Hydrocarbon-based substances represent 80% of today's fuels production.
Energetically dense and easy to handle, their sub-products, e.g. plastics,
rubber, oil, are present in most of industrial applications. Yet, its over-use
is associated with social and environmental impacts. They often lead to
public goods degradation, which enhances environmental endpoint issues:
global warming, human health impairment, biodiversity loss and others.
These damages are mostly omitted by actual market mechanisms: they are
external costs, borne by the society as a whole.
Ecological Economics gives a conceptual framework that stresses the need
for assessing and internalizing these externalities. Industrial Ecology gives
means to assess them. And economic valuation studies give the data to
monetize them. Combined, these techniques may be used to analyse envi-
ronmental policy eciency and design.
This study details the Danish manufacture of 1 ton of hydrocarbons-based
nonwoven fabric, taken as a functional unit. The environmental impacts
during its Cradle-to-Gate assembly are assessed through two robust Indus-
trial Ecology's tools: Life Cycle Assessment and Input-Output analysis with
Environmental Accounts.
Based on EU's economic valuation methods for environmental degrada-
tion, the impacts are monetized in terms of damage and avoidance costs.
Marginal costs are derived for each impact category considered: climate
change, human health impairment, agricultural and material loss.
Results show an external marginal cost interval of 197{344e per functional
unit produced in 2011. The comparison of this estimate with Denmark
environmental scal instruments reveals that these externalities are only
partially covered (around 217 e).
Based on the results, Denmark environmental taxes system is assessed:
while the overall taxation level remains high, some specic emissions-related
degradation do not, or poorly, have any tax counterpart. Additionally, sug-
gestion are made to improve the policy design.