Finnish Environment Institute, press release 2024/9/25
Particularly in the chemicals, metals, forestry, and electronics industries, Finnish companies produce and export goods with significantly lower carbon footprints than the global average. Lack of standardized methods results in uncertainties in the assessments. Thus, further methodological development is needed.
The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) has provided first estimates of the carbon handprint of Finland’s exports. According to the estimates, Finnish industries generated a carbon handprint of 13-23 million tonnes CO2eq in 2019 compared to a situation where Finnish products and services were not available on the global markets.
Traditionally, climate change mitigation efforts have focused on tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon and climate footprints based on life cycle assessment (LCA) have established their role as the standardized metric for monitoring progress in climate change mitigation. In recent years, these footprint-type indicators have been accompanied by the emergence of the carbon or climate handprints. Carbon handprint refers to possible climate benefits that could result from substituting a product or service with a less emission-intensive alternative.
The handprint concept has recently gained a momentum in Finland, with Finnish government actively supporting the development of the handprint concept. The government program of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo intends to establish specific handprint-based targets for Finnish exports and incorporate the handprint approach into EU climate reporting legislation.
Estimating carbon handprint is challenging, but allows comparison of products from different origins
Finland's carbon handprint for exported goods and services has been estimated by the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) for the year 2019. The estimate is the first that does not concentrate just on specific goods or services but rather encompasses the entire national economy, covering 56 product and service categories.
The findings indicated that handprint for Finnish exports ranged between 13 and 23 million tons CO2-eq., depending on where the alternative products and services were assumed to be produced. The smallest handprint was generated when it was assumed that Finnish exports replaced equivalent product groups from different countries according to the observed market shares. The largest handprint in turn was generated when it was assumed that the Finnish exports replaced the equivalent, global average product groups.
The results differ, because in the first scenario, many of the replaced product groups originated from other EU countries, where production emissions are comparable to those of Finnish manufacture. However, when using the global average, the carbon footprints of competing products are generally higher. The second scenario thus includes more countries where energy production emissions are higher and production methods less advanced than in Finland.
The largest carbon handprints were generated when products manufactured in Finland replaced other foreign products from the chemical, metal, forestry, and electronics industries. The handprints of these products groups varied slightly between reference scenarios described above. In turn, eleven of the product groups did not produce any positive carbon handprint, because their carbon footprints were even greater than the global average.
In Syke’s assessment, the products were presumed to replace only corresponding products. In this regard, Syke’s method differs from previous studies as it does not consider product substitution across product group boundaries. Such product substitution across product group boundaries can occur, for example, when biofuels replace fossil fuels in transportation. In future work, Syke plans to explore, how to systematically account for this kind of product replacement on a level of a whole national economy in further work. In the most ideal case, a carbon handprint could emerge as a result of a sustainability transition, where carbon-intensive systems are replaced by new, low-carbon systems.
Handprints are sensitive to assumptions about the products being replaced
The assessment made it evident that carbon handprint results are sensitive to assumptions about which foreign products Finnish products would replace in global markets. Additionally, the results are sensitive to the product group-specific emission factors.
Syke’s carbon handprint calculation uses environmentally extended input-output modeling. The method allocates the greenhouse gas emissions from production to final product groups, after which carbon footprints of Finnish and equivalent foreign product groups are compared. The modeling approach allows the life cycle emissions, or carbon footprints, of product groups from different origins to be determined in a comparable way. However, the method does not account for land-use impacts caused by products or services. Including these impacts would be important for the carbon handprint assessment, but the data availability does not yet allow for this.
The study was part of the "Carbon Handprint for Finland – Challenges and Data" project, funded by the Ministry of the Environment. The project produced an assessment of the carbon handprint of Finland’s goods and services exports and evaluated the challenges, uncertainties, and available data.
More information
Leading researcher Laura Sokka, +358 50 476 2057, laura.sokka@syke.fi
Group manager, senior researcher Hannu Savolainen, +358 50 464 2477, hannu.savolainen@syke.fi
Development manager, leading researcher Sampo Soimakallio, +358 40 707 6891, sampo.soimakallio@syke.fi