Evaluating Austrian resource efficiency. Material and energy use in relation to CO2 emissions, biodiversity and ecosystem services both from a production- and consumption-based perspective.

Resource efficiency is an important issue in the global and in particular the EU policy arena. In 2011, the EU published a flagship initiative on a “resource efficient Europe” (European Commission, 2011a) followed by a... [ view full abstract ]

Resource efficiency is an important issue in the global and in particular the EU policy arena. In 2011, the EU published a flagship initiative on a “resource efficient Europe” (European Commission, 2011a) followed by a roadmap guiding the implementation of the initiative (European Commission, 2011b). Similar policy documents were published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (OECD, 2011, 2004), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, 2011, 2007) and most recently the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015). In their programmes, the EU promotes a material use indicator as resource efficiency headline indicator, that is, domestic material consumption (DMC) (EC 2011b; Fischer-Kowalski et al. 2011), but recommends to complement it with a dashboard of indicators on energy, water, land, as well as carbon (EC 2011b, 21). In 2014 the EU complemented its resource efficiency policy with a programme on a circular economy (European Commission, 2014).

In this presentation, we present the full set of environmental accounts for Austrian for the years 1960 to 2013, including material use, energy use, land use, water use and CO2 emissions. All indicators on resource use will be presented from a production-based perspective (domestic or territorial accounts) as well as a consumption-based perspective (footprint-type indicators). The footprint calculations use the multi-regional Input-Output Model Eora (Lenzen et al., 2013, 2012). Second, we will discuss Austrian resource efficiency and will evaluate Austrian development in relation to the EU targets formulated in the Energy Strategy (European Commission, 2010) and the resource efficiency targets specified in the Austrian Resource Efficiency Action Plan (BM LFUW, 2012). To understand the underlying drivers, we conducted a structural decomposition analysis, which results will be presented as well. The pressure indicators on material and energy flows, water and land use will then be put in relation to potential impacts, that is biodiversity loss, forgone carbon sequestration in order to evaluate damages done to the environment, both domestically by Austria production as well as globally in relation to Austrian consumption patterns.

Indicators for measuring progress towards a circular economy are still in discussion but center around a combination of material use indicators and waste statistics in order to address recycling. In our presentation we will discuss different perspectives on a circular economy and will empirically test different indicators.