Statistical processing

Source data

The calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from Danish production to Danish final use use Statistics Denmark's input-output tables, which have been prepared in accordance with the "System of National Accounts 2008" (SNA08) Chapters 14 and 28 of the manual outline the framework for setting up supply-use tables and how these are used for setting up input-output tables.

In addition, the emission accounts from Statistics Denmark are used.

Information from the statistics "Foreign trade in goods" and "Balance of Payments" are used to split Danish imports by country of origin.

Data from EXIOBASE, version 3.8.2, is used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the production of the imports that are included in Danish production, as well as from the production of imports directly for Danish final use.

EXIOBASE is a database of global, multi-regional, environmental economic IO tables constructed by collating national IO tables, macroeconomic aggregates and trade statistics and balancing them against each other. EXIOBASE's sector- and country-distributed greenhouse gas emissions are calculated by combining data on economic activities with emission factors from the TEAM model. Further details are described in the article Stadler et al, 2018. The development and maintenance of EXIOBASE is handled by a consortium consisting of NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research), SERI (The Sustainable Europe Research Institute), Universiteit Leiden (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and 2 .-0 LCA Consultants.

Frequency of data collection

The sources from Statistics Denmark (the input-output tables and the emissions account) are based on data that is collected continuously, typically with an annual frequency.

EXIOBASE 3.8.2 is originally a time series of annual environmental economic IO tables from 1995-2011. In these years, each table is made with annually collected data. From 2011-2021, EXIOBASE has projected their tables themselves by balancing them against annually collected macroeconomic aggregates, trade statistics and emissions data (see details in readme.txt in EXIOBASE 3.8.2's Zenodo repository). However, these data were only available as projections for 2020 and 2021, when EXIOBASE 3.8.2 was compiled in 2021. No updates have been made available since then. From 1990-1995, the calculation of the climate footprint uses EXIOBASE data from 1995.

Data collection

The sources from Statistics Denmark (the IO tables from the national accounts and the emissions accounts) are drawn from Statistics Denmark's internal databases, but are also publicly available via Statbank.

EXIOBASE 3.8.2 is downloaded from this Zenodo repository.

Data validation

The output from the climate footprint model is validated by assessing the reasonableness of levels and developments in aggregates, such as Denmark's total annual climate footprint divided by exporting countries. In addition, it is checked that the total emissions from each Danish industry are equal to the industry-distributed emissions in the emissions account.

Data compilation

The climate footprint is calculated with the multiregional environmental economic IO model (MRIO), which links data from Statistics Denmark on Danish production and emissions with data from EXIOBASE on international production and emissions. First, the Danish IO table is used to calculate the Danish production to supply the various types of Danish final use, as well as the imports to supply this production. Next, industry-distributed emission intensities from the emissions accounts are used to calculate the emissions from this Danish production. Next, the imports are transformed into EXIOBASE's industry and country dimensions, after which EXIOBASE's IO table is used to calculate the global production of imports to Danish production of Danish final use, as well as of imports directly to Danish final use. Next, EXIOBASE's sector- and country-distributed emission intensities are used to calculate the emissions from this global production.

The climate footprint model is described further in this report to Eurostat

The statistic is compiled based on a so-called attributional method. This means that the statistics link parts of the actual global greenhouse gas emissions in a historical year to different parts of the actual Danish final use in that year. An input-output model calculation based on the attributional method is best suited to analyze the effects of marginal interventions in the economy that do not require significant structural changes to be implemented. It will therefore be problematic to use the statistics to analyze how the emissions from production to Danish final use would have been different if Danish final use had been significantly different. This means, for example, that it is problematic to use the statistics to say that if Danish consumers had bought X percent less food, then the Danish climate footprint would have been Y percent lower, where X is a significant change in food consumption.

Alternatively, you can work with a so-called consequential method, where the calculation aims to model some of the adaptations in the production structure that would actually occur if demand changed significantly. For example, the need for electricity that would come from a significantly increased demand in the Danish economy today would probably be met with new wind turbines or solar parks, and not with an average of the total electricity supply as it looks today. Schaubroeck et al, 2021, provides further explanation of the differences between an attributional and consequential methodological approach.

Adjustment

Not relevant for these statistics.