Greenhouse gas emissions from tourist activities in South Tyrol

Tourism is a non-negligible source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using South Tyrol (ST) – a small region with a tourism-intensive economy situated in the North of Italy – as a case study, this article discusses a multiregional input–output (MRIO) framework for calculating the direct and indirect emissions embodied in tourist consumption of goods and services at a subnational level. Compared to more standard single-region implementations of the input–output approach, MRIO analysis offers a more accurate depiction of the amount of emissions, that is, embodied in imports, because it acknowledges that in the modern economy supply chains often stretch across multiple borders and that the carbon intensity of production can vary widely from one location to another. Operationalizing the framework has become relatively straightforward since a number of new global MRIO databases have become available in recent years. Furthermore, the analysis could easily be extended to other environmental externalities of tourism, where the model’s capability to explicitly account for spatial spillovers might also be of interest. The modelling exercise at the heart of the article suggests that, over the course of 2010, the process of producing the goods and services consumed by tourists in ST resulted in 1092 kt CO2e of GHGs being emitted into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to average emissions of 191 kg CO2e per overnight visitor, 38 kg CO2e per night or 0.316 kg per euro of tourist expenditure. Direct emissions account for about one-fourth of the total. Almost four-fifths of total emissions appear to be the result of productive activities sited outside ST itself.