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To promote transparency and provide information, the Federal Planning Bureau regularly publishes the methods and results of its works. The publications are organised in different series, such as Outlooks, Working Papers and Planning Papers. Some reports can be consulted here, along with the Short Term Update newsletters that were published until 2015. You can search our publications by theme, publication type, author and year.
The traditional attribution of responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to producing countries may be distorted by international trade flows as importing emission-intensive commodities contributes to reducing a country’s production-based emissions. This has motivated the calculation of carbon footprints that measure the amount of domestic and foreign GHG emissions (directly and indirectly) embodied in commodities intended for final consumption by a country’s residents. In this working paper, we present carbon footprint estimations for Belgium based on global multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables that have been made consistent with detailed Belgian national accounts. According to our calculations, Belgium’s carbon footprint is substantially higher than its productionbased emissions, which means that Belgium is a net importer of GHG emissions. Moreover, our results show that consistency with detailed national accounts does matter for MRIO-based carbon footprint calculations, in particular for a small open economy like Belgium.
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Themes
Environmental economic accounts and analyses > Analyses and applications
Environmental economic accounts and analyses > Environmental economic accounts
Sectoral accounts and analyses > Analyses and applications
Sectoral accounts and analyses > Input-output tables and extensions
Structural studies > Globalisation, international trade and offshoring
JEL
Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > Mathematical Methods and Programming > Input-Output Models [C67]
International Economics > Trade > Trade and Environment [F18]
Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics > Environmental Economics > Climate; Natural Disasters; Global Warming [Q54]
Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics > Environmental Economics > Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth [Q56]
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