Life Cycle Management of Reducing Impacts on Climate Change at a Regional Level

This dissertation work consists of three studies related to the concept of entities moving beyond the environmental impacts under their direct control and becoming empowered to address the life cycle emissions outside of their physical or political boundaries.

Measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are guided by carbon footprint protocols, which require estimation of direct emissions (Scope 1) and emissions from direct purchases of energy (Scope 2), but focus less on indirect emissions upstream and downstream of the supply chain (optional Scope 3).

The first part of this dissertation uses input-output analysis method to categorize sectors' indirect upstream supply chains and demonstrated the importance of Scope 3 guideline specificity in improving the performance of footprint accounting.

The results show that enterprises can capture a large portion of their total upstream carbon footprint by collecting full emissions information from only a handful of direct suppliers, and Scope 3 footprint capture rates can be improved considerably by sector-specific categorization.

In the second part, the paradoxical materiality thresholds for including emission sources in life cycle GHG accounting used by an existing protocol were explored, and the trade-offs between threshold, performance, and efforts in GHG accounting were examined using Structural Path Analysis.

It is demonstrated that application of cut-off thresholds results in highly variable performance in footprint capture rate and is not a reliable criterion for including emission sources in GHG footprints.

In the third part, an advanced supply chain decomposition technique was introduced and used in conjunction with a multi-regional input-output model to analyze the life cycle effects of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) on reducing the carbon footprint of California enterprises and consumers.

This study found that if California achieves the RPS target of 33%, California businesses and consumers can expect to see 2-10% reduction in their carbon footprints.

If California achieves a LCFS of 10%, California business and consumers can expect a reduction of 0.5-4% in their total carbon footprints.

If a state intends to significantly reduce life cycle carbon footprint of enterprises and consumers through policy interventions, additional policy tools must be considered.