Lifecycle carbon footprint: The case study of the electricity use in Puebla, Mexico

Vázquez, Irais; Madrid, Cristina; Chávez, Abel; Villalba, Gara

OPEN ACCESS at Revista Internacional De Contaminación Ambiental (2022), 38, 199–217

Greenhouse gas emissions inventories and carbon footprints assessed at the local level are critical for any country, mainly for those countries which are part of the Paris Agreement such as Mexico, where federal and local governments join forces to design climate-change mitigation policies. However, determining carbon footprints is time and resource-intensive and not always possible for local governments. To meet this need, we propose an alternative method using lifecycle input-output analysis and location quotients to quantify direct and total emissions of the Mexican state of Puebla caused by its use of electricity during 2013. We quantify the emissions from the production and consumption-based perspective, finding that Puebla’s economy emitted a total of 15 million metric tons of CO₂e caused by industrial sectors’ electricity use, which represented 3 % of the total national emissions caused by Mexico’s industrial electricity use. The most significant contributors to Puebla’s total greenhouse gas emissions were the “food and beverage preparation services” and the “business support services” sectors accounting for 38 % and 9 % of Puebla’s total emissions and 50 % and 23 % of direct emissions, respectively. We conclude that, in addition to the decarbonization of the energy matrix, potential climate change mitigation policies should reduce the intensity factors of the sectors with the highest emissions identified with the proposed method.