Fundamental changes in our economies are required to secure decent living standards for all in the struggle against climate breakdown, according to new research.
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Lead author Jefim Vogel, PhD researcher at Leeds' Sustainability Research Institute, explained: "Decent living standards are crucial for human well-being, and reducing global energy use is crucial for averting catastrophic climate changes. Truly sustainable development would mean providing decent living standards for everyone at much lower, sustainable levels of energy and resource use.
"But in the current economic system, no country in the world accomplishes that - not even close. It appears that our economic system is fundamentally misaligned with the aspirations of sustainable development: it is unfit for the challenges of the 21st century."
Co-author Professor Julia Steinberger, from the University of Leeds and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, added: "The problem is that in our current economic system, all countries that achieve decent living standards use much more energy than what can be sustained if we are to avert dangerous climate breakdown."
By 2050, global energy use needs to be as low as 27 gigajoules (GJ) of final energy per person to reach the aspirations of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C without relying on speculative future technologies, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That means current global average energy use (55 GJ per person) needs to be cut in half, while affluent countries like the UK (81 GJ per person) or Spain (77 GJ per person) need to reduce their average energy use by as much as 65%, France (95 GJ per person) by more than 70%, and the most energy-hungry countries like the USA (204 GJ per person) or Canada (232 GJ per person) need to cut by as much as 90%.
A major concern, however, is that such profound reductions in energy use might undermine living standards, as currently only countries with high energy use accomplish decent living standards.
Even the energy-lightest of the countries that achieve decent living standards - spearheaded by Argentina (53 GJ per person), Cyprus (55 GJ per person), and Greece (63 GJ per person) - use at least double the 'sustainable' level of 27 GJ per person, and many countries use even much more.
On the other hand, in all countries with energy use levels below 27 GJ per person, large parts of the population currently suffer from precarious living standards - for example, in India (19 GJ per person) and Zambia (23 GJ per person), where at least half the population is deprived of fundamental needs.
It appears that in the current economic system, reducing energy use in affluent countries could undermine living standards, while improving living standards in less affluent countries would require large increases in energy use and thus further exacerbate climate breakdown.
But this is not inevitable, the research team show: fundamental changes in economic and social priorities could resolve this dilemma of sustainable development.
Co-author Dr Daniel O'Neill, from Leeds' School of earth and Environment, explained: "Our findings suggest that improving public services could enable countries to provide decent living standards at lower levels of energy use. Governments should offer free and high-quality public services in areas such as health, education, and public transport.
"We also found that a fairer income distribution is crucial for achieving decent living standards at low energy use. To reduce existing income disparities, governments could raise minimum wages, provide a Universal Basic Income, and introduce a maximum income level. We also need much higher taxes on high incomes, and lower taxes on low incomes."
Another essential factor, the research team found, is affordable and reliable access to electricity and modern fuels. While this is already near-universal in affluent countries, it is still lacking for billions of people in lower-income countries, highlighting important infrastructure needs.
Perhaps the most crucial and perhaps the most surprising finding is that economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence is detrimental for aspirations of sustainable development.
Professor Steinberger explained: "In contrast with wide-spread assumptions, the evidence suggests that decent living standards require neither perpetual economic growth nor high levels of affluence.
"In fact, economic growth in affluent or even moderately affluent countries is detrimental for living standards. And it is also fundamentally unsustainable: economic growth is tied to increases in energy use, and thus makes the energy savings that are required for tackling climate breakdown virtually impossible."
"Another detrimental factor is the extraction of natural resources such as coal, oil, gas or minerals - these industries need to be scaled back rapidly."
Lead-author Jefim Vogel concluded: "In short, we need to abandon economic growth in affluent countries, scale back resource extraction, and prioritise public services, basic infrastructures and fair income distributions everywhere.
"With these policies in place, rich countries could slash their energy use and emissions whilst maintaining or even improving living standards; and less affluent countries could achieve decent living standards and end material poverty without needing vast amounts of energy. That's good news for climate justice, good news for human well-being, good news for poverty eradication, and good news for energy security.
[...] In my view, the most promising and integral vision for the required transformation is the idea of degrowth - it is an idea whose time has come."
Highlights
• No country sufficiently meets human needs within sustainable levels of energy use.
• Need satisfaction and associated energy requirements depend on socio-economic setups.
• Public services are linked to higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements.
• Economic growth is linked to lower need satisfaction and higher energy requirements.
• Countries with good socio-economic setups could likely meet needs at low energy use.
Abstract
Meeting human needs at sustainable levels of energy use is fundamental for avoiding catastrophic climate change and securing the well-being of all people. In the current political-economic regime, no country does so. Here, we assess which socio-economic conditions might enable societies to satisfy human needs at low energy use, to reconcile human well-being with climate mitigation.
Using a novel analytical framework alongside a novel multivariate regression-based moderation approach and data for 106 countries, we analyse how the relationship between energy use and six dimensions of human need satisfaction varies with a wide range of socio-economic factors relevant to the provisioning of goods and services ('provisioning factors'). We find that factors such as public service quality, income equality, democracy, and electricity access are associated with higher need satisfaction and lower energy requirements (‘beneficial provisioning factors’). Conversely, extractivism and economic growth beyond moderate levels of affluence are associated with lower need satisfaction and greater energy requirements (‘detrimental provisioning factors’). Our results suggest that improving beneficial provisioning factors and abandoning detrimental ones could enable countries to provide sufficient need satisfaction at much lower, ecologically sustainable levels of energy use.
However, as key pillars of the required changes in provisioning run contrary to the dominant political-economic regime, a broader transformation of the economic system may be required to prioritise, and organise provisioning for, the satisfaction of human needs at low energy use.
Check also Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario. Joel Millward-Hopkins, Julia K. Steinberger, Narasimha D. Rao, Yannick Oswald. Global Environmental Change, Volume 65, November 2020, 102168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102168
Highlights
• Providing Decent Living with Minimum Energy: A Global Scenario.
• As ecological breakdown looms, the basic material needs of billions remain unmet.
• We estimate the minimal energy for providing decent living globally & universally.
• Despite population growth, 2050 global energy use could be reduced to 1960 levels.
• This requires advanced technologies & reductions in demand to sufficiency levels.
• But ‘sufficiency’ is far more materially generous than many opponents often assume.
Abstract: It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent material livings to the entire global population. We find that global final energy consumption in 2050 could be reduced to the levels of the 1960s, despite a population three times larger. However, such a world requires a massive rollout of advanced technologies across all sectors, as well as radical demand-side changes to reduce consumption – regardless of income – to levels of sufficiency. Sufficiency is, however, far more materially generous in our model than what those opposed to strong reductions in consumption often assume.
Keywords: Basic needsClimate changeDemandEnergyInequalitySufficiency
| Food | 2000–2150 kcal/cap/day | 15% | – | 3 KJ/kilocalorie | 30% |
| Cooking appliances | 1 cooker/household | – | 0.8 KJ/kilocalorie | 1 GJ/app+ | 50% |
| Cold Storage | 1 fridge-freezer/household | – | 0.44 GJ/app+/yr | 4 GJ/app+ | – |
| Shelter & living conditions | |||||
| Household size | 4 persons/household | −25% | – | – | – |
| Sufficient space | 15 meters2 floor-space/cap* | 80% | – | 2–4 GJ/m2 | 100% |
| Thermal comfort | 15 meters2 floor-space/cap* | 80% | 20–60 MJ/m2/yr | – | 300% |
| Illumination | 2500 lm/house; 6 hrs/day | 100% | 150 lm/W | 14 MJ/house/yr | – |
| Hygiene | |||||
| Water supply | 50 Litres/cap/day | 100% | – | 5–17 KJ/L | – |
| Water heating | 20 Litres/cap/day | 100% | 96–220 KJ/L | – | 50% |
| Waste management | Provided to all households** | – | – | 180 MJ/cap/yr | 200% |
| Clothing | |||||
| Clothes | 4 kg of new clothing/year | 33% | – | 100 MJ/kg | – |
| Washing facilities | 80 kg of washing/year | 33% | 2.4 MJ/kg | 2 GJ/app+ | – |
| Healthcare Hospitals | 200 meters2 floor-space/bed | 50% | 410–560 MJ/m2/yr | 14–23 GJ/m2 | 130% |
| Education Schools | 10 meters2 floor-space/pupil | 50% | 100–130 MJ/m2/yr | 4.5–7.5 GJ/m2 | 150% |
| Communication & information | |||||
| Phones | 1 phone/person over 10yrs old | – | 28 MJ/phone/yr | 110 MJ/phone | 30% |
| Computers | 1 laptop/household | – | 220 MJ/laptop/yr | 3 GJ/laptop | 30% |
| Networks & data | High** | 100% | – | ~0.4 GJ/cap/yr | – |
| Mobility | |||||
| Vehicle production | Consistent with pkm travelled** | – | – | 0.1–0.3 MJ/pkm | 50% |
| Vehicle propulsion | 5000–15,000 pkm/cap/year | 3–10% | 0.2–1.9 MJ/pkm++ | – | 100% |
| Infrastructure | Consistent with pkm travelled** | – | – | 0.1–0.3 MJ/pkm | – |
- * Assuming 10 m2 of living space/capita plus 20 m2 of communal space/house; with the latter divided by four, we get 15 m2/capita overall.
- ** Activity levels here are not straightforward to define.
- + ’App’ refers to ‘appliance’.
- ++ Large range as this covers different modes (public transport to passenger flights).
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