Project: ÖRME 4 - Rohmaterialäquivalente Österre...

Master data
ÖRME 4 - Rohmaterialäquivalente Österreich 4: Rohmaterialäquivalente (RME) des österreichischen Außenhandels - Vergleich unterschiedlicher Berechnungssysteme
Description: Wie in den meisten Industrieländern spielen auch in Österreich Importe und Exporte eine zunehmend wichtige Rolle im gesamten Materialverbrauch. Die Materialflussrechnung (MFA) zeigt, dass Importe derzeit ca. 35% des Österreichischen Materialverbrauchs (DMC) ausmachen. Gleichzeitig werden mehr und mehr Länder in die globalen Austauschbeziehungen integriert. Nationale Ressourcennutzung hängt daher stark mit internationalem Handel und der globalen Arbeitsteilung zusammen. Importe höher verarbeiteter Güter haben zu Ressourceneinsparungen im Importland geführt, da vorgelagerte Materialflüsse in der Produktion des importierten Gutes in der wirtschaftsräumlichen MFA nicht berücksichtigt werden. Anders, wenn die Rohmaterialäquivalente der Importe und Exporte berechnet werden, welche diesen vorgelagerten Materialverbrauch quantifizieren. In Vorgängerprojekten haben wir die RME des Österreichischen Außenhandels in Zeitreihe für 1995-2007 unter Verwendung eines hybriden IO-Modells berechnet. Diese hybride IO Modell verwendet Österreichische Input-Output Tabellen und ergänzt sie um physische Koeffizienten aus der Lebenszyklusanalyse (LCA). The Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Materialverbrauch inkl. der RME im Jahr um 45 Millionen Tonnen (oder 28%) höher als der direkte Materialverbrauch (DMC) ist. Der Materialverbrauch pro Kopf beläuft sich dann auf 25 t/Kopf statt der 20 t/Kopf im Falle des DMC. In der internationalen Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft finden derzeit verschiedene Methoden in der Berechnung der RME Anwendung: reine IO Modelle (single-region oder multi-regional), Koeffizienten-Modelle, oder hybride IO-Modelle, die diese beide Ansätze kombinieren. In ÖRME4 werden wir verschiedene Berechnungsmethoden verwenden, um die RME für Österreich im Jahr 2007 zu berechnen und die Ergebnisse mit jenen der oben präsentierten hybriden IO Methode vergleichen. Diese 4 Methoden sind: (1) MRIO Modell „EORA“, (2) MRIO Modell basierend auf dem „Global Trade Analysis Project“ (GTAP), (3) MRIO Modell „World Input-Output Database“ (WIOD), und (4) die RME Koeffizienten entwickelt von Eurostat.
Keywords: MFA Methoden, Handel und natürliche Ressourcen, Österreich, Materialnutzung, Handel, Ressourcennutzung, RME
ÖRME 4
Description: As is the case for most industrialized countries, imports and exports play an increasingly important role in terms of Austria’s material throughput. Material flow analysis (MFA) shows that imports currently account for approximately 35% of Austria’s domestic material consumption (DMC). At the same time, more and more countries are involved in global trade. Therefore, resource use at the national level strongly depends on patterns in international trade and division of labour. Hitherto, the import of highly-processed goods has led to resource ‘savings’ in the MFA logic as the intermediate inputs of material and energy required in the production of traded goods were not accounted for in the resource use of the importing country. This changes when the so-called raw material equivalents (RME) of trade are calculated and import and export flows are considered including their used upstream material requirements. We have calculated the RME of Austria’s trade for a time series spanning from 1995 to 2008 using a hybrid method which is based on both economic input-output and physical life cycle analysis (LCA) data. The results show that the RME are notably greater in magnitude than the direct trade flows with which they are associated. In 2005, both the mass of exported and the imported RME was approximately 3 times larger than Austria’s direct exports and imports. By taking the upstream requirements associated with trade flows into account, we obtain a new picture of material use in the Austrian economy. In 2005, Austria’s material consumption as expressed in RME (i.e. raw material consumption or RMC) was 45 million t (or 28%) higher than its direct material consumption (DMC) which does not take the intermediate inputs into account. This corresponds to 25t/cap in terms of RMC compared to 20t/cap in terms of DMC. These results highlight the need to consider the associated upstream flows of trade when it comes to assessing the dematerialization or development of resource efficiency in the Austrian economy. This also applies to assessing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with Austria’s material use: While its DMC of fossil energy carriers reached 33,6 million t in 2005, the corresponding RMC was 40,7 Mio. t. The calculation of RME allows us to further pursue several of the key research questions in social ecology and more specifically in the analysis of social metabolism. The role of trade and its impact on local and/or national metabolic patterns can be better understood. The share of a nation/an economy in global resource use can be more precisely assessed. The link between production and consumption which was difficult to capture with traditional MFA tools can be explored. The calculation of RME also opens up a category that has so far been neglected in material flow analysis: that of space and the role trade and transport therefore play in enabling a certain metabolic profile. On a less applied level, the possibility to calculate RME also opens up the question of what is an adequate entity (or social system) as a unit of analysis in a globalized world.
Keywords: RME, material use, trade, MFA methodology, Material Flow Accounting, resource use
Short title: n.a.
Period: 01.01.2012 - 31.12.2013
Contact e-mail: -
Homepage: -

Employees
Employees Role Time period
Nina Eisenmenger
Nina.Eisenmenger@aau.at
Research activities
To visiting card
(internal)
  • Project leader
  • 01.01.2012 - 31.12.2013

Assignment
Organisational unit
Fakultät für Interdisziplinäre Forschung und Fortbildung
  Institut für Soziale Ökologie (BOKU)
Schottenfeldgasse 29
1071 Wien
Austria
http://www.iff.ac.at/socec/
To organisation

Categorisation
Project type Research funding (on request / by call for proposals)
Funding type §27
Research type
  • Applied research
  • Fundamental research
Subject areas
  • 5924 - Environmental economics *
  • 2944 - Human ecology *
  • 5914 - Environmental research *
  • 5368 - Sustainable development, sustainable economics *
  • 5425 - Environmental sociology *
  • 1921 - Long-term ecological research *
Research Cluster
  • Sustainability
Gender aspects Genderrelevance not selected
Project focus
  • Science to Science (Quality indicator: n.a.)
Classification raster of the assigned organisational units:
working groups No working group selected

Cooperations
No partner organisations selected