Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash
When factoring heat generation required for the manufacturing and transportation of products, Greenhouse gas emissions attributable to products, from food to sneakers to appliances, make up more than 75% of global emissions.
(Source: The Carbon Catalogue https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01178-9)
Our data, which is publicly available on nature.com, contains product carbon footprints (PCFs) for various companies. PCFs are the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to a given product, measured in CO2 (carbon dioxide equivalent).
This data is stored in a PostgreSQL database containing one table, product_emissions
, which looks at PCFs by product as well as the stage of production that these emissions occurred. Here’s a snapshot of what product_emissions
contains in each column:
product_emissions
Field | Data Type |
---|---|
id |
VARCHAR |
year |
INT |
product_name |
VARCHAR |
company |
VARCHAR |
country |
VARCHAR |
industry_group |
VARCHAR |
weight_kg |
NUMERIC |
carbon_footprint_pcf |
NUMERIC |
upstream_percent_total_pcf |
VARCHAR |
operations_percent_total_pcf |
VARCHAR |
downstream_percent_total_pcf |
VARCHAR |
Which industries are the worst offenders in 2017?
Include some interesting code/features worked with
-- Carbon Emissions by Industry
SELECT industry_group,
COUNT(DISTINCT company) AS num_companies,
ROUND(SUM(carbon_footprint_pcf),1) AS total_industry_footprint
FROM product_emissions
WHERE year = 2017
GROUP BY industry_group
ORDER BY total_industry_footprint DESC;
In 2017, the industry group with the highest total carbon footprint was “Materials”, with a total industry footprint of 107,129 kgCO2. This group consists of three different companies.