The Carbon Footprint of International Tourism in the European Union

In recent years, international tourism has emerged as an activity with a high contribution to carbon emissions. Calculating the carbon footprint of tourism is the first step towards achieving low-carbon tourism development, mainly if it includes a detailed assessment of the carbon footprint by country of origin, destination country, and sector of economic activity. This research aims to estimate the carbon footprint of international tourism expenditure for the European Union countries. The carbon footprint calculation employs an Environmentally Extended Multi-regional Input-Output (EEIO) model. It combines the intra-regional and inter-regional transactions with data from the Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA). The findings show that for countries with strong tourism growth, the carbon footprint of tourism is about 4% of the total carbon footprint, while it is significantly lower for other countries. Furthermore, the sectors of electricity generation, transport (water, air, and land), food products industry, accommodation, and food services contribute about 85% of the total CO2 pollutants due to international tourism.