The Finnish Environment 697en ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Sirkka Koskela (ed.) Environmental analysis and indicators for the Kymenlaakso region Documentation report 1 of the ECOREG project Social Social and welfare cultural Culture indicators Environmental Economic and Economic Ecosystems material flow welfare Natural indicators Production resources indicators ........................... FINNISH ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE The Finnish Environment 697en Sirkka Koskela (ed.) Environmental analysis and indicators for the Kymenlaakso region Documentation report 1 of the ECOREG project HELSINKI 2004 . .......................... FINNISH ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE This publication is also available in the Internet www.environment.fi/publications ISBN 952-11-1692-7 ISBN 952-11-1693-5 (PDF) ISSN 1238-7312 Cover picture: Katariina Kytönen Page layout: Ritva Koskinen Printing: Dark Ltd., Vantaa 2004 2 ........................................................ The Finnish Environment 697en Foreword The Finnish Environment Institute, the Southeast Finland Regional Environment Centre, the Regional Council of Kymenlaakso and the Thule Institute of the University of Oulu are conducting (September 1, 2002 – December 31, 2004) a Life- Environment project called “The Eco-efficiency of Regions – Case Kymenlaakso (ECOREG)” (LIFE02 ENV/FIN/000331). The first sub-project of the ECOREG project conducted an environmental analysis of the Kymenlaakso region and designed environmental indicators based on this analysis. This report documents the work conducted. The indicators can be used as such in monitoring the development of the environment in Kymenlaakso, but they are intended for use especially in the final stage of the project. This final stage involves the development of a monitoring system for eco-efficiency in Kymenlaakso, which combines the environmental, economic and socio-cultural perspectives. Interim results of the regional environmental analysis have been discussed in several meetings of the ECOREG steering group and at two regional workshops arranged in Kymenlaakso. The present report was written by Sirkka Koskela, Marja-Riitta Hiltunen, Matti Melanen, Tuuli Myllymaa, Jyri Seppälä and Jyrki Tenhunen from the Finnish Environment Institute and Mika Toikka from the Southeast Finland Regional Environment Centre. Matti Melanen Project Manager, ECOREG project The Finnish Environment 697en ........................................................ 3 Summary The environmental analysis for Kymenlaakso for the year 2000 included an inventory and a subsequent impact assessment based on life cycle assessment methodology: The first aim was to identify the environmental burdens and impacts of the most important activities in the region of Kymenlaakso. Moreover, the boundaries of the analysis were expanded to include, besides the local impacts, also the environmental burdens and impacts of fuels, electricity and the major industrial raw material flows imported into the region. The material flows included in the inventory covered 86.2 % of the total mass of imports. Exports by businesses in the region were left outside the scope of the study. The most important activity sectors in the local environmental analysis were agriculture, forestry, industry, communities and traffic. The industrial classification of the imported product flows was considerably more detailed than the classification by activity sector. These two classifications could not be combined in all cases, and thus the total results cannot be presented by industrial categories. Conducting the very comprehensive inventory stage of the regional environmental analysis of Kymenlaakso required numerous estimates, calculations and statistical investigations. The local emissions and other environmental burdens were analysed using decision analysis and an impact assessment model employing the methods used in life cycle assessment. The model included the emission data obtained through measurements and calculations, evaluations by local experts on the different environmental loads, and the opinions of local decision makers on the relative severity of the different environmental problems. The core of the business economy in Kymenlaakso is a strong processing industry and the sub-contracting and service businesses that have evolved around it, including especially logistics services. There is a large concentration of the pulp and paper industry in Kymenlaakso, which makes the energy intensity of the region significantly higher than the national average. In the year 2000, Kymenlaakso was the second largest energy consumer among the regions in Finland. The region’s own electricity production has decreased significantly between 1995 and 2000. During this period, the electricity self-sufficiency in the region has declined from 68 per cent to 51 per cent. Industry gained the highest impact value in the total results of the impact assessment. In Kymenlaakso, industry accounts for half or almost half of the carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide emissions to air. Among the other sectors, traffic and communities (including, e.g., energy production) gained approximately equal damage scores, which were about 2/3 of the score for industry. According to the results of the impact assessment, less damage is caused by agriculture and forestry, with agriculture gaining about double the impact value of forestry. The location of Kymenlaakso on the eastern border of Finland increases the amount of transit transports and other traffic through the area. According to the results of the emission inventory, personal traffic caused distinctly more environmental burdens than goods transports. The actual transit transports constituted a minor share of the traffic emissions. The share of transit transports is only notable in the transports by sea, of which transit transports constitute one- 4 ........................................................ The Finnish Environment 697en fifth, and are visible in a large share of the sulphur dioxide emissions. The through traffic on the roads consists primarily of goods transports. Goods transports account for about one-third of the total carbon dioxide emissions from road traffic, and of these emissions, the share due to transports within the area is twice as large of that of through traffic. In passenger traffic, through traffic only constituted one-sixth. Among all the traffic forms, rail traffic caused the least environmental burdens in the Kymenlaakso region in 2000. The relative share of the emissions from the production stage of products imported into Kymenlaakso, in proportion to the combined results for local activities and imports, varied by emission category. In the impact assessment, imports were analysed using five impact categories. The results indicate that the environmental impacts of imports are definitely larger than those of traffic in Kymenlaakso, for example, and are comparable to the activity sectors leading to the greatest environmental burdens within the region itself. When comparing the environmental impacts of imports with the local impacts, it is also worth bearing in mind that the imports considered in the present study did not include food or consumer goods. The environmental analysis performed for the year 2000 in Kymenlaakso provides a reference point with which to compare findings for the following years. Even though it was not possible to make comprehensive comparisons with earlier years, the environmental analysis provides a good overview of the structure of environmental interventions in the region, and the roles of different activity sectors in engendering different kinds of emissions and environmental impacts. The local decision makers’ evaluations of the relative importance of different environmental problems also provided valuable information. Altogether, 26 environmental indicators were selected for annual monitoring. The environmental burdens used in the impact assessment model of the environmental analysis were not suitable as indicators in themselves, but they formed the basis for selecting and designing indicators. The indicators selected mainly represent environmental conditions or burdens, but also include a few environmental protection measures primarily related to conserving biodiversity. An important criterion in selecting the indicators was the ease of obtaining data from statistics or databases. Almost all the selected indicators are suitable for use in Europe as whole. In their present form, they are particularly applicable to Finnish regions. Elsewhere in Europe, there is also a need to develop other indicators providing a better picture of the environmental trends in each specific region, and the selection process developed in the present study provides a good basis for such endeavours. The Finnish Environment 697en ........................................................ 5 Introduction The main objective set for the ECOREG sub-project on environmental factors was to conduct an environmental analysis of the Kymenlaakso region. The method adopted was regional environmental analysis (Tenhunen and Seppälä 2000), which is suitable for analysing the environmental burden of different kinds of economic activities within the region, as well as their environmental impacts. The analysis of all activities using the same method provides a good overview of the relevance of the different activity sectors, or on a more detailed level, industrial categories, in the formation of the total environmental load in the region. The most important activity