Mike wrote: - >resource price at the wellhead is zero - >no one pays Mother Earth Peter Chopelas wrote: - >The lower the purchase and ownership costs, >the less the resources consumed. This should >also correspond to a lower carbon "foot print". G'day, The following will prove that I'm neither an economist or a Life Cycle analyst:~) The sort of approaches you both suggest are similar to one I've tried that subtracts profit margins and wages (including taxes) from every part of a product's value chain and then makes the assumption that "no-one pays mother earth" and that all infrastructure and material costs are ultimately spent on energy. Of course this assumption can break down. For example if you built a kayak out of concrete that gives off CO2 as it sets. But concrete kayaks aside and making some rough estimates based on a guess that the wages and profit margin for all stages contributing to the manufacture of a kayak are about 67%. Then the remaining 33% could be attributed to an energy cost. I came to the conclusion that the cost of energy going into manufacturing the boat was probably about 30% of the cost of energy used in transporting it during its working life. So if one wanted to calculate a carbon offset value then Dave is almost certainly right that the difference between manufacturing techniques is not worth considering. But it does seem possible that the energy used in making a kayak is significant. It would be interesting to have better estimates of profit margins, wages, and the average cost of fuel used in transporting a kayak during its working life. All the best, PeterO *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 04 2007 - 04:53:20 PDT
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