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Is there a serious source ranking all global CO2 emissions? Where percentages add up to 100%?

by iTokio 6y ago

treve 6y ago
I don't have the answer, but I can imagine this is hard to compile because so many things emit CO2 all over their supply chain. So the question becomes, when do you consider something the 'final' product in the line. If it's cement, you presumably can't count 'construction' as it would be double-counted. Do you count an iPhone just during production? Or do you include shipping? If you include shipping, you can't have 'cargo ships' as it's own category.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  Why would it be hard to compile? Costs over supply chains are calculated all the time. And we don't have to look at IPhones, we just have to look at the subset of processes that emit non-neglible amounts of CO2 regardless of if they are the final product or not.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - josmala 6y ago
    The problem is deciding categories, and what to account for what and duplicate accounting of same operation in different sources and differences in accounting and not everybody doing it the exact same way and lack of transparency for sub-components. Think about making steel for wind turbines, or transporting sand for base of wind turbines. Both actions should be accounted on wind turbines co2 emissions, but also they should be accounted for transportation/steel industry and construction. Everything is interdependent. But lets put things in perspective what is ineffective, in Finland home electricity use is 7% of all energy products used in the country, and still people concentrate on that you should make marginal reductions in your electricity usage to reduce CO2 emissions.
- stanmancan 6y ago
  I would argue cargo ships don’t need their own category in that case since they don’t exist for any other reason than to be part of the supply chain or other goods. All cargo ship pollution can be attributed to the cargo they’re transporting.
  - _puk 6y ago
    There was an interesting pilot performed by SEI (Stockholm Environmental Institute) and UCL, using shipping data from Brazil, that tried to attribute shipping emissions to commodity type [0] 0: https://www.sei.org/publications/shipping-emissions-per-commodity/#figure-2-global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-maritime-shipping-of-brazilian-exports-2014 https://www.sei.org/publications/shipping-emissions-per-comm...
  - kijin 6y ago
    Collapsing all the categories will make it difficult to say things like "Using locally sourced construction materials will reduce our carbon emissions by x%," or "Our new SolarShip(tm) technology will reduce cargo ship emissions by y%, which amounts to z% of global emissions." We don't need to eliminate categories, we just need to be clever in the way we present data. For example, there's nothing particularly difficult to understand in the statement "Cement is responsible for 8% of the world's CO2 emissions, half of which is from transportation, 1/3 of which is from cargo ships." If we likewise break down each category into its major sub-components, the sub-components can be recombined in different ways to produce a lot of interesting and actionable data. Having several charts side-by-side is much better than fighting over a single chart that doesn't add up to 100%.
  - anonymfus 6y ago
    But ultimately the main purpose of such stat is to make policy decisions to reduce amount of greenhouse emissions, and so it should show effects of the both making cargo ships more emmision efficient and reducing amount of things people buy. So it's better to let it overlap.
jekdoce 6y ago
Here is a pie chart (globally) from epa.gov: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_em...
discordance 6y ago
Our World in Data is usually my go to for reliable data: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Is there a serious source ranking all global CO2 emissions? Where percentages add up to 100%?

by iTokio 6y ago

Is there a serious source ranking all global CO2 emissions? Where percentages add up to 100%?

I don't have the answer, but I can imagine this is hard to compile because so many things emit CO2 all over their supply chain. So the question becomes, when do you consider something the 'final' product in the line. If it's cement, you presumably can't count 'construction' as it would be double-counted. Do you count an iPhone just during production? Or do you include shipping? If you include shipping, you can't have 'cargo ships' as it's own category.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Why would it be hard to compile? Costs over supply chains are calculated all the time. And we don't have to look at IPhones, we just have to look at the subset of processes that emit non-neglible amounts of CO2 regardless of if they are the final product or not.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- josmala 6y ago
  The problem is deciding categories, and what to account for what and duplicate accounting of same operation in different sources and differences in accounting and not everybody doing it the exact same way and lack of transparency for sub-components. Think about making steel for wind turbines, or transporting sand for base of wind turbines. Both actions should be accounted on wind turbines co2 emissions, but also they should be accounted for transportation/steel industry and construction. Everything is interdependent. But lets put things in perspective what is ineffective, in Finland home electricity use is 7% of all energy products used in the country, and still people concentrate on that you should make marginal reductions in your electricity usage to reduce CO2 emissions.
stanmancan 6y ago
I would argue cargo ships don’t need their own category in that case since they don’t exist for any other reason than to be part of the supply chain or other goods. All cargo ship pollution can be attributed to the cargo they’re transporting.
- _puk 6y ago
  There was an interesting pilot performed by SEI (Stockholm Environmental Institute) and UCL, using shipping data from Brazil, that tried to attribute shipping emissions to commodity type [0] 0: https://www.sei.org/publications/shipping-emissions-per-commodity/#figure-2-global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-maritime-shipping-of-brazilian-exports-2014 https://www.sei.org/publications/shipping-emissions-per-comm...
- kijin 6y ago
  Collapsing all the categories will make it difficult to say things like "Using locally sourced construction materials will reduce our carbon emissions by x%," or "Our new SolarShip(tm) technology will reduce cargo ship emissions by y%, which amounts to z% of global emissions." We don't need to eliminate categories, we just need to be clever in the way we present data. For example, there's nothing particularly difficult to understand in the statement "Cement is responsible for 8% of the world's CO2 emissions, half of which is from transportation, 1/3 of which is from cargo ships." If we likewise break down each category into its major sub-components, the sub-components can be recombined in different ways to produce a lot of interesting and actionable data. Having several charts side-by-side is much better than fighting over a single chart that doesn't add up to 100%.
- anonymfus 6y ago
  But ultimately the main purpose of such stat is to make policy decisions to reduce amount of greenhouse emissions, and so it should show effects of the both making cargo ships more emmision efficient and reducing amount of things people buy. So it's better to let it overlap.

jekdoce 6y ago

Here is a pie chart (globally) from epa.gov: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_em...

discordance 6y ago

Our World in Data is usually my go to for reliable data: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector