This paper presents a model for prioritisation within the integrated product policy. The description of the model contains more precise technical details, but is relatively brief and therefore requires prior understanding of the fundamental concepts of environmental life cycle assessment and input-output analysis, such as presented in the Nielsen & Weidema (2001).
The model description serves as a specification of the model development during phase 2 of the project “Prioritisation within the integrated product policy” funded by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.
The paper specifies an environmentally extended Danish input-output model, based on the national NAMEA, for screening product groups under the integrated product policy. The planned model would describe product use and disposal in greater detail, split selected industries into product groups, improve treatment of imports and environmental exchanges, quantify uncertainty, account for market sensitivity, and be implemented in standard LCA software.
Product groups would be selected for finer modelling where impacts per unit of economic value are high or where subdivision can reduce uncertainty. The authors stress that this requires environmental data of at least comparable completeness and validity to the existing industry data, alongside production values and purchase and sales flows. Supply-use tables and physical data were proposed to support the links between products and industries.
To support forward-looking prioritisation, the model also proposed testing constraints on suppliers, co-products, raw materials and waste-treatment capacity. This matters because a change in demand may not change output in constrained sectors as a conventional retrospective input-output model implies. The report describes these elements as ambitions and a specification for phase two of a Danish Environmental Protection Agency project; it does not present a completed assessment or final ranking of product groups.
