BC3 Seminar: “Carbon footprint of human settlements in Spain”

BC3  Seminars
“Carbon footprint of human settlements in Spain”

Guadalupe Arce
Member of the Global Energy and Environmental Economics Analysis Research Group (GEAR).
University of Castilla – La Mancha

Abstract: The role of towns and their inhabitants in fighting climate change is becoming increasingly important (Shi et al., 2016). In this context, we propose to apply a multi-regional input-output model to study the evolution of the carbon footprint for Spanish households as determined by the different type of settlement. This study analyses the household carbon footprint as a function of the municipality’s population size, whether it is located in a rural or urban environment, and its relation to population density. By using a multi-regional model, we are able to calculate the share of that carbon footprint that is generated within the settlement and the share that is produced around the world along global value chains. This methodology has been widely applied to study carbon footprints for households in terms of different characteristics: income levels (R. Duarte, A. Mainar, & J. Sánchez-Chóliz, 2012), age (Shigetomi, Nansai, Kagawa, & Tohno, 2014), consumption of agriculture products (L.-A. López, Cadarso, Gómez, & Tobarra, 2015), or tourism consumption (Cadarso, Gómez, López, & Tobarra, 2016). The structure of household consumption as a function of the type of settlement will be used to analyse whether socio-economic features are the greatest influence in the level of carbon footprint, or by the contrary, structural, institutional or geographical factors of the settlement are more relevant. Previous literature has addressed this link in other countries, for instance Fan, Guo, Marinova, Wu, and Zhao (2012), J. Minx et al. (2013), Baiocchi, Creutzig, Minx, and Pichler (2015) or Ahmad, Baiocchi, and Creutzig (2015), but not for the Spanish case.

Lecturer´s Personal Website

• https://blog.uclm.es/grupogear/people/guadalupe-arce/
• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guadalupe_Arce3

Research interests

• Input-Output Analysis
• International Trade
• Anthropogenical Footprints
• Emissions Balances
• MRIO Model

My main area of interest is the measurement of the role of international trade in carbon footprint, the study of emissions responsibility criteria, alternative to the producer criterion (for example, control-based based accounting) and the analysis of the role of household consumption in the environmental footprints considering their different characteristics, especially income inequality, which implies the analysis of policies which focus on consumers’ lifestyle in order to mitigate the Climate Change.