Abstract
Decision makers increasingly recognise the importance of lifestyle changes in reaching low emission targets. How the mitigation potential of changes in mobility, dietary, housing or consumption behaviour compare to those of ambitious technological changes in terms of decarbonisation remains a key question. To evaluate the interplay of behaviour and technological changes, we make use of the European Calculator model and show that changes in behaviour may contribute more than 20% of the overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions required for net-zero by 2050. Behaviour and technology-oriented scenarios are tested individually and in combination for the EU plus the UK and Switzerland. The impacts of behavioural change vary across sectors, with significant GHG emission reduction potential and broader benefits. Changes in travel behaviour limit the rising demand for electricity, natural resources and infrastructure costs from the electrification of passenger transport. Adopting a healthy diet reduces emissions substantially compared to intensifying agricultural practices, while at the same time making cropland available for conservation or bioenergy crops. The trade-offs between energy and food may be substantially alleviated when deploying technological and behavioural changes simultaneously. The results suggest that without behavioural change, the dependency of Europe on carbon removal technologies for its net-zero ambitions increases. Structural changes will be necessary to achieve full decarbonisation by 2050, yet changes in lifestyles are crucial, contributing to achieving climate targets sooner.
Highlights
Policy makers increasingly recognise that achieving low-carbon pathways requires some degree of societal change in addition to technological and policy measures (European Commission 2018a)
Changes represented in the Life scenario would lead to a 43% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU27 + 2 in 2050 given technological developments foreseen in the LTS Baseline
After configuring EUCalc’s inputs to match the evolution of activities, technologies, fuel mix and efficiencies found in the LTS Baseline scenario we obtain a difference in total GHG emissions of +3.1% in the year 2050 compared to those reported by the European Commission (2018a)
Summary
Policy makers increasingly recognise that achieving low-carbon pathways requires some degree of societal change in addition to technological and policy measures (European Commission 2018a). The profile of demandbased solutions for mitigation is sharpening (Creutzig et al 2018), and the role of lifestyle changes is moving from the fringes of the climate debate to occupy a more central role. Underpinning this shift is emerging research on the abatement potential of lifestyle-related changes in mobility, housing, diet and overall consumption (Springmann et al 2016, van de Ven et al 2018, Vita et al 2019, Ivanova et al 2020). While the mitigation potential from lifestyle changes has been reported to be broadly complementary to that brought by efficient and clean technologies (van Sluisveld et al 2016), a multisectoral investigation of the interlinkages between infrastructure, technologyand behavioural changes remain underexplored, especially in the context of rapid technological advances
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