Drivers of household carbon footprints across EU regions, from 2010 to 2015

Abstract

Urban regions are responsible for a significant proportion of carbon emissions. The carbon footprint (CF) is a practical measure to identify the responsibility of individuals, cities, or nations in climate change. Numerous CF studies have focused on national accounts, and a few combined consumer consumption and global supply chains to estimate additionally detailed spatial CF. However, the drivers of temporal change in detailed spatial CF are largely unknown, along with regional, spatial, and socioeconomic disparities.
Here, we uncovered the drivers of changes in household CFs in EU regions, at the finest scale currently available, between 2010 and 2015. This study mapped the household CFs of 83 macro-regions across 27 EU nations and identified the driving factors underlying their temporal change. We combined multi-regional input-output tables and micro-consumption data from 275,247 and 272,045 households in 2010 and 2015, respectively. We decomposed EU regional CF, employing Structural Decomposition Analysis, into five driving factors: emission intensity, supply chain structure, population, per capita consumption, and final demand share. For a deeper assessment of changes in the contribution of consumption patterns, we further categorized the regional CF into 15 factors, including 11 per capita consumption categories. We found that household CF drivers vary depending on region, population density, income, and consumption patterns. 
Our results can help policymakers adopt climate policies at the regional level by reflecting on the residents' socioeconomic, spatial, and consumption conditions, for further ambitious climate actions.

Declining household greenhouse gas footprints in Germany: Decomposing the contributions of working time, consumption, mobility, energy efficiency and decarbonization between 2000 - 2019

“…Herein, the case of Germany is investigated, which is a high-income country and a pioneer of policy-driven decarbonization, where national-level and household footprints are slowly declining (Lamb et al, 2021a). Previous research suggests that slowing household consumption, decreasing energy intensity of supply chains and the decarbonization of energy supply may explain this (Lee et al, 2023). Fuel switching and increasing renewable energy supply are especially relevant in Germany (Lamb et al, 2021b).…”

“…From a consumption-based perspective, which takes into account global emissions occurring to satisfy final demand, GHG emissions footprints are substantially larger than production-based emissions and their reductions in Germany and Europe are happening more slowly. Household footprints constitute ~2/3 of the German national GHG footprint (Lamb et al, 2021a;Lee et al, 2023). Understanding if and why household GHG footprints are declining fast enough to comply with climate policy targets is therefore paramount for designing further supply-and demand-side measures for climate change mitigation.…”

“…Previous research has mainly focused on a few key drivers, primarily for countries with increasing GHG emissions (Lenzen, 2016;Ottelin et al, 2019;Pottier, 2022): growing household income enables increasing demand in general and mobility in particular, which drive up household footprints; while supply-side improvements in energy efficiency and slowly decarbonizing energy supply mitigate some of the increasing demand. The specific interplay and strength of each driver varies across countries, population density, household sizes and socio-economic groups, as well as the complexity of the explanatory statistical models employed (Gill and Moeller, 2018;Lamb et al, 2021bLamb et al, , 2021aLee et al, 2023;Pottier, 2022;Song et al, 2022). This raises the question of how the underlying socio-economic drivers of household consumption footprints changed, enabling the decline in household footprints in Germany and how this might inform further climate change mitigation measures.…”

“…Fuel switching and increasing renewable energy supply are especially relevant in Germany (Lamb et al, 2021b). However, mobility and transport have been increasing in Germany, mostly due to road passenger and freight transport, followed by international shipping and aviation, while railways and other modes of transport only contribute a minor share of mobility emissions (Lee et al, 2023;Umweltbundesamt, 2022). A more systematic analysis of the previously discussed drivers of household consumption in shaping the decline of German household GHG emissions footprints is however missing.…”