Environmentally extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) models map who sells what to whom across the world economy and attach environmental data to every sector and region, so the pressures behind production, consumption and trade can be followed along a whole supply chain.
XIO develops the EXIOBASE MRIO model. EXIOBASE resolves 200 products across 163 industries in 49 regions, and carries more than a thousand environmental stressors: greenhouse gases, air pollutants, water use and scarcity, land use, material extraction and pressures related to biodiversity among them. The spend-based emission factors are one output among many.
The model itself includes the underlying supply-use tables and the energy, emission and other environmental accounts, so a result can be traced back to the data it came from. Every version is peer reviewed in its methodology and archived on Zenodo with its own DOI.
Origins in European research
EXIOBASE was built to answer a question that standard statistics and data can’t: what environmental pressure sits behind a unit of spending, wherever in the world that production actually happens. Three consecutive EU research projects assembled it between 2007 and 2016. The sectoral detail was a deliberate choice: national supply-use tables usually arrive at around 64 sectors, and EXIOBASE disaggregates them where the environmental impacts concentrate.
History
History of EXIOBASE
2007
EXIOBASE 1
Built in EXIOPOL, an EU Sixth Framework project running to 2011. Coordinated by FEEM in Italy with TNO leading the input-output work, across 37 partners in Europe and beyond, including NTNU, CML and SERI. The first global database to pair high sectoral detail with consistent environmental accounts.
2011
EXIOBASE 2
Built in CREEA, an EU Seventh Framework project running to 2014, coordinated by TNO with twelve partners including Leiden University’s CML and NTNU. It extended EXIOBASE into a multi-year time series, with harmonised source data and broader environmental indicators.
2012
EXIOBASE 3
Built in DESIRE, an EU Seventh Framework project running to 2016, coordinated by TNO with eleven partners. Its update to methods and internal consistency are what made EXIOBASE usable for Scope 3 accounting in industry as well as in research.
2021
EXIOBASE 3.8
Ad-hoc update, produced through related project funding by members of XIO and material extensions from WU. Updating core IO and GHG accounts to 2019
2023
XIO Sustainability Analytics
Founded by core developers of EXIOBASE, who continue to work on the model and build the spend-based factors from it.
XIO-SA has now modernised the workflow behind the core EXIOBASE accounts, producing annual updates, bug fixes, and regular improvements across the whole database.
At a Glance
EXIOBASE at a glance
Coverage and structure, the research projects behind the model, recent publications, and the partners we work with.
Scientific projects
Three consecutive EU research projects built EXIOBASE between 2007 and 2016, coordinated by TNO with partners across Europe.
The Footprint Explorer shows the model’s production, consumption and import accounts.
Use Cases
Where EXIOBASE is used
Research and assessment
Cited in well over a thousand publications, listed on the citations page.
Used in work by the EU Joint Research Centre and the UN International Resource Panel.
The methodology is peer reviewed and documented in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.
Government statistics and policy
Statistics Sweden through the PRINCE programme, and the Norwegian CaFEAN accounts, use it for official consumption-based emission accounting.
UK BEIS uses it to model the imported emissions component of the DEFRA spend-based emission factors.
The Danish Energy Agency uses it to project the economy’s global climate impact under policy scenarios.
Also used by the Norwegian Environment Agency and by DFØ for public procurement.
Corporate carbon reporting
Widely used for spend-based Scope 3, and particularly for purchased goods and services.
The GHG Protocol recognises this class of factor for value-chain estimates where supplier data is missing.
Covers a whole footprint on one basis, which is what makes it useful for finding hotspots.
Financial institutions
The PCAF Standard names EXIOBASE for financed emissions under category 15.
The ECB has used it in euro-area nature-related risk assessment, as recorded by the NGFS.
Sector and country comparability lets a whole portfolio be screened on one basis, including where asset-level data is partial.
Examples in the open literature: the ECB on euro-area nature-related risk, the EU Joint Research Centre on the EU economy’s dependency on nature, and the Danish Energy Agency on Denmark’s global climate impact.
Licence and access
EXIOBASE version 3.9 and later is published under a customised Creative Commons BY-SA-NC licence. It is free for universities, non-profit research institutes, environmental and social NGOs, and national and international environmental agencies provided they are not doing commercial work with it. Every version is archived on Zenodo with its own DOI, so past analyses stay reproducible.
For any other use not covered by the Zenodo licence, reach out.