New Publications and Tool for Capital Inclusive Footprint Calculations in US

Two new papers published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology describe methods for endogenizing capital in the USEEIO model, and quantify the contributions of capital to Carbon, Energy, Material footprints in the US in 2007 and 2012, using recently released updated Make and Use Tables.

The first paper by Miller et al. develops and describes a detailed capital flow matrix to endogenize capital in the US Input Ouptut tables for 2007 and 2012. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12931

The second paper by Berrill et al. shows that capital consumption represents a substantial portion of environmental footprints in the US, particularly in the housing, government expenditures, gasoline, and healthcare sectors. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12953

In addition to the endogenization of capital, extensions to the USEEIO model from Wengersen, Yang and collegaues include the addition of household combustion sectors (personal automobiles and residential fuel combustion), and modifications/updates to the satellite tables.

We developed a free-to-use tool, Capital Inclusive Footprint Tool for United States (CIFT-US), where users can enter current dollars in purchasers or producers prices for the 408 sectors of our IO model, and calculate the capital inclusive/exclusive footprints, the portion from capital, and which production sectors contributed to the overall footprints. This would be suitable for quick calculations, and classroom demonstrations where users do not need to get into the matrix math.

Read more, download the tool, and check out our instructional YouTube video from the project page https://cie.research.yale.edu/project_main/incorporating-capital-american-carbon-energy-and-material-footprints

Sorry for the type above, this work builds upon the USEEIO model of Ingwersen, Yang, and colleagues. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.04.150