Abstract
The UK introduced carbon budgets in 2008, with an aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 compared with the 1990 levels. It has been argued that the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting the global average temperature rise to ‘well below 2° C’ requires deeper and more rapid emission reductions than the current UK targets. Household energy consumption accounts for almost a third of total UK CO2 emissions in recent years. This paper explores drivers of high energy consumption in domestic buildings from a sociological practice perspective and through a lens of dominant meanings of ‘home’. Whilst the practice approach and meanings of home have been explored separately in the literature to understand household energy consumption, this paper adds new findings on the interaction between the meanings of home and the elements of practices. Results show the dominant meaning of home differs between householders; this in turn affects the materials and procedures of energy-consuming practices. For instance, if ‘home’ means ‘hospitality’, this changes the standard of comfort and convenience people perceive at home. Understanding how practices and meanings of the home intersect, provides new, much needed insights that could support policy change commensurate with more rapidly reducing CO2 emissions from domestic energy consumption.
Highlights
The UK introduced carbon budgets in 2008, with an aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 compared with the 1990 levels
A focus on reducing and decarbonising household energy use has increased in many countries since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report was published in 1990, in order to achieve global climate change mitigation and adaptation (IPCC 1990)
It has been argued that the Paris Agreement requires deeper and more rapid emission reductions than the current UK targets (Anderson 2015; Committee on Climate Change 2016; Pye et al 2017) because the more emissions are released into the atmosphere in the short term, thereby accumulating, the more difficult it will be to meet the Agreement goal given the rate of reductions that will become necessary later on (Anderson and Bows 2011)
Summary
The UK introduced carbon budgets in 2008, with an aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 compared with the 1990 levels. It has been argued that the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting the global average temperature rise to ‘well below 2° C’ requires deeper and more rapid emission reductions than the current UK targets. The UK Government became the first to put an emission reduction target into statute in 2008 when it committed to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 80% by 2050, compared to the 1990 baseline (Climate Change Act 2008). This target was premised on a 63% probability of exceeding a 2° C global temperature rise The CO2 emissions from household energy use accounted for around 27% of total territorial-based CO2 emissions in the UK by end-users in 2016; the remaining CO2 emissions are mainly due to the business/industry (30%) and transport (36%) sectors (BEIS 2018a)
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