Enviromental Impacts of A Regional Economy: An Application To The Aragonese Economy (Spain)

The objective of this paper is to analyse the environmental impacts of a regional economy (Aragon, Spain) by way of its atmospheric emissions. Our starting point is the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix with Environmental Accounts for this region. We calculated environmental indicators from the underlying SAM model considering the households and foreign sector accounts as exogenous accounts, while government, labour, capital and other accounts were treated as endogenous. The impacts obtained and their per capita distributions are the bases of our approximation to the environmental impacts. The pollution measures are estimated for seven categories of pollution (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFC, PFC, SF6 y CO2 eq). The analysis reveals that pollution in Aragon is closely linked to food production, energy and transportation material. We show that services, taken as a whole, are major polluters, though this is due to the volume of household expenditure they represent rather than their pollution potential as such. We also show that the Aragonese economy avoids a great deal of pollution by importing inputs, which pollute where they are produced.