The CarbonCloud platform uses economic allocation because the generation of economic value motivates the production processes.
-
Economic allocation (in comparison to physical allocation) better represents the societal cause of the emissions:
-
The generation of economic value motivates the production processes. (The value created causes the process. If no value is created, the process will soon cease to exist and no environmental interference will result.) Therefore the economic value is an appropriate basis for allocating the responsibility for the associated environmental burdens.
-
-
Economic values better reflect the intrinsic qualities of the products and co-products, which physical parameters cannot adequately reflect:
-
Prices represent aggregate proxies for the complex quality to many products (taste, trend etc..), which cannot be communicated in terms of single physical attributes. Therefore differences in the prices reflect the balance of the qualities of the products and co-products.
-
-
Economic allocation facilitates producing LCA model outcomes that may incentivise increased use of low-value co-products in order to increase industrial ecological efficiencies.