Greenhouse gas emissions of India's household food, apparel, mobility and energy consumption: Regional structure and inequality, and scenarios for 1.5°C climate stabilization

Abstract

The GHG emission pathway of India will be crucial for keeping temperatures below 2°C or even 1.5°C. It is still unclear how to reconcile increasing consumption and energy demand, and questions of wellbeing for all, with climate change mitigation. Here, we investigate the role of Indian household consumption by calculating carbon footprints for 12 income-categories and 33 products and services reported for both urban and rural conglomerations in 35 states and union territories of India. The impact of the urban population per person is higher (2.7 tCO2eq) than in rural areas (2.2 tCO2eq), but due to the larger population the rural population contributed two thirds of all emissions. High inequality in emission footprints is caused by high-income urban travellers and high-income meat consumption in rural and urban areas. The total emissions of consumption were 2.6 GtCO2eq, with fuel and lighting, transportation, milk and dairy, meat and egg, and rice contributing 1020, 280, 610, 430, and 130 MtCO2eq, respectively. Scenario analysis demonstrates that switching to solar energy, staying away from OECD-type animal-based diets, and avoiding status-driven mobility behaviour can deliver 52GtCO2eq emission savings until 2050. Nonetheless, fair burden sharing requires even stronger action by Global North and China.

Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four socio-economically diverse countries

“…For example, when considering GHG embedded in goods, services, and public and private investments, the average personal carbon footprint is 1.6 tCO2e in Nigeria compared to 21.1 tCO2e in the United States 5,6 . However, such country averages do not account for inequalities in personal carbon footprints within countries [7][8][9][10][11][12] , which usually vary as a function of income and wealth 5,8,13 . Studies show that the footprints of wealthier individuals can be orders of magnitude higher than the country average 5,10,[14][15][16] .…”