Issue Brief ENTWINED 2013/04/02. Food consumption choices and climate change

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1 Issue Brief ENTWINED 2013/04/02 15 Food consumption choices and climate change By Stefan Åström. Co-authors: Susanna Roth, Jonatan Wranne, Kristian Jelse, Maria Lindblad

2 ABOUT THE LEAD-AUTHOR Stefan Åström is an environmental economist and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) expert specialised in the cross-disciplinary field of air pollution and greenhouse gas abatement. For the past eight years he has worked as a researcher at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. Primarily on projects focused on emission abatement options (including behavioural change) and emission-abatement costs. Prior to working at IVL, Stefan graduated from Gothenburg University with degrees in LCA and Environmental Economics. Stefan is a member of the Swedish representation to the UNECE CLRTAP Task Force on Integrated Assessment Modelling. His contribution to the Entwined Brief publication series is due to his teams work on climate impacts from food consumption choices in Sweden, reported in this issue brief.

3 Food consumption choices and climate change Lead-author: Stefan Åström Co-authors: Susanna Roth, Jonatan Wranne, Kristian Jelse, Maria Lindblad THIS BRIEF TARGETS Policymakers working with greenhouse gas emissions from consumption Researchers in the fields of life-cycle analysis and climate policy KEY MESSAGES Policies successfully affecting dietary choices are important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from food consumption. Emphasis on dietary choices might be sufficient when developing policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from food consumption, instead of focusing policies on locally grown food, transport distances from food production locations to stores, or how food items are produced. Vegetarian diets adjusted to the Swedish growth season have the highest potential to be climate friendly. The choice of consumer transportation mode coupled to food purchases may be as important as dietary choices with respect to the climate impact of food consumption. purpose of the issue brief: The purpose of this brief is to provide policy-relevant input and perspectives to the apparent conflict between advocating for locally grown food and policies aimed at facilitating international trade. This is done by analysing and discussing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with different food consumption patterns, where one of the available choices is to eat locally grown food. Introduction In 2006 the Swedish National Food Agency was mandated to reduce the environmental impact of food consumption. In 2009 the agency together with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered a report to the European Commission that included suggestions regarding environmentallyfriendly dietary choices. This report was rescinded by the Swedish government after criticism from the European Commission. The report was criticised for containing proposals that could encourage the purchase of Swedish goods at the expense of products from other countries, thus violating the principle of free trade within the common market. However, the potential negative impact on trade of the suggestions put forward in the report was never evaluated and compared with the potential environmental benefits. A conflict between environment and trade seemed to have occurred. This made the question of environmental impacts of locally grown food a relevant topic for the ENTWINED programme (Environment and Trade in a World of Interdependence). In 2012 the Swedish National Board of Trade published a review of the climate-benefit statements often associated with the not-fullydefined term locally grown food products. The focus of the report is on the relative climate impacts of transporting food products internationally, and the emissions associated with different stages of the food life cycle. The authors of the review concluded that ISSUE BRIEF 3

4 focusing on one single stage of the food life cycle as an indicator of climate impact can be misguiding, and specifically identified using locally-produced food as a single indicator as misguiding from a climate perspective. One of the reasons for this is that there are other factors than transport distance that determine the climate impact of food transport. To reduce GHG emissions from transporting food internationally, the review recommends global carbon taxes. To reduce GHG emissions from other parts of the food life cycle the review recommends a number of different policy instruments. All in all, correctly estimating the climate impacts of food consumption requires a systems approach. So, if reducing transport distance by advocating locally-grown food is not the most important factor in determining the GHG emissions from food consumption, what then should be done? And how? Background In Sweden, GHG emissions have decreased from 72.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 1990 to 66.2 million tonnes in (However, this reporting of emissions only considers emissions produced within Swedish borders (a production perspective).) Shifting from a production to a consumption perspective (including international transport), Sweden s 2003 GHG emissions increase from 76 to 95 million tonnes. Of these 95 million tonnes, about 80 per cent are associated with consumer consumption. Twenty five per cent are associated with the consumption need to eat, as referred to by the Swedish EPA. In short, in 2003 Swedes caused an estimated 20 million tonnes of GHG emissions through the supply of their food intake (~2 tonnes per capita). Further, when viewed from a consumption perspective, it appears that Swedish GHG emissions have increased rather than decreased over time. In a recently-published report, the Swedish EPA provides a calculation of the GHG-emission trend associated with Swedish consumption. According to the report, the total life-cycle emissions associated with Swedish consumption increased from 90 to 98 million tonnes over the period , corresponding to an increase of nine per cent. About four million tonnes of the increase is considered to have been caused by population growth. Method In order to analyse the GHG emissions associated with food in more detail as well as the emissions associated specifically with locally grown food a detailed approach is needed. We have compared the climate impact caused by choosing to purchase locally grown food with the climate impact of other types of food 4 ISSUE BRIEF

5 Agriculture Cradle-to-farm gate Food Warehouse/ Trp Trp Trp processing Retail Consumption Trp Cradle-to-store Cradle-to-grave Waste management Figure 1: General product system description and the main life cycle stages of a food product. Different scopes may be used in an LCA, depending on the focus in on the agricultural production system or the entire life cycle of the food item. consumption choices. We have also explored policies that could be used to promote the most climate friendly consumption in our analysis. The focus of our analysis was on potential measures to influence consumption choices, with the aim of reducing GHG emissions from food consumption. Since eating locally grown food is a consumer choice, we have compared it with other available consumer choices. In our analysis we considered current food consumption conditions in Sweden with respect to consumption quantities and the GHG emissions associated with consumption. Furthermore, we restricted the analysis to emissions of GHGs. Our results are thereby only applicable to the climate aspects of food consumption. We used results from previous LCAs (Life Cycle Analysis) on food items to study climate impacts resulting from different types of food consumption choices. This method ensures that all (or most) stages of the food life cycle are incorporated in a climate impact assessment. We performed case studies on different consumption bundles represented as different grocery bags, starting with a 15kg Average Bag. The quantities consumed in the Average Bag and variations on the contents of this bag, representing alternative consumption choices were approximated from Swedish consumption statistics. The variations included an all-beef bag, a vegetarian bag adapted to the Swedish growth season, a standard vegetarian bag, a standard locally grown food bag, and a locally grown food bag adapted to the Swedish growth season. The two vegetarian diets included dairy and egg products. The climate impact of each category of bags was also compared with the climate impact of transporting groceries to homes by car and that of reducing wastage of food. We also performed a literature review to identify policy solutions that could be suitable to reduce the climate impact from food consumption, given the results of the LCA analysis. Our key results suggest that: Choosing a vegetarian diet adjusted to the Swedish growing seasonal had the highest potential to be climate friendly (lowest associated GHG emissions). The Swedish seasonal aspect could be an important factor influencing the total climate impact of the grocery bag. The relative importance depended on the amount of meet in the grocery bag. The importance of the seasonal aspect for GHG emissions increased in a grocery bag containing relatively low shares or amounts of beef. In vegetarian grocery bags the importance of the Swedish seasonal aspect was quite high. Electing to transport purchased food by car was in our example as important as non-vegetarian dietary choices with respect to climate impact. Average bag Beef Swedish seasonal veg. Veg. Local Swedish seasonal Local Bread and grain mill products Pasta Rice Potatoes Fruits and berries Vegetables, out of which: Root vegetables & beans & peas Other fresh vegetables Fish Meat, out of which: Beef & lamb Pork Poultry Milk and milk products Eggs Other products (estimate) Table 1: Grocery-bag categories and their contents (in kg). ISSUE BRIEF 5

6 GHG Emissions from Swedish grocery bags Swedish seasonal vegetarian Vegetarian Swedish seasonal Local Average Beef Average, with 20 km transport to home per week by car Average, with 40 km transport to home per week by car kg GHG / grocery bag Bread and grain mill products Pasta and rice Potatoes Fruits an berries Vegetables Figure 2: GHG emissions associated with analysed grocery bags. The error bars represent low and high global warming potential estimates and also include impacts from varying the food items contained in a specific grocery bag. The total GHG emissions associated with the grocery bags analysed were sensitive to the assumed Global Warming Potential (GWP) estimate per kg product for the various food categories. However, in our data, the variance in total GHG emissions associated with a given grocery bag was influenced more significantly by the selection of food items included in the food category than by which study the data originated from. With regard to the climate impact associated with locally produced food, is that when we used the LOW GWP estimate in the GHG emission calculations the Average, Local and Swedishseasonal grocery bags were associated with very similar GHG emissions (19.2, 19.0, 18.6 kg CO 2e respectively). However, we note that we did not apply a local beef GWP estimate in the calculations. Fish Meat Milk and milk products Eggs Other products (estimate) Transport to home If our grocery bags correspond to 50 per cent of the food purchased, and if all Swedes would have eaten a diet corresponding to our Swedish seasonal vegetarian grocery bag, current annual Swedish GHG emissions from food consumption could be reduced by approximately 3.6 million tonnes CO 2e. Conclusions Based on these results and considering the data used to derive the results we conclude that, from a climate perspective, it would be useful for policymakers to start efforts to reduce GHG emissions directly associated with food consumption by discussing and trying to influence what we eat. Focusing on locally-grown food, transport distance of food items to stores, or how food items are produced may not be necessary initially. It is also important to influence how consumers transport food from stores to their homes in order to achieve further GHG emission reductions resulting from the food life cycle. WAY FORWARD We suggest that efforts should be made to develop a standard methodology for estimating life-cycle GHG emissions resulting from food consumption. Such a standard is an important requisite for assessing policy options, such as economic instruments or public-sector serving requirements. POLICY IMPLICATIONS We suggest that the possibility of developing consumeroriented policy packages should be explored. Such policy packages could contain information measures, such as voluntary agreements on food exposure in restaurants and stores, economic measures such as increased relative prices of beef, and regulatory measures such as requiring an increase in the share of climate-friendly in food served in public-sector restaurants. Beef & meat sensitivity CO 2e / kg meat CO 2e per bag LOW Best estimate HIGH Average bag Av. Bag - Low Swedish beef GWP Av. Bag - Low share of beef Av. Bag - More veg., 1 kg meat Av. Bag - More veg., 1 kg meat, low share of beef Av. Bag - No beef grocery bag Swedish Seasonal Low share of beef Corresponding Vegetarian Swedish seasonal More veg., 1 kg meat, low share of beef Corresponding Vegetarian Table 2: Sensitivity analysis. 6 ISSUE BRIEF

7 Issue Brief Stockholm 2013/04/02 ENTWINED Box SE Stockholm Sweden, +46 (0) Editor: Maria Kardborn, Communication Manager ENTWINED Financed by Mistra Production: Capito AB Photography: Istockphoto Printed by: Tryckeri AB Orion, 2013 ISSUE BRIEF 7

8 The reseach programme ENTWINED Environment and Trade in a World of Interdependence examines the interplay between the global trade regime and environmental policies promulgated by governments and private entities with a particular focus on the treatment of transboundary problems. ENTWINED is actively engaged with policy makers and other stakeholders to the Trade and Environment Debate. The team includes researchers specializing in environmental and natural resource economics, international economics and trade law. The programme has its focus in Sweden, but engages leading experts in other locations, including Geneva, New York, Washington and Montreal. The ENTWINED programme is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, Mistra, see