France 2072: Lifestyles at the Core of Carbon Neutrality Challenges

Abstract

In this chapter, we propose to explore the conditions under which a stringent target of 1.5°C-written into the Paris Agreement in December 2015-may be fulfilled at a country level, France, while focusing on energy issues. The analysis horizon spans to 2072 in reference to the Club of Rome's 1972 Limits to Growth publication, 2072 being the neutral target. To this end, we explore the impact of two contrasting lifestyles for France: the first, named digital, represents an individualistic and technological society, whereas the second, named collective, depicts a society with strong social ties and cooperation between citizens. These scenarios are assessed through different models, each one representing a particular aspect: lifestyles, economy and technologies. While technology-oriented energy models usually omit or oversimplify the lifestyle dimension, the proposed approach gives a more coherent framework for the formulation of alternative demand levels. These demands for energy services enrich the scenariobuilding process and influence not only the economic system, but also the energy system. The digital society involves significant growth of both GDP and the unemployment rate, and does not result in carbon neutrality, whereas the collective society leads to smaller growth of GDP and a decrease in the unemployment rate, but Page | 2 makes it possible to reach a nil carbon target. These results underline the leverage role of lifestyles in attaining carbon neutrality. Key messages  Policymakers must find a compromise between pathways that lead to economic growth (GDP) but make it impossible to reach a carbon neutrality target, such as a digital society, and pathways with lower GDP that enable reaching a carbon neutrality target, such as a more collective society.  Policymakers must ensure consistency between the intended technology deployment and evolving lifestyles.  Policymakers should make use of their ability to set up support measures in order to shift our habits toward more sobriety, especially in the transport sector.  The TIMES models are relevant to study the impacts of lifestyle changes as they have to satisfy energy services demands that are linked to lifestyles.

Assessing Lifestyle Transformations and Their Systemic Effects in Energy-System and Integrated Assessment Models: A Review of Current Methods and Data

“…Considering only the IAM and ESM-based applications, the percentage of global-level studies was higher than that of national-level studies due to the wider system boundaries defined in these modeling frameworks. The majority of the national and sub-national studies in the complete sample (~80%) were performed for countries located in the Global North, which consist mainly of developed OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) economies (e.g., USA [39], United Kingdom [40], Japan [41] and a number of EU member states [42]). On the other hand, only a few modeling studies were identified with a focus on developing or less-developed nations (e.g., China [43] and India [44]).…”

“…Limiting unnecessary floor area per capita through, for example, compact city and building designs, is represented by setting a cap on household areas in the majority of lifestyle-led mitigation pathways [19,28] according to living standards in selected developed economies. Contrary to the customary approach, the authors of [42,90] established a statistical relationship between housing floor area and a set of factors, such as cohabitation practices and dwelling location, based on information from national surveys in France. By changing the strength of the statistical relationship, the authors simulated the potential effects of lifestyle changes on household floor area, which were then fed as inputs to an energy-system model to analyze the wider effects on energy use and emissions.…”

“…This was performed, for example, through capturing the idiosyncratic preferences of consumers in assessing the distributional effect of energy-efficiency policies in the residential sector [96], through modeling the impact of social learning on vehicle selection in combination with technological learning [54] and varying cultural influences [55], and through perceptions of transport modes [81]. However, similar assessments of a broader set of lifestyle changes in IAM-based mitigation pathways accounting for consumer heterogeneity are still lacking, with rare exceptions, such as in [42]. Such assessments require rich data input from national surveys, making it difficult to reproduce them in regional or global contexts.…”

Endogenous simulation of low-carbon lifestyle change in global climate mitigation pathways

“…Significant lifestyle change is required to reduce future energy and emission outcomes consistent with Paris Climate Agreement goals to limit global warming to well below 2 • C [1][2][3][4][5]. The Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC suggests that by 2050, global CO 2 emissions could be reduced 40%-70% across all enduse sectors with demand-based mitigation strategies [6,7].…”

On the Socio-Cultural Determinants of Polish Entrepreneurs’ Attitudes towards the Development of Renewable Energy: Business, Climate Skepticism Ideology and Climate Change

“…Social actors at each of these levels have different interests, political beliefs, belong to different social classes, and represent various sectors (professional, business, cultural, spatial) of society. Hence, it is worth recalling and emphasising that energy transition is not only the replacement of one energy generation technology by another, but a complex social process affecting not only the natural environment, but also production models, employment structure, safety and workplace costs [7], international political alliances and geopolitical systems [8], power systems and relations [9], the strategies of entrepreneurs [10], the lifestyle and consumption behaviour of citizens [11,12] and dozens of other dimensions of social life. These diverse factors-including, primarily, geopolitical risk and international uncertainty [13]-may not only be affected by energy transition, but may themselves accelerate or delay the transition to renewable energy.…”