ارزیابی چرخه عمر انتشار گازهای گلخانه ای
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Materials and methods
3- Results
4- Discussion
5- Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Appendix A. Supplementary data
References
Abstract
The military sector is an important global player in terms of monetary expenditure and resource use. However, reporting of military greenhouse gas emissions is often embedded into other activities and quantitative estimations are scarce. This paper assesses the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from the Norwegian defence sector from an organisational perspective. The total annual emissions add up to 0.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, corresponding to approximately 1.1% of the national emissions from Norwegian consumption. The results show that upstream activities are the main contributors to emission (68%), with only 32% allocated to the reporting organisation. From a management perspective, this distinction is important since these emissions may be mitigated through green procurement practices, in contrast to direct emissions that require operational reductions.
Introduction
World military expenditure is estimated to have reached $1739 billion, representing 2.2 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP), in 2017 (Tian et al., 2018). The military sector and defence industry are therefore major global players, using considerable resources and subsequently affecting the environment. Even though the environmental impact of military activities has been discussed and debated for centuries, few documented studies of the sector’s environmental impact exist and most are connected to biodiversity and land use (Hanson, 2018; Lawrence et al., 2015; Nuttall et al., 2017; Vertegaal, 1989; Zentelis et al., 2017). Indirect correlations between military energy use, especially fossil fuel use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been discussed previously (Bildirici, 2017; Clark et al., 2010; Nuttall et al., 2017), but quantitative estimations are scarce. According to the Kyoto protocol and, subsequently, the Paris agreement, emissions from military activities are to be included in the national emissions inventory if they are accrued within national borders. Reporting of overseas activities or impacts of warfare is not required. The emissions from military activities are often embedded into other activities, such as energy production, transportation, and industrial activities, or taken out of the reporting (Michaelowa and Koch, 2001). A few studies on sector-specific calculations of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and Australia have been found, indicating that defence activities contribute to approximately 1% of the annual emissions of greenhouse gases in these countries (Bailey, 2009; Wood and Dey, 2009). Figures from the US are within the same range, varying from 25.4 million tonnes annually from direct fuel consumption (Belcher et al., 2019) to 172 million tonnes including electricity use and upstream emissions (Liska and Perrin, 2010). This is equivalent to 0.5e3.3% of the total US emissions in 2017 (EIA, 2019).