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Tracking the Flows of
Energy and Materials
INTRODUCTION
Consumption becomes environmentally important because of the
manner or extent to which it transforms materials and energy. Therefore,
to understand the environmental impacts of consumption, one must un-
derstand anthropogenic changes in the flows of materials and energy.
This chapter presents four brief reports, taken from presentations at the
workshop, that track flows of energy and environmentally important
materials or propose methods for tracking them. These reports suggest
what can be learned by following materials and energy flows. Their
bibliographies point to other related work.
Iddo Wernick analyzes aggregate and per-dollar materials flows
within the United States, using weight and volume as indicators. A1-
though these units are not always good proxies for environmental im-
pacts, the analysis provides a first approximation to importance by show-
ing which human-environment interactions are the largest; by identifying
trends, it highlights the materials that are likely to be increasing or de-
creasing as environmental problems. For instance, many materials used
in bulk, such as steel and wood, are becoming less important aspects of
economic activity, and special-purpose materials used in lesser quantity,
such as special alloys, plastics, and coated papers, are becoming more
important (see Larson et al., 1986~. The new materials have quite different
environmental impacts from one another. The use of paper, despite the
information revolution, has continued to increase in absolute terms and
26
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
27
has held steady on a per-gross-national-product (GNP) basis throughout
this century. This sort of analysis, combined with information on the per-
unit environmental impacts of the production and consumption of par-
ticular materials, can suggest which kinds of consumption are likely to
remain, or to become, environmentally important.
David Allen's report focuses on wastes, including air pollutants as
well as solid wastes. Allen identifies the sources of these wastes by type
of industry. He also illustrates, with an analysis of the inputs and wastes
associated with producing a kilogram of polyethylene, how the environ-
mental impacts of particular materials or energy transformations can be
examined. Data like these can be combined with production data and
estimates of the toxicity of each type of emission to yield comparative
quantitative assessments of the environmental significance of each prod-
uct of the chemical industry or some other segment of the economy. This
sort of analysis can clarify the relative environmental importance of dif-
ferent kinds of economic activity.
David Allen's approach is similar to one that has been used in energy
analysis since the 1970s. Applying the approach to materials is more
difficult, however, because materials differ qualitatively to the extent that
it is not always meaningful to convert them to a common unit such as
joules or kilograms. In addition, unlike energy, which dissipates as waste
heat, many materials need to be tracked even after they are "used," be-
cause they continue to be transported through the environment and may
reappear in environmentally significant ways.
Lee Schipper's report disaggregates one class of environmentally im-
portant consumption. Schipper looks in detail at travel, a significant and
growing factor in fossil energy use and associated climatic change and
pollution. He disaggregates changes over time in carbon emissions from
motor vehicles in wealthy countries into those attributable to levels of
activity (passenger-kilometers traveled), energy intensity (fuel per pas-
senger-kilometer), and the fuel-use characteristics of the vehicles, and
then to finer levels of detail. For instance, he examines activity levels as a
function of such variables as numbers of vehicles, load factors, and num-
ber and average distance of trips. He finds that while fuel consumption
for travel was leveling off in the United States, largely because of de-
creases in fuel used per vehicle-kilometer between 1973 and 1991 (but not
thereafter), this trend was not observed in other Organization for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries: in all
the countries studied, levels of activity have continued to increase since
the 1970s with no sign of saturation in any country. The higher level of
automobile travel in the United States is attributable to a greater number
of trips of about the same average length as in other OECD countries.
Schipper also examines such factors as sex and age of drivers. This sort of
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28
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
analysis is useful for separating technological influences on environmen-
tally significant consumption from behavioral ones; projecting the likely
environmental impacts of travel as a function of changes in incomes, age
distribution, household composition, labor force participation, and other
variables; and estimating the effects of policies to reduce emissions, such
as fuel taxes, on different kinds of drivers.
Faye Duchin explores the possibility of developing a classification
system for households, akin to the Standard Industrial Classification sys-
tem, as a way to facilitate disaggregating consumption by household type
and by activities within these types, and to make possible systematic
study of issues of consumption and "lifestyle" such as those raised in
Schipper's work. Noting that various market research firms have devel-
oped household classifications for short-term marketing purposes, Duchin
suggests that a similar form of classification might be useful for detailed
analysis of household consumption, including environmentally signifi-
cant consumption. She notes that developing classification schemes for
different countries may help illuminate the kinds of broad changes in
household consumption patterns occurring in developing countries.
All four reports illustrate the potential value of tracking and disag-
gregating environmentally significant human activities. Such efforts ad-
vance understanding by clarifying which actions and which actors are
most responsible for particular environmental changes and which make
little difference. The results of such classifications could suggest where
the greatest potential lies for reducing the environmental impact of hu-
man activity. In addition, by identifying some of the immediate purposes
for which people undertake activities that cause environmental damage
(e.g., travel to work), this sort of research can identify sources of resis-
tance to policy interventions and thus alert policy makers to challenges
facing their efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of consumption.
REFERENCE
Larson, E.D., M.H. Ross, and R.H. Williams
1986 Beyond the era of materials. Scientific American 254 Qune):3441.
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
CONSUMING MATERIALS: THE AMERICAN WAY
Iddo K. Wernick
29
I focus in this paper on characterizing consumption by providing an
account of all the physical materials consumed in the United States and a
framework for assessing the relative scales and environmental relevance
of that consumption. Assessing the materials consumption of a nation
requires viewing (a) the total volume of materials consumed, (b) the com-
position of that total, (c) how these change with time, (d) forces driving
those changes, (e) foreign trade in raw materials, and (f) the prospects for
large-scale materials recovery. Together, these allow us to view materials
consumption comprehensively and place particular instances and anec-
dotes in proper perspective.
Since the oil price shocks of the 1970s many have studied energy
consumption at the national level, examining consumption trends over
time, the mix of fuels used, and alternatives for the future (United Na-
tions, 1978; World Energy Conference, 1974~. Such studies provide the
analytic tools that have documented the slowing growth of primary en-
ergy consumption and its decoupling from U.S. economic development
(Nakicenovic, 1996~. Although the analogy is imperfect, materials would
similarly benefit from this approach but have not yet enjoyed the same
scrutiny for several reasons. The same fear of imminent shortages that
focused attention on energy never gathered momentum with respect to
materials, as the proven reserve base for most material resources has
actually grown in the last decades (U.S. Congress, 1952; Goeller and
Weinberg, 1976; World Resources Institute, 1994~. Although exhausting
materials resources may, in fact, not be a priority concern with the no-
table exception of high-grade energy fuels the environmental degrada-
tion resulting from extracting, processing, consuming, and disposing
materials is.
tJ tat' 1 tat'
The heterogeneity of materials consumed in modern society presents
a further barrier to comprehensive analysis. Materials possess numerous
and diverse properties that make them attractive to consumers and deter-
mine their environmental impacts, thus weakening generalizations. While
the energy from firewood, coal, or gas is readily reduced to common units
such as joules or British thermal units, the utility of the gravel, ore, and
fertilizer materials we consume cannot be.
Although less than an ideal measuring stick, mass will serve here as
HA longer version of this paper appeared in Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
1996, 53:111-122. Printed with permission of the journal.
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30
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
the common currency for describing materials. Using mass alone ob-
scures environmentally important features of materials use, such as the
growing volume of plastics in U.S. waste streams, the high toxicity of
relatively trivial masses of industrial effluent, and the acreage disturbed
in extracting both renewable and nonrenewable resources. Nonetheless,
kilograms and tons provide objective measures for grasping the sheer
quantities of bulk materials mobilized to serve society and the relative
sizes of different materials classes. Moreover, most of the available data
on materials are either given directly in mass or can be converted to it.
CURRENT NATIONAL MATERIALS CONSUMPTION AND
TEMPORAL DYNAMICS
In 1990, the average American consumed over 50 kg of material per
day, excluding water (Wernick and Ausubel, 1995~. Consumer goods
compose a small fraction of this total; the materials required for their
production and distribution, as well as the auxiliary materials used in
their manufacture, contribute a far greater amount. To gain some per-
spective on the ratio of direct to indirect consumption, the mass of mu-
nicipal waste that Americans directly dispose of each day accounts for
less than 5 percent of the daily quantity (Franklin Associates, Ltd., 1992~.
Figure 3-1 shows the total as a sum of the six major classes of materials.
Almost 90 percent of total inputs go to providing energy, structures, and
food. Inputs of water, if included, would raise the total many fold. Min-
ing wastes (particularly for coal) are huge and represent another conse-
quence of consumption mostly hidden from the public eye. The daily 50-
kg quantity may be common to highly industrialized societies. In 1990,
Japanese consumption also summed to a little over 50 kg per capita per
day (Gotoh, 1994~.
The mix of materials consumed changes over time. For example, per
capita U.S. lumber consumption has declined markedly in this century.
At the turn of the century wood provided building materials for homes
and factories, ties and rolling stock for railroads, utility poles for tele-
phone and power lines, and fuel. Today a large fraction of harvested
wood (approximately 40 percent including residues) goes to paper mills
(Ince, 1994~. Although drastic reductions in consumption are more the
exception than the rule, wood is not unique in that both the level of
consumption and how it is used in the economy have changed.
A more aggregated account of consumption reveals wholesale
changes in the amount of physical structure materials Americans con-
sume. Figure 3-2 shows that in total tonnage per capita, reported con-
sumution appears to rise over long cycles of economic growth and then to
fluctuate during times of economic upheaval.
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
Inputs
21.5 Energy l
21.1 Construction Minerals' ~
2.7 Industrial Minerals _
1.2 Metals
~ 2.9 Forestry
/' 6.9 Agriculture
6.9 Imports
/ 56.3
1,425 Water
(consumptive use)
31
~_ Outputs
2.7 Recycled - `
19.0 Air Emissions
-
-
20.6 Domestic Stock
_ 6.1 Wastes
1.6 Dissipation
4.5 Exports
>loo Extractive Wastes
(mostly waste rock)
FIGURE 3-1 Daily per capita materials flow by mass (all values in kg): United
States about 1990. Materials are here classed as energy fuels (i.e., coal, oil, gas),
construction minerals, industrial minerals, metals, forestry products, and agricul-
tural products. Data from Wernick and Ausubel (1995~. Reprinted with permis-
sion.
12
10
8
Metric
Tons 6
4
2
o
Oft,,'
,\~
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
FIGURE 3-2 Annual per capita consumption of physical structure materials:
United States 1900-1991. Physical structure materials are here defined as con-
struction minerals, industrial minerals, forestry products. Data from Rogich et al.
(1993~; U.S. Bureau of the Census (1975~. Reprinted with permission.
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32
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
Are industrialized societies constrained to follow this path indefi-
nitely? Do improvements in the standard of living necessarily translate to
greater material consumption? Intensity of use (IOU) measures address
this question directly. IOU measures show the evolution of individual
materials used in the national economy by indexing primary, as well as
finished, materials to gross domestic product (Malenbaum, 1978~. Begin-
ning with studies done in the late 1970s, researchers noted several com-
mon patterns in the course of consumption of a material in the economy
(Williams et al., 1987~. Initially, the consumption of a particular material
exceeds general economic growth. Growing markets and newly discov-
ered uses for the material stimulate further growth. This rapid growth
eventually saturates, and consumption of that material then tracks or lags
the rest of the economy.
Figure 3-3 illustrates this phenomenon at different stages for a variety
of materials in the United States. One clear conclusion from the figure is
that more dollars in the economy do not always mean more tons. Heavy
materials such as steel, copper, lead, and lumber, all materials used for
infrastructure, became less critical to economic growth over the course of
this century. Paper seems to track economic activity in lockstep, conserv
100
10
kg/$ GNP
1
Plastic
Lu
WE
Pb,Cu,P I,
~ ~ Aluminum
I=
if_ ~ A~ I/
\~ Phosphates
Potash
~_.~ ~ ;=~~- Paper
Paper
St Plastic
Al ^ \.t
0.1 Potash,
1 900
S ~Lumber
Steel
Lead
Copper
1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
FIGURE 3-3 Materials intensity of use: United States 1900-1990. Annual con-
sumption data are divided by GNP in constant 1987 dollars and normalized to
unity in the year 1940. Data for plastics are production data. NOTE: St: Steel;
Lu: Lumber. Data from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1993-1994 and 1975~; Modern
Plastics 136~5~:71-72~1959~; plastics data from personal communication with Joel
Broyhill, Statistics Department, Society of the Plastics Industry, Washington, D.C.,
August 20, 1993. Reprinted with permission.
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
33
ing its role through the national shift from manufacturing to information
and services. The rapid growth of materials used as fertilizers shows the
"green" revolution that has raised agricultural yields. Finally, low-den-
sity materials, such as aluminum, have outpaced economic activity in the
second half of the twentieth century. This is spectacularly true with re-
spect to plastics, a class of materials that, in addition to being lightweight,
possess a host of properties that make them the material of choice for the
manufacturer and the consumer alike.
The types of material flows can be separated into the categories of
elephants and fleas. Some of the bulk materials we have seen may be
called the elephants. These high-volume material flows may cause little
environmental impact per unit mass but can have profound long-range
environmental consequences. Pumping oil, quarrying stone, and har-
vesting feed each contributes to chronic global environmental problems,
affecting atmospheric composition and land use. The fleas, materials
generated in small quantities often as by-products of large-scale commer-
cial production, can have more acute harmful effects. Consider that total
annual U.S. dioxin releases are under 500 kg (Thomas and Spiro, 1994~.
Despite the small quantity released, environmental concerns about the
effects of dioxin continue to demand the attention of both government
and industry. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
inclusive definition of Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) production-related
wastes, toxic chemicals totaled about 17 million metric tons in 1992, 0.3
percent of all materials consumption (INFORM, 1995~. Concerns over
this relatively small mass fraction dominate much of the current public
environmental debate.
Foreign trade in raw materials accounts for about 10 percent of U.S.
materials flows. Table 3-1 shows that a few bulk commodities dominate
trade. On a mass basis, agricultural products, coal, and chemicals domi-
nate U.S. exports, whereas oil, oil products, and metals and ores dominate
imports. The plentiful carbon that enters America, of course, exits as CO2
emissions. Agricultural trade surpluses require domestic land, chemi-
cals, and minerals but feed many elsewhere. For many minerals the
United States shall continue to rely on foreign sources.
FORCES AFFECTING MATERIALS CONSUMPTION
The simple arithmetic of a U.S. population of 400 million or more in
2100 will draw more materials into the economy (United Nations, 1992~.
Efficiency improvements might be able to maintain a constant total for the
collective whole, in theory. However, in the United States more people
means more individual consumers acting on their own. The average
number of residents per American occupied housing unit halved since
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34
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
TABLE 3-1 Major Materials Flows in U.S. Foreign Trade
ExportsImportsNet Flow
(million(millionper Capita
Categorymetric tons)metric tons)(kg)
Agricultural products135.514.9(482.6)
Coal96.02.4(374.5)
Minerals47.854.225.6
Metals and ores27.076.4197.8
Chemical and allied
products41.314.4(107.6)
Petroleum products34.196.9251.3
Timber products16.418.48.0
Paper and board6.211.922.8
Oil (crude)5.6307.41207.6
Natural gas1.731.0117.2
Automobilesa1.25.918.8
TOTAL412.7633.8884.4
Air transport1.51.70.8
Waterborne transport406.9524.9472.0
Trucks
Other industrial and
consumer products?
151,000 (units) 766,000 (units) N.A.
?
NOTE: N.A. indicates not applicable. Numbers in parentheses indicate net exports.
abased on an estimated average vehicle mass of 1.5 metric tons.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census (1975~.
the beginning of the century (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975, 1993, 1994~.
Besides the materials needed for additional structures, appliances and
furniture enter these dwellings irrespective of the number of inhabitants.
Thus the relationship of number of persons to materials consumed is not
simply proportional, reflecting settlement patterns as well. This same
relation holds true for energy consumption: the same number of people
living in a larger number of residences consume more (Schipper, 1996~.
While American behavior drives expansion, historical development
and technical innovations offer hope for contraction. The United States is
a postindustrial country. The service sector continues to claim more of
national economic activity, and the physical infrastructure of the country
is largely in place. For instance, during the period 1970-1992, the surfaced
road network in the United States expanded at only a third of the rate for
the century (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975, 1993, 1994~. Because of the
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
35
-1
O
1960 1965 1970 1975
-1
1980 1985 1990
FIGURE 3-4 Volume ratio of pipe manufactured from plastic over all other mate-
rials. Data from Hurdelbrink (1989~. Repinted with permission.
massive quantities consumed constructing roads and highways, slowing
the rate is consequential to national consumption of materials like steel,
asphalt, sand, and rock.
Substituting lighter for heavier materials also puts downward pres-
sure on national materials use. Replacing heavy copper cable with light
fiber optics not only reduces the amount of mass consumed but also
reduces the need for mining copper ore. Lightweight plastics now pro-
vide the primary material for pipes, formerly made of steel and lead
(Figure 3-4~. The quantity of carbon steel in American automobiles fell
drastically during the 1970s, while high strength steel alloys, plastics,
composites, and aluminum continue to make up more of our cars (Figure
3-5~.
For some products the same utility can be supplied with less mass of
product. Metallurgical advances allow for steel beams with smaller
cross-sectional areas to support loads. Sweetening foods with high-fruc-
tose corn syrup uses only a fifth the mass of sugar to produce the same
result to our palate. The ubiquitous aluminum beverage can is today 25
percent lighter than in 1973 (personal communication, Jenny Day, Direc-
tor of Recycling, Can Manufacturers Institute). In addition to smaller
mass, the aluminum beverage can provide a model of a highly successful
recycling system with a recycling rate exceeding 70 percent.
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36
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
1,000
900
my 800
700
600
120
1 1 1 1
Plastics and
Composites ,_~
Carbon Steel (right scaled,,,
(left scale) ~-~
High-Strength ~
Steel \
~(right scale) \~
~ .
1 1 11 20
1970 1 975 1980- 1985 1990
100
80
60
40
In
ye
FIGURE 3-5 Mass of carbon steel, high-strength steel, composite materials, and
plastics in the average U.S. automobile: 1969-1989. Data from Ward's Automotive
Yearbook (1970-1989~. Reprinted with permission.
The combination of forces to reduce materials use in the industrial-
ized countries drives a process that researchers have dubbed "dematerial-
ization," or aggregate reductions in the amount of material needed to
serve economic functions (Wernick et al., 1996~. Substitution of materials
that require less mass to deliver a unit of a given service, a phenomenon
formally named "transmaterialization," represents a central component
of the proposed shift to lowered consumption.
Developing nations can benefit from the knowledge-based shift to
lower materials requirements. The dematerialization hypothesis main-
tains that as nations launch into development later, their initial growth
rates may be sharper, but consumption saturates at lower levels, as they
can avoid the materials-intensive process of trial and error experienced
by the earlier starters (Grubler, 1990~. The potential for reducing materi-
als use through recycling, or "materials recovery," can also be studied in
terms of mass transformations (Rogich, 1993; Wernick, 1994; Wernick et
al., 1996; Allen, this chapter).
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62
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
Sheinbaum, C., and L. Schipper
1993 Residential sector carbon dioxide emissions in OECD countries 1973-1989: A
comparative analysis. Pp. 255-268 in The Energy Efficiency Challenge for Europe:
Proceedings of the ECEEE Summer Study, Vol. II. Oslo, Norway: European Council
for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
STRUCTURAL ECONOMICS: A STRATEGY FOR
ANALYZING THE IMPLICATIONS OF
CONSUMPTION
Faye Duchin
LIFESTYLES AND THE ENVIRONMENT
63
Interest in personal consumption is of long standing in economics,
and many related aspects of household behavior have been addressed in
all the social sciences. Consumption can be viewed as the motor propel-
ling an economy in that producers will fabricate only the goods and ser-
vices that consumers want to buy. Very recently, environmental concerns
have reinvigorated social scientists' interest in consumption. Most envi-
ronmental degradation can be traced to the extraction of fuels and other
materials and their transformation to produce, both directly and indi-
rectly, the goods and services valued by consumers. Clearly, changes
surrounding consumption would alter, and could alleviate, pressures on
the environment.
There are basically two ways in which such changes could be
achieved. First, the technologies used to extract and transform materials
could be improved in various ways. Second, consumption patterns could
change. There are many efforts under way to develop technologies that
are more efficient in their use of energy and materials and that generate
less environmental damage than current practices. In this paper our con-
cern is especially with consumption patterns. This paper describes a con-
ceptual and methodological approach for situating consumption activi-
ties within a broad socioeconomic framework. It brings together various
pieces of work that I have carried out over the past few years and fills in
the missing pieces to make a relatively complete and coherent frame-
work. A book-length manuscript that elaborates the major aspects of this
approach has recently been completed (Duchin, 1996~.
Economists are concerned with consumption by individuals, but there
are two compelling reasons to think in somewhat broader terms. First, an
individual's consumption behavior is tightly linked with his or her em-
ployment, in that earned income has to cover outlays for purchased goods
and services. Consumption behavior is also related to other people's
employment and consumption: if everyone stopped buying cars, auto
workers (and, by a domino effect, many other workers) would soon be
without jobs and income. Second, people live in households (including,
of course, one-person households) that generally contain one or more
paid workers. At least a portion of the income they earn is pooled, based
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64
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
on various kinds of negotiations, to pay for both common purchases and
those of financially dependent individuals. A household's lifestyle refers
to the jointly determined work and consumption practices of its mem-
bers.
THE LOGIC OF STRUCTURAL ECONOMICS
There is a vast amount of literature indicating that consumer demand
for specific goods levels off at higher incomes. However, prospects for
overall saturation are far more ambiguous. Following I S Mill, a number
of economists have expressed the view that once population levels off in
affluent societies, other forms of satisfaction might be preferred to further
purchases of goods and services (Mishap, 1967; Scitovsky, 1976; Hirsch,
1977), especially when people become aware of the environmental impli-
cations (Boulding, 1973; Daly, 1977~. None of these authors, however,
was able to provide an analytic framework for integrating these phenom-
ena with other economic activities. The "new home economics" initiated
by the work of Gary Becker, on the other hand, established the impor-
tance of the household as a decision-making unit within the analytic
framework of neoclassical economics. Household decisions are portrayed
as maximizing the household's "utility" subject to budget constraints; the
treatment is analogous to that of business firms concerned only with maxi-
mizing their short-term profit (Becker, 1981~.
Input-output economics provides a foundation for the description
and analysis of household lifestyles that is both firmer and richer than
neoclassical economics. However, this approach needs to be substantially
extended in its coverage of both households and the physical environ-
ment. Structural Economics provides this extended framework.
Input-output economics describes the structure of an economy in
terms of the interdependence among its different parts (Leontief, 1986~.
In the dynamic formulation, changes in structure result from technologi-
cal changes, the accumulation of stocks of physical capital, and the deple-
tion of stocks of resources. The framework consists of two simple but
extremely flexible mathematical models a model of physical intercon-
nectedness and a corresponding representation of costs and prices and
a highly structured database.
In neoclassical economics, a money price needs to be associated with
every variable, a network of parameters called elasticities govern auto-
matic substitutions among inputs whenever prices change, economic ac-
tions are limited to the operations of competitive markets, and a solution
requires that all markets are simultaneously in "equilibrium." The power
of these assumptions is that they assure unique, optimal solutions to com-
plex problems. However, the problems that are solved are arguably not
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
1
n
1
o
1
r
I N D U S T R Y
( Capital )
H O U S E H O L D S
E N V I R O N M E N T
65
FIGURE 3-17 A structural table of an economy. NOTE: A structural table incor-
porates elements of an input-output table (n sectors), social accounting matrix
to occupations; h categories of household), and natural resource accounts (r re-
sources, w categories of wastes). See text. SOURCE: Duchin (1995~.
the most useful representation of actual situations. An input-output solu-
tion has the important advantages that it is not restricted to money val-
ues: substitutions of one technology for another are governed by sce-
narios rather than by formal mathematical expressions, and scenarios can
reflect competitive behavior or behavior that is strategic, civic, or ethically
motivated. Because many fewer kinds of assumptions are built into the
formal framework, more burden falls on the development of scenarios
and the interpretation of alternative outcomes.
Structural Economics situates the detailed inter-industry relationships
within a broader social context of household activities, which in turn are
entirely contained within the physical environment. Figure 3-17 shows
the way in which a structural table extends an input-output table. The
household and environmental portions of the table draw on social ac-
counting (Stone, 1986; Keuning and de Ruijter, 1988) and natural resource
accounting (Central Bureau of Statistics of Norway, 1992; de Haan et al.,
1993; Lange and Duchin, 1994), respectively. Mathematical relationships
that deal with these extensions in a realistic way have been developed in
a number of recent studies.
A structural analysis starts by defining the questions that will be
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66
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
addressed and selecting or developing the mathematical model. A de-
scription of various input-output models can be found in Duchin (1988~.
Then classifications for industries, households, and resources are es-
tablished, and the "transactions" among them are quantified for one or
more historical years. National Accounts can provide the bulk of this
information.
The base year data are expressed as stocks or flows e.g., tons of coal
absorbed by the steel industry. The model is formulated in terms of both
variables (representing the stocks and flows) and parameters; the latter
quantify the relationships among variables. An example of a parameter is
the tons of coal required, on average, to make a ton of steel in the United
States in 1992, given the mix of technologies in use at that time and the
relative importance of each. The mathematical equations specify the kinds
of parameters that are required.
One or more scenarios are built for each of the questions to be ex-
plored. An example will demonstrate how a scenario translates the ques-
tion into variables and parameters.
As part of an analysis of development strategies for Indonesia, we
were asked what changes would be needed in agricultural technology for
Indonesia to remain self-sufficient in food over the next several decades,
while upgrading the quality of the diet for a growing population and
being obliged to take some of the most fertile land out of food production
(Duchin et al. 1993~. This scenario required assumptions about changes in
diet (i.e., consumption parameters) and in the yields of new agricultural
technologies (i.e., parameters for the agricultural sectors). The computa-
tion would determine how much land would be required (i.e., endog-
enous variables) to support these assumptions.
Input-output case study methodology has been developed for struc-
turing the data projections (Duchin and Lange, 1994~. Case studies for
Indonesia, focused on the use of land, water, and energy, were carried out
for households, forestry, rice, other food crops, estate crops, livestock,
pulp and paper, cement, chemicals, food processing, textiles and apparel,
and basic iron and steel. The computations showed that even the most
optimistic assumptions about the adoption of advanced agricultural tech-
nologies could not satisfy the land constraints and other requirements;
food will need to be imported.
CATEGORIES OF HOUSEHOLDS
Standardized Industrial Classification (SIC) schemes for goods and
services produced on farms and in factories and offices are in wide use.
These classification schemes have made it possible to share data, compare
across studies and across countries, and cumulate results. Standard Occu
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
67
pational Classifications also exist, although they are less widely used.
Classification schemes for households are more fundamental than those
for occupations but are at a much earlier stage of development.
Anthropologists and sociologists have provided detailed, qualitative
description of specific categories of households; see Wilk and Lutzen-
heiser (Chapter 4, this volume) for recent developments. Economists
have established classifications that cover the entire society, but they are
usually in terms of income categories only. An exception is the work
done within the social accounting framework. Most Social Accounting
Matrices (SAMs) have been constructed to examine the distribution of
income in developing countries.
A particularly detailed SAM (a flow table similar in structure to the
industry and household portions of Figure 3-17) is the one for Indonesia,
where households are classified according to urban or rural location, ag-
ricultural or nonagricultural nature of the work of the "head" of the house-
hold, and economic status, for a total of ten categories. This SAM also
distinguishes four occupations and whether or not the workers are paid
(Central Bureau of Statistics of Indonesia, 1990~.
The most promising kind of household classification scheme is one
developed for consumer research and marketing based on a direct exami-
nation of detailed data (by Jonathan Robbin; described in Weiss, 1988~.
Observing that people who share a "zip code" tend to have similar life-
styles, Robbin built a database about U.S. household practices in each of
these small areas; he included detailed information from the Census of
Households, automobile purchase lists, credit card information, voting
records, social values from surveys carried out at the Stanford Research
Institute, and a host of specialized, private surveys. Robbin discovered
that 34 variables accounted for almost 90 percent of the variation among
neighborhoods. Each zip code was rated on these variables and assigned
to one of 40 clusters, for which Robbin created a descriptive name. The
resulting classification, which is widely used by corporations and politi-
cal candidates to customize their messages for specific markets, is shown
in Table 3-5. Research scientists may well be able to improve on these
categories for the kinds of purposes envisaged in this paper.
At the present time, my colleagues and I are designing classification
schemes and building structural tables for several developing countries
(Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, and Namibia) in collaboration with
local researchers and the national statistical offices. The classification
schemes are obviously very different from that shown for the United
States in Table 3-5 but have been stimulated by its example. After this
type of work has been done in several countries with attention to using
similar nomenclature for similar lifestyles some categories are likely to
emerge that are common to a variety of societies. The most important
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68
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
TABLE 3-5 Household Classifications and Characteristics for the United
States in 1987
ZQ Cluster
Description
% U.S.
Househo
1 Blue Blood Estates America's wealthiest neighborhoods includes 1.1
suburban homes and one in ten millionaires
2
4
5
6
Money & Brains
3 Furs & Station Wagons
Urban Gold Coast
Pools & Patios
Two More Rungs
7 Young Influentials
8
9
0
11
12
13
14
Young Suburbia
God's Country
Blue-Chip Blues
Bohemian Mix
Levittown, USA
Gray Power
Black Enterprise
15 New Beginnings
16 Blue-Collar Nursery
17 New Homesteaders
18 New Melting Pot
19 Towns & Gowns
20 Rank & File
21 Middle America
22 Old Yankee Rows
23 Coalburg & Corntown
24 Shotguns & Pickups
25
26
Posh big-city enclaves of townhouses, condos
and apartments
New money in metropolitan bedroom suburbs
Upscale urban high-rise districts
Older, upper-middle-class, suburban communities
Comfortable multi-ethnic suburbs
Yuppie, fringe-city condo and apartment
developments
Child-rearing, outlying suburbs
Upscale frontier boomtowns
The wealthiest blue-collar suburbs
Inner-city bohemian enclaves a la Greenwich Village
Aging, post-World War II tract subdivisions
Upper-middle-class retirement communities
Predominantly black, middle- and upper-middle
class neighborhoods
Fringe-city areas of singles complexes, garden
apartments and trim bungalows
Middle-class, child-rearing towns
Exurban boom towns of young, midscale families
New immigrant neighborhoods, primarily in the
nation's port cities
America's college towns
Older, blue-collar, industrial suburbs
Midscale, midsize towns
Working-class rowhouse districts
Small towns based on light industry and farming
Crossroads villages serving the nation's lumber and
breadbasket needs
Rustic cottage communities located near the coasts,
in the mountains or alongside lakes
Agri-business Small towns surrounded by large-scale farms and
ranches
0.9
3.2
0.5
3.4
0.7
2.9
5.3
2.7
6.0
1.1
3.1
2.9
0.8
4.3
2.2
4.2
0.9
1.2
1.4
3.2
1.6
2.0
1.9
5.2
2.1
27 Emergent Minorities Predominantly black, working-class, city 1.7
neighborhoods
28 Single City Blues Downscale urban singles districts 3.3
29 Mines & Mills Struggling steeltowns and mining villages 2.8
30 Back-Country Folks Remote, downscale, farm towns 3.4
31 Norma Rae-ville Lower-middle-class milltowns and industrial 2.3
suburbs, primarily in the South
32 Smalltown Downtown Inner-city districts of small industrial cities 2.5
33 Grain Belt The nation's most sparsely populated rural 1.3
communities
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
~ United
69
% U.S. Median Home % College
Household Income Value Graduate
Les 1.1 $70,307$200,000+a 50.7
s
[os 0.9 45,798150,755 45.5
orbs 3.2 50,086132,725 38.1
0.5 36,838200,000+a 50.5
unities 3.4 35,89599,702 28.2
0.7 31,263117,012 28.3
2.9 30,398106,332 36.0
5.3 38,58293,281 23.8
2.7 36,72899,418 25.8
6.0 32,21872,563 13.1
ch Village 1.1 21,916110,669 38.8
.s 3.1 28,74270,728 15.7
s 2.9 25,25983,630 18.3
riddle- 0.8 33,14968,713 16.0
ten 4.3 24,84775,354 19.3
2.2 30,07767,281 10.2
families 4.2 25,90967,221 15.9
in the 0.9 22,142113,616 19.1
1.2 17,86260,891 27.5
1.4 26,28359,363 9.2
3.2 24,43155,605 10.7
1.6 24,80876,406 11.0
rming 2.0 23,99451,604 10.4
nber and 1.9 24,29153,222 9.1
e coasts, 5.2 20,14051,537 12.8
ns and 2.1 21,36349,012 11.5
1.7 22,02945,187 10.7
3.3 17,92662,351 18.6
2.8 21,53746,325 8.7
3.4 19,84341,030 8.1
Lal 2.3 18,55936,556 9.6
2.5 17,20642,225 10.0
1.3 21,69845,852 8.4
continued on next page
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70
TABLE 3-5 Continued
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
% U.S.
Househo
ZQ Cluster
Description
34 Heavy Industry Lower-working-class districts in the nation's older 2.8
industrial cities
35 Share Croppers Primarily southern hamlets devoted to farming and 4.0
light industry
36 Downtown Dixie-Style Aging, predominantly black neighborhoods, typically 3.4
in southern cities
37 Hispanic Mix America's Hispanic barrios 1.9
38 Tobacco Roads Predominantly black farm communities throughout 1.2
the South
39 Hard Scrabble The nation's poorest rural settlements 1.5
40 Public Assistance America's inner-city ghettos 3.1
National Median
NOTE: The source document does not report the year for which the data apply or the price
unit. The household percentages are based on 1987 data, but the values appear to be for
1986 in current prices. The table shows a median household income of $24,269; this com-
pares with figures of $23,618 for 1985 and $24,897 for 1986, according to the U.S. Bureau of
the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (1994), Table No. 707. The ZQ (zip qual
lifestyle changes in the developing countries surround those households
whose work is unregistered and untaxed, and who are largely not reached
by social services. Their ways of life are being rapidly altered by urban-
ization and industrialization. The objective of scenario analysis in this
context is to anticipate the nature and magnitude of these changes in
terms, for example, of the future demand for education, health care, sani-
tary facilities, or small loans.
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TRACKING THE FLOWS OF ENERGY AND MATERIALS
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