Prioritisation within the Integrated Product Policy

The project “Prioritisation within the integrated product policy” established a detailed and well-documented method for prioritising product areas and groups.

The client

Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – Denmark

Our role

The project “Prioritisation within the integrated product policy” was performed in 2003-2004, commissioned by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. 2.-0 LCA consultants was the main contractor and project leader. Project completed December 2004.

Product groups with large potential for environmental improvement

Food, housing, transport by ship, and electricity are the four areas of in Danish industry that have the largest potential for environmental improvements.

When looking at the Danes’ private consumption, priority areas are housing, food, tourism, clothes, personal hygiene and car driving.

The project “Prioritisation within the integrated product policy” was performed in 2003-2004, commissioned by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. 2.-0 LCA consultants was the main contractor and project leader.

The objective was to establish a detailed and well-documented method for prioritising product areas and product groups, to identify where policy measures will provide most environmental improvement.

The method that was developed is a variant of input-output LCA, based on a combination of environmental statistics and the national accounting data. See also our page on Life cycle inventory databases.

The method was applied to the Danish economy, providing prioritised lists of those product groups and industries where Danish environmental measures will give the largest environmental improvement, both for the products currently produced in Denmark (for domestic consumption or for export) and the products currently consumed in Denmark (domestically produced as well as imported).

We are currently applying the methodology to other geographical regions.

Publications from this project

• • B P Weidema, S Suh, P Notten (2006) · Setting Priorities within Product-Oriented Environmental Policy: The Danish Perspectives. Journal of Industrial Ecology 10(3):73-87.
  • BP Weidema, K Christiansen, AM Nielsen, GA Norris, P Notten, S Suh, J Madsen (2005) · Prioritisation within the integrated product policy. Environmental project no. 980. Copenhagen: Danish Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Nielsen A M, Christiansen K, Weidema B P (2003) · Prioritisation of product groups and product areas in the integrated product policy. Seminar Proceedings.