Clim. Policy http://doi.org/czhv (2018)

Effective climate policy requires a multi-pronged strategy that reduces greenhouse gases at the point of emissions and simultaneously leverages consumer-orientated behaviour change. Although these green actions are widely studied, a comprehensive accounting of their potential emissions impacts is a challenging task.

Credit: studiomode / Alamy Stock Photo

Daniel Moran of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and colleagues with the European Union Carbon-CAP project use the existing literature on demand-side initiatives to parameterize a multi-region input–output model, enabling them to assess the national-level impacts of household action. The results show that if all 90 of the initiatives considered were adopted, the EU could reduce its carbon footprint by as much as 25% and its territorial emissions by 30%. Initiatives addressing transport and food yielded the largest reductions in emissions. However, a large number of actions contributed very little.

Notably, the authors characterize their findings as estimating an upper bound on the potential impact of consumer mitigation options, reaffirming that there is no silver-bullet with respect to meeting the Paris climate goals.