Inequality can double the energy required to secure universal decent living

Ecological breakdown and economic inequality are among the largest contemporary global challenges, and the issues are thoroughly entangled – as they have been throughout the history of civilisations. Yet, the global economy continues toward ecological crises, and inequalities remain far higher than citizens believe to be fair. Here, we explore the role of inequality, alongside traditional drivers of ecological impacts, in determining global energy requirements for providing universal decent living. We consider scenarios from fair inequality – where inequalities mirror public ideals – through a fairly unequal world, to one with a super-rich global elite. The energy-costs of inequality appear far more significant than population: even fair levels increase the energy required to provide universal decent living by 40%, and a super-rich global 1% could consume as much energy as would providing decent living to 1.7 billion. We finish by arguing that total population remains important nonetheless, but for reasons beyond ecological impacts

Back to the future: Old values for a new (more equal) world

Inequality has become a defining feature of our time and concerns are growing that artificial intelligence, human-enhancement and global ecological breakdown could cause levels to spiral upwards. Although public disapproval of current inequalities is widespread, studies also show that people don’t desire equality, but prefer ‘fair’, still significant inequalities. Here, I argue these preferences are rooted in ideals of meritocracy and intuitive notions of free will; values that’ll become increasingly tenuous in a future of human enhancement, where they could legitimise mass inequalities. Maintaining an illusion of free will is often argued to be needed to disincentivise immoral behaviour, but it also creates a vicious feedback: It provides social legitimacy to substantial inequalities, which exacerbate precisely those immoral behaviours that the illusion is intended to mitigate. However, meritocratic values, and their foundational notion of individual agency, are neither natural nor inevitable – they’re mediated by social practices. To see what egalitarian practices may look like, I review the rich anthropology literature on egalitarian societies. This highlights an irony, in that the meritocratic ideals proposed by contemporary politicians as a remedy to entrenched inequalities are the same values seen as the origin of inequality in existing egalitarian societies around the world

Why the impacts of climate change may make us less likely to reduce emissions

Non-technical summary A widely held belief is that once the impacts of warming are experienced more directly and substantially, especially by affluent populations, the necessary support for a politics prioritising ambitious emissions reductions will follow. But consideration of the indirect socioeconomic impacts of warming suggests this could be false hope. Technical summary There is some evidence to support the common intuition that, as the direct impacts of warming intensify – particularly in the affluent Global North – a politics ambitious enough to confront the climate emergency may finally find support. However, it seems at least equally likely that the opposite trend will prevail. This proposition can be understood by considering various indirect impacts of warming, including the widening of socioeconomic inequalities (within and between countries), increases in migration (intra- and inter-nationally) and heightened risk of conflict (from violence and war through to hate speech and crime). Compiling these impacts reveals a considerable and highly inconvenient overlap with key drivers of the authoritarian populism that has proliferated in the 21st century. It highlights the risk of a socio-ecological feedback loop where the consequences of warming create a political environment entirely at odds with that required to reduce emissions. Such a future is, of course, far from inevitable. Nonetheless, the risks highlight the urgent need to find public support for combined solutions to climate change and inequality, which go well beyond the status-quo. This is necessary not only for reasons of economic and climate justice, but in order to mitigate political barriers to carbon mitigation itself. Social media summary As the impacts of warming are experienced more directly and substantially, we may vote for precisely the wrong people

Urban Wind: Characterization of Useful Gust and Energy Capture

Small-scale wind turbine operations within the urban environment are exposed to high levels of gusts and turbulence compared to flows over less rough surfaces. There is therefore a need for such systems to not only cope with, but to thrive under such fluctuating flow conditions. This paper addresses the potential importance of gust tracking technologies within the urban environment via the analysis of the additional energy present in the gusty wind resource using high resolution measurements at two urban roof-top locations. Results demonstrate significant additional energy present in the gusty wind resource at high temporal resolution. This energy is usually under-represented by the use of mean wind speeds in quantifying the power in the wind over longer averaging times. The results support the promise of capturing a portion of this extra energy through gust tracking solutions. The sensitivity of this “additional” wind energy to averaging time interval is also explored, providing useful information for the design of gust tracking or dynamic control algorithms for small-scale turbines. Relationships between turbulence intensity and excess energy available are drawn. Thus, an analytical model is proposed which may prove useful in predicting the excess energy available across wide areas from, for example, boundary layer turbulence models

Low Carbon Cities: Is Ambitious Action Affordable?

Research has begun to uncover the extent that greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to cities, as well as the scope for cities to contribute to emissions reduction. But assessments of the economics of urban climate mitigation are lacking, and are currently based on selective case studies or specific sectors. Further analysis is crucial to enable action at the urban level. Here we consider the investment needs associated with 11 clusters of low carbon measures that could be deployed across the world’s urban areas in a way that is consistent with a broader 2°C target. Economic assessment of these low carbon measures finds that they could be deployed around the world with investments of c$1 trillion per year between 2015 and 2050 (equivalent to 1.3$16.6 trillion USD in the period to 2050. However, discount rates, energy prices and rates of technological learning are key to the economic feasibility of climate action, with the NPV of these measures ranging from -$1.1 trillion USD to$65.2 trillion USD under different conditions

‘Fair’ inequality, consumption and climate mitigation

Economic inequality and climate change are pressing issues that have climbed high up the political agenda, yet action to mitigate both remains slow. As income is a key determinant of ecological impacts, the Global North—and wealthier classes elsewhere—are the primary drivers of global carbon emissions, while the least well off have contributed the least yet are set to be hit hardest by climate impacts. These inequalities are clearly unjust, but the interrelations between economic inequality and ecological impacts are complex, leaving open the question of whether reducing the former would mitigate the latter, in the absence of reductions in total economic output. Here, we contribute to these debates by estimating the carbon-footprint implications of reducing income (and hence expenditure) inequalities within 32 countries of the Global North to the levels people consider to be fair; levels that are substantially smaller than currently exist. We find that realising these levels of economic inequality brings comparable reductions in carbon-footprint inequalities. However, in isolation, implementing fair inequalities has a negligible impact upon total emissions. In contrast, recomposing consumption—by reducing inequalities in household expenditure and the overall levels, then reallocating the reductions to public services—reduces carbon footprint by up to 30% in individual countries and 16% overall and, crucially, still allows the consumption of those at the bottom to rise. Such reductions could be significant on a global level, and they would be additional to the full range of conventional technological and demand-side measures to reduce carbon emissions

Circulating Blame in the Circular Economy: The Case of Wood-Waste Biofuels and Coal Ash

The transition from coal-based electricity to ‘carbon neutral’ biofuels derived from forests has catalysed a debate largely centred upon whether woody-biofuels drive deforestation. Consequently, a crucial point is often missed. Most wood pellets used in electricity production are derived from waste-wood; a practice considered acceptable by many otherwise strongly opposed to the industry. We highlight that, precisely because waste-wood is a ‘waste’, its carbon-neutral credentials should be questioned. We then examine a parallel development occurring within the same industrial system; the recovery of electricity producers’ combustion-ash residues for concrete production. Contrasting how accounting practices allocate upstream carbon to these ‘wastes’ in the cases of wood pellets and coal-ash reveals how decisions are shaped by industry imperatives, rather than established lifecycle techniques. If the politics of emissions allocation continue to evolve in this way, it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish where progress towards a low-carbon, environmentally sustainable and circular economy is real, from where it is an artefact of biased and inconsistent accounting practices

Distributing less, redistributing more: Safe and just low-energy futures in the United Kingdom

Low energy demand pathways may be essential for the transition to net zero. However, to date, the distributional impacts of these futures have been neglected, leaving open crucial questions about living standards and inequality. Using the lens of ‘decent living energy’, this article begins to piece together the puzzle by providing a distributional analysis of a recent low-energy-demand, net-zero scenario for the UK. We find that if the UK succeeded in following a low-energy pathway, but income and energy inequality continued increasing at the current rate, 9 million people could lack sufficient energy for meeting decent living standards in 2050. Theoretically, this can be mitigated either by achieving considerable reductions in income inequality, or by ensuring highly energy-efficient technologies are available at all income levels as this reduces the energy required to meet decent living standards. Reviewing various specific policies that could forge a low-energy-demand future, we find some are inherently equitable and others can easily be designed to be so. However, policies could also prove regressive in numerous ways. We thus argue that an equitable, socially-just, low-energy-demand policy pathway would need to be responsive and dynamic, bold and targeted, and joined-up with respect to both policy implementation and assessment

Producer Cities and Consumer Cities: Using Production- and Consumption-Based Carbon Accounts to Guide Climate Action in China, the UK, and the US

Meeting the commitments made in the Paris Agreement on climate change will require different approaches in different countries. However, a common feature in many contexts relates to the continued and sometimes increasing significance of the carbon footprints of urban centres. These footprints consider both production or territorial (i.e. Scope 1 and 2) emissions, and consumption or extra-territorial (i.e. Scope 3) emissions. Although a growing number of cities have adopted targets for their production-based emissions, very few have even started to analyse or address their consumption-based emissions. This presents a potential challenge for urban policymaking if consumption emissions rise while production emissions fall, and for climate mitigation more broadly if emissions are effectively migrating to areas without carbon reduction targets or capabilities. To explore these issues, in this paper we analyse and compare production- and consumption-based emissions accounts for urban centres in China, the UK and the US. Results show that per-capita income and population density are strong predictors of consumption-based emissions levels, and consumption-based emissions appear to diminish but not decouple with higher per-capita incomes. In addition, results show that per-capita income is a predictor of net emissions - or the difference between production- and consumption-based accounts - suggesting that continuing increases in per capita income levels may drive the ‘leakage’ of urban emissions. These findings highlight a risk in placing too much faith in city-level climate strategies focused only on production-based emissions, and stress the importance of new city-level initiatives that focus on consumption-based emissions, especially in cities that are shifting from producer to consumer city status

Public perceptions of how to reduce carbon footprints of consumer food choices

Carbon footprints – the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with consumer food choices –substantially contribute to climate change. Life cycle analyses from climate and environmental sciences have identified effective rules for reducing these food-related carbon footprints, including eating seasonal produce and replacing dairy and red meat with plant-based products. In a national UK survey, we studied how many and which rules our participants generated for reducing GHG emissions of produce, dairy, and protein-rich products. We also asked participants to estimate GHG emission reductions associated with pre-selected rules, expressed in either grams or percentages. We found that participants generated few and relatively less effective rules, including ambiguous ones like 'Buy local'. Furthermore, participants' numerical estimates of pre-selected rules were less accurate when they assessed GHG emission reductions in grams rather than in percentages. Findings suggest a need for communicating fewer rules in percentages, for informing consumers about reducing food-related GHG emissions