Demand-side solutions to climate change mitigation consistent with high levels of well-being

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• Prof Dr Felix Creutzig, Head of the working group Land Use, Infrastructures and Transport at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Chair of Sustainability Economics at Technische Universität Berlin
• Thursday 21 April 2022, 12:00-14:00
• Queens' College, Cambridge (please see event signage from Porters' Lodge).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Andrea Lorenz.

Registration is required for this event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/manage/events/311109937197/details

Mitigation solutions are often evaluated in terms of costs and greenhouse gas reduction potentials, missing out on the consideration of direct effects on human well-being.

Here, we systematically assess the mitigation potential of demand-side options categorized into avoid, shift and improve, and their human well-being links. We show that these options, bridging socio-behavioural, infrastructural and technological domains, can reduce counterfactual sectoral emissions by 40–80% in end-use sectors. Based on expert judgement and an extensive literature database, we evaluate 306 combinations of well-being outcomes and demand-side options, finding largely beneficial effects in improvement in well-being (79% positive, 18% neutral and 3% negative), even though we find low confidence on the social dimensions of well-being. Implementing such nuanced solutions is based axiomatically on an understanding of malleable rather than fixed preferences, and procedurally on changing infrastructures and choice architectures. Results demonstrate the high mitigation potential of demand-side mitigation options that are synergistic with well-being.

This talk is part of the El-Erian Institute Events series.

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• El-Erian Institute Events
• Queens' College, Cambridge (please see event signage from Porters' Lodge)

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