An open-access web application to visualise countries’ and regions’ carbon footprints using Sankey diagrams

Consumption-based carbon assessments are essential for evaluating climate change responsibility. However, the results vary greatly depending on the boundary chosen, making them hard to understand for non-expert readers and hindering their uptake by policy makers. Sankey diagrams are a type of flow diagram where the thickness of a flow is proportional to its value. They allow to shed light on the various ways to calculate carbon footprints and on the implications of choosing one method over another. Although several multi-regional input-output databases allow for the calculation of footprints, none of them has been systematically represented as Sankey diagrams. To fill this gap, we build an open access web application to represent carbon footprints for 49 world regions between 1995 and 2019 based on EXIOBASE 3 data. We include production-based, consumption-based and consumption-based with capital endogenized accounts. We then provide examples of the insights gained with such diagrams. Different ways to calculate carbon footprints and the implications of choosing one option over another are visualised in an open-access web application that uses a global input-output database to produce Sankey diagrams of carbon flows for 49 world regions between 1995 and 2019.