Sustainable Consumption and Production (known as SCP) is about more and better socio-economic growth with less. It is also about decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, increasing resource efficiency and promoting sustainable lifestyles. To design frameworks conducive to a shift to SCP, policy-makers need to be informed of the key national economic processes and activities that are generating the most harmful environmental and socio-economic impacts (so-called “hotspots”).

The “Hotspot Analysis Tool for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP-HAT)” aims at supporting science-based national SCP policies in countries around the world. The tool provides stakeholders of different levels of (policy) expertise with (1) an overview of a country’s performance with regard to SCP-related policy areas and (2) empirical evidence of hotspots of (un)sustainable consumption and production activities. The SCP-HAT allows for analysing direct as well as indirect impacts, i.e. supply-chain wide impacts, brought about by consumption and production activities of national economies.

SCP HAT’s methods and perspectives:

• Based upon an environmentally extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE-MRIO) model coupled with information from Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)
• Tracing all pressures and impacts occurring at different stages of complex supply chains
• Applying two perspectives: domestic production and consumption footprint
• Using same methodology and homogenous datasets for all countries
• Capability to compare different environmental categories, pressures and impacts, domestic and footprint perspectives and countries among each other