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The potential of behavioural change for climate change mitigation: a case study for the European Union

August 2018
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 23(10)

DOI:10.1007/s11027-017-9763-y

Authors:

Dirk-Jan van de Ven

BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change

Mikel González-Eguino

BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change

Iñaki Arto

BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change

Mainstream literature on climate change concentrates overwhelmingly on technological solutions for this global long-term problem, while a change towards climate-friendly behaviour could play a role in emission reduction and has received little attention. This paper focuses on the potential climate mitigation by behavioural change in the European Union (EU) covering many behavioural options in food, mobility and housing demand which do not require any personal up-front investment. We use the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), capturing both their direct and indirect implications in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Our results indicate that modest to rigorous behavioural change could reduce per capita footprint emissions by 6 to 16%, out of which one fourth will take place outside the EU, predominantly by reducing land use change. The domestic emission savings would contribute to reduce the costs of achieving the internationally agreed climate goal of the EU by 13.5 to 30%. Moreover, many of these options would also yield co-benefits such as monetary savings, positive health impacts or animal wellbeing. These results imply the need for policymakers to focus on climate education and awareness programs more seriously and strategically, making use of the multiple co-benefits related with adopting pro-environmental behaviour. Apart from that, the relevance of behavioural change in climate change mitigation implies that policy-informing models on climate change should include behavioural change as a complement or partial alternative to technological change.

Carbon emissions in EU-27 region until 2050 in two scenarios (million tons of carbon-eq)

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Per capita GHG emission reduction compared with baseline emissions for the three behavioural profiles, accumulated from 2011 to 2050. Total savings are split between different domestic sectors and savings outside the EU-27 area (The sector ‘biomass use’ represents the change in biomass use for different end-use sectors. If positive, biomass use has decreased implying that less CO2 has been taken out of the atmosphere. On the other side, this also means that there are less emissions related to burning biomass. This decrease in emissions is distributed over the different end-use sectors. This is the way the GCAM model accounts for biomass emissions)

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Avoided GHG emissions per behavioural profile dependent on starting year of behavioural change

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Footprint impact due to adoption of behavioural change in EU-27 on GHG emissions outside the EU-27, representing in detail the savings within the non-domestic share from Fig. 2 (see Fig. 2 caption for an explanation on the biomass use sector)

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Per capita amount of avoided cropland due to behavioural change in EU-27, per land use category (average for period 2011–2050)

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The potential of behavioural change for climate change

mitigation: a case study for the European Union

Dirk-Jan van de Ven

&Mikel González-Eguino

1,2

Iñaki Arto

Received: 29 May 2017 /Accepted: 1 September 2017 /Published online: 20 September 2017

#Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Abstract Mainstream literature on climate change concentrates overwhelmingly on techno-

logical solutions for this global long-term problem, while a change towards climate-friendly

behaviour could play a role in emission reduction and has received little attention. This paper

focuses on the potential climate mitigation by behavioural change in the European Union (EU)

covering many behavioural options in food, mobility and housing demand which do not

require any personal up-front investment. We use the Global Change Assessment Model

(GCAM), capturing both their direct and indirect implications in terms of greenhouse gas

emissions. Our results indicate that modest to rigorous behavioural change could reduce per

capita footprint emissions by 6 to 16%, out of which one fourth will take place outside the EU,

predominantly by reducing land use change. The domestic emission savings would contribute

to reduce the costs of achieving the internationally agreed climate goal of the EU by 13.5 to

30%. Moreover, many of these options would also yield co-benefits such as monetary savings,

positive health impacts or animal wellbeing. These results imply the need for policymakers to

focus on climate education and awareness programs more seriously and strategically, making

use of the multiple co-benefits related with adopting pro-environmental behaviour. Apart from

that, the relevance of behavioural change in climate change mitigation implies that policy-

informing models on climate change should include behavioural change as a complement or

partial alternative to technological change.

Keywords Climatechange .Mitigation.Behavioural change .Diet change .Mobility.Land-use

change .Waste recycling .Policy costs .Footprint emissions

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change (2018) 23:853–886

DOI 10.1007/s11027-017-9763-y

*Dirk-Jan van de Ven

dj.vandeven@bc3research.org

Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Edificio Sede 1-1, Parque Científico de UPV/EHU, Barrio

Sarriena s/n, 48940 Leioa, Spain

University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

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