Effects of relocation on the energy and carbon footprint of selected industrial goods

The relocation of production processes abroad to low-wage countries has become increasingly relevant in times of globalization. Production costs can be significantly reduced by these relocations in order to give the company a competitive advantage. These relocations also cause higher emission outputs. In this thesis, the impacts are examined and then evaluated using various LCA tools. For this purpose, the country-specific energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of the manufacturing phase of different reference products of the textile, paper, steel and automotive industry are determined. The low-wage countries of Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are considered and compared with Germany. Especially China and India have the most CO₂-intensive productions. The higher the percentage of electrical energy in the energy consumption of a manufacturing process, the lower are the emissions of Germany as a location for production. The production of the selected goods of the textile and paper industry in low-wage countries causes an average of about 25 % higher emissions than a comparable production in Germany. The products of the steel industry represent a special case. In this case, the emissions of the production in Germany are an average 10 % higher than in low-wage countries. However, China and India also show the highest emissions in this area. By producing a conventionally driven automobile and an electric vehicle in China, 65 % respectively 50 % more CO₂ is generated than in a production in Germany. The analysis of the utilization phase of both automobiles shows that from an environmental point of view even today the large-scale use of electric mobility in countries like Germany is worthwhile. In countries such as China, which continue to produce a large part of their electricity from fossil sources, electromobility cannot significantly contribute to the reduction of emissions. This CO₂ outsourcing has to be adapted to the effective measures of climate change.