What if there were a single open and easily accessible database with climate data for everything in the world?
With that question, professor Jannick Schmidt, together with colleagues from Aalborg University, Leiden University in the Netherlands, 2-0 LCA in Denmark, and CICERO in Norway, launched an ambitious project in 2021 that now culminates in the BONSAI database.
“The ambition with the project was to help especially the Danish authorities meet the goal of a 70% reduction by 2030. To do that, we believed we needed to provide carbon footprints for more than 1,000 products and cover the entire world,” says Jannick Schmidt, who is pleased to report that this ambition has been fulfilled.
With the new database, one can find out how much CO2 it costs to produce a product in a given country, when accounting for its full life cycle. And there is a need to listen more to data when making climate-related decisions, according to Jannick Schmidt:
“Some political decisions are made where, if our approach and data had been used, different choices might have been made,” he says, pointing to the Danish “green tripartite agreement” as an example:
“Personally, I’m happy to see more nature in my backyard, but the consequence is that production gets moved elsewhere. The only places left for new farmland are where nature currently exists. So we’re shifting agricultural production out of Denmark, but that means we’re removing nature outside of Denmark instead.”
Supply and Demand
To understand the critique, one first needs to understand how the BONSAI model works.
The model draws on life cycle data – that is, data covering a product’s journey from production to transport to disposal – and calculates the footprint at each stage.
Producing a liter of orange juice requires more than just oranges; it also involves packaging, transport, and much more. To calculate an accurate footprint, the model doesn’t just use average emissions for oranges – it bases the calculation on the specific country where the oranges are produced. Denmark doesn’t grow its own oranges but imports most of them from Spain, so the model can provide a precise CO2 price for a Danish orange juice once import, transport, and other factors are added.
This brings us back to Jannick Schmidt’s criticism of the green tripartite agreement. The BONSAI model assumes that if Denmark stops producing a good, other countries will step in to fill that gap in demand. And this shifts the footprint out of the country – a phenomenon known as “leakage” in climate science:
“With the model, you can calculate the CO2 cost of producing, say, a kilo of pork in Denmark, and then compare it with what it would cost to produce it in Poland, Germany, New Zealand, or wherever the alternative production is expected to take place.”
“But of course, you can’t yet ask the model what the carbon emissions of the green tripartite agreement are,” says Jannick Schmidt, adding that in the future, that’s exactly the kind of question he hopes can be answered with the help of AI.
Also a Help for Consumers and Companies
Although the database was initially created to support authorities and policymakers, Jannick Schmidt believes that both consumers and businesses can benefit greatly from it.
“It’s not just the authorities who make decisions that affect our carbon footprint. Any consumer can also see what it would mean to buy a kilo of rice instead of a kilo of beef or lettuce instead of apples,” says Jannick Schmidt.
“In the same way, companies can use the database to quantify the footprint of their purchases and use of services and consultancy.”
In collaboration with the Confederation of Danish Industry and the consultancy Viegand Maagøe, the research team is now developing an additional module to help companies analyze the carbon footprint of their value chains.
Jannick Schmidt also encourages others to experiment with the model – it’s all open source and therefore free to build on and expand.
BONSAI – which stands for Big Open Network for Sustainability Assessment Information – is officially launched on 26 June at a debate at Aalborg University. Read more and register here.