Abstract: The call for a decent life for all within planetary limits poses a dual challenge: Provide all people with the essential resources needed to live well and, collectively, to not exceed the source and sink capacity of the biosphere to sustain human societies. In this paper, we examine the corridor of possible distributions of household energy and carbon footprints for the populations of 28 European countries that satisfy both minimal energy requirements for a decent living and maximum supply of decarbonised energy to achieve the 1.5°C target in 2050. We constructed energy and carbon footprints for harmonized European expenditure deciles in 2015 by combining data from national Household Budget Surveys (HBS) provided by EUROSTAT with the Environmentally-Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE-MRIO) model EXIOBASE and aggregating the ranked national expenditure quintiles European deciles. Estimates for a range of minimum energy requirements for a decent life, as well as estimates for the maximum available energy supply, were taken from the 1.5°C scenario literature. We found a top decile to bottom decile ratio of 7.2 for expenditure, 3.5 for energy and 2.6 for carbon, largely attributable to inefficient energy and heating technologies in the four bottom deciles that are predominantly located in Eastern European countries. Adopting best technology in all European deciles would safe 17EJ per year and equalize expenditure, energy and carbon inequality. At those inequality levels, the dual goal can only be achieved by CCS deployment plus large and fast efficiency improvements plus extremely low minimum energy use requirements of 27GJ per adult equivalent (as compared to currently xx GJ/ae in the lowest decile). When around 50GJ/ae minimum energy requirements for a decent living and no CCS deployment is assumed, the mathematical possible inequality to also achieve the 1.5°C target becomes practically zero. We conclude that for Europe combining the goals of providing enough energy for a decent living and achieving the Paris agreement poses an immense and widely underestimated challenge to which the current organization of the euro zone offers little monetary or fiscal leeway.
Abstract: The call for a decent life for all within planetary limits poses a dual challenge: Provide all people with the essential resources needed to live well and, collectively, to not exceed the source and sink capacity of the biosphere to sustain human societies. In this paper, we examine the corridor of possible distributions of household energy and carbon footprints for the populations of 28 European countries that satisfy both minimal energy requirements for a decent living and maximum supply of decarbonised energy to achieve the 1.5°C target in 2050. We constructed energy and carbon footprints for harmonized European expenditure deciles in 2015 by combining data from national Household Budget Surveys (HBS) provided by EUROSTAT with the Environmentally-Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE-MRIO) model EXIOBASE and aggregating the ranked national expenditure quintiles European deciles. Estimates for a range of minimum energy requirements for a decent life, as well as estimates for the maximum available energy supply, were taken from the 1.5°C scenario literature. We found a top decile to bottom decile ratio of 7.2 for expenditure, 3.5 for energy and 2.6 for carbon, largely attributable to inefficient energy and heating technologies in the four bottom deciles that are predominantly located in Eastern European countries. Adopting best technology in all European deciles would save 19 EJ per year and equalize expenditure, energy and carbon inequality. At those inequality levels, the dual goal can only be achieved by CCS deployment plus large and fast efficiency improvements plus extremely low minimum energy use requirements of 27GJ per adult equivalent (as compared to currently xx GJ/ae in the lowest decile). When around 50GJ/ae minimum energy requirements for a decent living and no CCS deployment is assumed, the mathematical possible inequality to also achieve the 1.5°C target becomes practically zero. We conclude that for Europe combining the goals of providing enough energy for a decent living and achieving the Paris agreement poses an immense and widely underestimated challenge to which the current organization of the euro zone offers little monetary or fiscal leeway.
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