This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Even if industry rapidly becomes more sustainable, households will still need to change their lifestyles to meet climate targets. Industrial ecologist Stephanie Cap warns that households cannot do this alone: Businesses and governments must create the conditions to make these changes possible.
Cap defends her dissertation titled "Everything Must Change: 1.5°C decarbonisation scenarios across industries and households" on Oct. 1. Using scientific models, Cap has developed scenarios for 2030 and 2050, mapping out what is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°, the threshold below which climate change remains harmful but still manageable. One thing is certain, she says: "Making industry more sustainable is not enough on its own to stay within 1.5°, and neither is making households more sustainable.
We really need both." For her research, Cap analyzed five European countries: Germany, Spain, Latvia, Hungary and Sweden. Each has a different starting point in terms of renewable energy infrastructure, dependence on fossil fuels, household income and, to some extent, policy. Using scenario models based on the EXIOBASE database, she mapped the carbon footprint of households.
"If you buy vegetables, a laptop or electricity, the model looks at all the production factors involved in producing that product. For one euro's worth of food products or train travel, for example, I can calculate how many greenhouse gases were emitted in the process." With these models, Cap set out to answer a key question: What happens to greenhouse gas emissions if households change their consumption patterns? To find out, she developed various "portfolios" of measures and changes.
Reducing the use of cars with internal combustion engines, phasing out fossil-fuel heating and switching to plant-based diets consistently delivered the largest emissions reductions. Her scenarios also assumed that industry would become far more sustainable. So, is the 1.5° target achievable?
In the scenarios for 2030, it is theoretically possible, but only if a large share of the population adopts a wide range of lifestyle changes. In countries with relatively high emissions, at least 87% of the population would need to take part; in Spain and Hungary, that share is lower, at around 50% to 60%. The picture for 2050 is even more challenging: Germany, Latvia and Sweden fail to meet the 1.5° target.
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