Driving forces underlying sub-national carbon dioxide emissions within the household sector and implications for the Paris Agreement targets in Japan

Abstract

This study investigated insights into reducing energy-related CO2 emissions in households by examining individual socio-economic drivers at a sub-national level. Specifically, the logarithmic mean Divisia index technique was used to decompose CO2 emission trends into six drivers in all 47 prefectures of Japan during the period from 1990 to 2015. Drivers included the change in the number of households (household effect), distribution of households (distribution effect), household size (size effect), per-capita household energy consumption (consumption effect), household energy choice (choice effect), and sectoral CO2 emission intensity (intensity effect). The results showed that, in contrast to size and the distribution effects, the number of households had a positive, significant effect on CO2 emissions, indicating that recent demographic trends are responsible for the increase in CO2 emissions observed in most of the prefectures during the study period. With regard to effects related to consumption and choice, CO2 emissions due to changes in lifestyle dropped in only seven prefectures and reductions due to changes in sectoral energy choice were seen in only two prefectures in 2015. The intensity effect boosted the emissions of these prefectures the most in 2015 because of the shutdown of nuclear power plants due to the Great East Japan Earthquake. Further, we identified those prefectures that needed to reduce their per-capita energy consumption level in order to attain the reduction targets for household CO2 emissions in 2030 from 2015, given projected changes in demographic trends and recent and projected emission intensities. In order to achieve reductions in total CO2 emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, it is important to prioritize national and local policy interventions for the transfer of new household energy technologies, upgrade household appliances, and encourage people to limit energy consumption in light of the differences in these key drivers in each prefecture.