action. We provide three reasons to believe ICT emissions are going to increase barring a targeted intervention, and we note that in light of these, it seems risky to assume that ICT will, by default, assist in the attainment of climate targets. Based on our analysis, we find that not all carbon pledges in the ICT sector are ambitious enough to meet climate targets. We explore the underdevelopment of mechanisms for enforcing sector-wide compliance, and contend that without a global carbon constraint, a new regulatory framework is required to keep the ICT sector's carbon footprint in alignment with the Paris Agreement. We further contend that a global carbon constraint should be viewed as a significant opportunity for the ICT sector, as efficiencies within and enabled by ICT would be even greater enablers of productivity and utility than they are today

The real climate and transformative impact of ICT:A critique of estimates, trends and regulations

In this paper, we critique ICT's current and projected climate impacts. Peer-reviewed studies estimate ICT's current share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at 1.8-2.8% of global GHG emissions; adjusting for truncation of supply chain pathways, we find this share could actually be between 2.1-3.9%. For ICT's future emissions, we explore assumptions underlying analysts' projections to understand the reasons for their variability. All analysts agree that ICT emissions will not reduce without major concerted efforts involving broad political and industrial action. We provide three reasons to believe ICT emissions are going to increase barring intervention and find not all carbon pledges in the ICT sector are ambitious enough to meet climate targets. We explore the underdevelopment of policy mechanisms for enforcing sector-wide compliance, and contend that without a global carbon constraint, a new regulatory framework is required to keep the ICT sector's footprint aligned with the Paris Agreement

Systems thinking and efficiency under emissions constraints: Addressing rebound effects in digital innovation and policy

Innovations and efficiencies in digital technology have lately been depicted as paramount in the green transition to enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, both in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector and the wider economy. This, however, fails to adequately account for rebound effects that can offset emission savings and, in the worst case, increase emissions. In this perspective, we draw on a transdisciplinary workshop with 19 experts from carbon accounting, digital sustainability research, ethics, sociology, public policy, and sustainable business to expose the challenges of addressing rebound effects in digital innovation processes and associated policy. We utilize a responsible innovation approach to uncover potential ways forward for incorporating rebound effects in these domains, concluding that addressing ICT-related rebound effects ultimately requires a shift from an ICT efficiency-centered perspective to a “systems thinking” model, which aims to understand efficiency as one solution among others that requires constraints on emissions for ICT environmental savings to be realized

Applying linked data in multimedia annotations

Current multimedia applications in Web 2.0 have generated large repositories for multimedia resources and annotations, so there is an urgent requirement to interlink annotations of these resources across different repositories to achieve better indexing and searching. To solve this problem, many researchers have been trying to apply semantic Web technologies to media fragments and annotations. Linked data has brought forward a promising way to expose, index and search media fragments and annotations which used to be isolated in different applications. This paper discusses in depth three key research problems when applying linked data principles in multimedia annotations: choosing URIs for media fragments, dereferencing media fragments and ontology alignment. An architecture is designed based on the possible solutions of the research problems. The key idea of the architecture is that it should act like an extra layer built on top of old applications when publishing linked data. A demo is built as an implementation of the architecture to show that media fragments can be published and linked to various datasets in the linked data cloud. In the future, some algorithms should be designed to make full use of the interlinked media fragments and annotations for indexing and searching

Current global food production is sufficient to meet human nutritional needs in 2050 provided there is radical societal adaptation

We present a quantitative analysis of global and regional food supply to reveal the ows of calories, protein and the micro-nutrients vitamin A, iron and zinc, from production through to human consumption and other end points. We quantify the extent to which reductions in the amount of human-edible crops fed to animals and, less importantly, reductions in waste, could increase food supply. The current production of crops is sufficient to provide enough food for the projected global population of 9.7 billion in 2050, although very significant changes to the socio-economic conditions of many (ensuring access to the global food supply) and radical changes to the dietary choices of most (replacing most meat and dairy with plant-based alternatives, and greater acceptance of human-edible crops currently fed to animals, especially maize, as directly-consumed human food) would be required. Under all scenarios, the scope for biofuel production is limited. Our analysis finds no nutritional case for feeding human-edible crops to animals, which reduces calorie and protein supplies. If society continues on a ‘business-as-usual’ dietary trajectory, a 119% increase in edible crops grown will be required by 2050

The relative greenhouse gas impacts of realistic dietary choices

The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embodied in 61 different categories of food are used, with information on the diet of different groups of the population (omnivorous, vegetarian and vegan), to calculate the embodied GHG emissions in different dietary scenarios. We calculate that the embodied GHG content of the current UK food supply is 7.4 kg CO2e person−1 day−1, or 2.7 t CO2e person−1 y−1. This gives total food-related GHG emissions of 167 Mt CO2e (1 Mt=106 metric tonnes; CO2e being the mass of CO2 that would have the same global warming potential, when measured over 100 years, as a given mixture of greenhouse gases) for the entire UK population in 2009. This is 27% of total direct GHG emissions in the UK, or 19% of total GHG emissions from the UK, including those embodied in goods produced abroad. We calculate that potential GHG savings of 22% and 26% can be made by changing from the current UK-average diet to a vegetarian or vegan diet, respectively. Taking the average GHG saving from six vegetarian or vegan dietary scenarios compared with the current UK-average diet gives a potential national GHG saving of 40 Mt CO2e y−1. This is equivalent to a 50% reduction in current exhaust pipe emissions from the entire UK passenger car fleet. Hence realistic choices about diet can make substantial differences to embodied GHG emissions

Our House Is On Fire:The Climate Emergency and Computing’s Responsibility

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