GSOE9740 Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering
Assignment 1
IOA-based TBL analysis of an economic sector
ASSIGNMENT BRIEF
Assessment value: 100 marks (30% of total course mark)
Due date: Tuesday, 25 March 2025, 1:00 pm
Groups: This is an individual assignment. No groups.
Submission: Via the link 'Submission and marking of Assignment 1' under the section Assignment 1 on Moodle.
Maximum length: 8 pages (including everything)
Tasks
The aim of this assignment is to produce a report in the style of a journal article that presents and discusses the triple-bottom-line performance of one sector of the Australian economy and compares it to that of Australian households. This 'paper' will then be reviewed and marked by two fellow students, as well as an academic marker.
1. You can choose one sector of the Australian economy for your assignment. Refer to the first 120 rows or columns in file ‘AUS-ROW_2region_SIOT.xlsx’ . There are 120 Australian sectors in total, ranging from Aus-1 (wheat) to Aus-120 (other services) . Note: ‘n.e.c.’ stands for ‘not elsewhere classified’ .
2. Conduct a literature review and provide three original references for your sector that contain information about the sustainability of the industry or products represented by the sector. This can be about any aspect of sustainability (environmental or social performance). Search for references inwww.sciencedirect.com,www.scopus.comor through a general search on the internet (https://ecosia.org). Articles from the scientific literature are preferred, but reports from the grey literature (e.g. governments, NGOs or industry associations) are allowed, as long as they are correctly cited (see below). One of these reports may be the Balancing Act report (Foran et al., 2005). Another useful source of information are the Sector Profiles from the SCP Hotspot Analysis Tool (https://scp-hat.org/sector-profiles).
3. Summarise the information from the literature in your Introduction section of your article, pointing out the highlights with respect to the un/sustainability of your sector.
4. Quantitative analysis in this assignment is done by using an extended two-region input-output table which is provided as an Excel file on Moodle. The two regions are Australia and Rest of World (RoW), i.e. it is a table of the global economy. There are many extensions on direct environmental impacts from industries, as well as direct employment and direct wages & salaries (compensation of employees) .
Create an IO model, either in Excel or with Matlab and calculate the total impact multipliers (TIMs) for all sectors (Hint: Use the full 2-region IO table together with the RoW rows and columns as your T matrix from which you calculate A and L. The total matrix has the dimensions 240x240. Because the DIMs are row vectors, TIMs will also be row vectors. These can be transposed into columns and placed next to the final and total demand columns. This makes it easier later to multiply TIMs with final or intermediate demand numbers, i.e. row by row).
5. Calculate the carbon footprint (CO2), the employment footprint and the wages & salaries footprint for two entities:
a) Australian households (use the column labelled (HousehoId finaI consumption,, Aus-FD1) and your sector (use the column of intermediate demand for your specific sector).
b) Add direct impacts (Scope 1) to derive the total footprints for both and calculate the proportion from imports for the total footprints. In order to make the total footprints of households and your sector comparable, divide them, respectively, by either total Australian population (for households) or total number of workers employed by the sector (for the sector) to derive per-person numbers.
c) Present all these results in a summary table. Discuss the results as you see appropriate (e.g. discuss absolute and relative results and direct vs total, etc.)
From here onwards, only do the calculations for the carbon footprint.
6. Create graphs that show details of the total per-person carbon footprint of both, households and your sector. Explicitly show the direct and the indirect portions of your per-person carbon footprint and break down the indirect portion by using the broad consumption categories of economic sectors/activities provided in the Excel file (i.e. Food and Drink, Manufactured products, Housing, Energy, Transport, Health and education services, Other services and Other).
7. In a separate graph, explicitly show the Scopes 1, 2 and 3 of your per-person carbon footprint of households and for your sector. The total per-capita carbon footprints of Tasks 6 and 7 must be the same.
8. Discuss all carbon footprint results and interpret their meaning in the wider context identified in the introduction section. Did you find out anything new or interesting? Which contributions to the carbon footprint stand out? Also, discuss how difficult or easy it would be for households and your sector to reduce their carbon footprint.
9. Redo the carbon footprint calculations for households and your sector under the assumption that all electricity in Australia comes from renewable (zero-emissions) energy! Do this by setting the direct CO2 emissions from electricity generation to zero. Compare the results to the previous results and discuss your findings.
General guidelines
• Briefly describe the data and methods used in a separate section of your report.
• Present and discuss your results in a separate section of your report. An important part of your article is the discussion of your results, i.e. how the different footprints of households and your sector compare, what the main contributions to the carbon footprints are and why, and how these footprints can be reduced.
• Refer back to the context of what is described in the literature. What are the limitations of describing relative sustainability in terms of per-person numbers?
• Present results in graphs or tables. The use of meaningful graphs is strongly encouraged.
• Briefly summarise and contextualise your findings in a separate Conclusions section of your report.
• After submission, read and mark the reports from two fellow students (see below for details).