Carbon Footprint from Household Consumption and Exploration of Reduction Potentials for the Paris Agreement Target: A Preliminary Study on Japan and Finland

This poster presentation received The People's Choice Award at the 13th Biennial International Conference on Ecobalance, 9-12 Oct. 2018, Tokyo, Japan. The poster was selected among over 90 posters by the votes of the participants.

The Paris Agreement envisions a net negative carbon society by the second half of the century. Existing studies on emission scenarios have been dominantly focusing on production side reductions from industries and negative emission technologies. Footprint studies have revealed the importance of the emissions embedded in final demands, but the major scopes have been i) the estimation of the footprint from single products based on bottom-up LCA approach or ii) the estimation of overall footprint of countries based on top-down I/O approach. However, none of these approaches have successfully addressed the footprint of households related to lifestyle choices with consideration of service consumption amount or provided an integrated analysis to examine reduction potentials. In this study, carbon footprint from household consumption in Japan and Finland were examined from lifestyles perspectives. Amount of service consumption such as mobility distance, nutrition intake, and energy consumption were estimated based on national statistics. Based on the combination of bottom-up LCA databases and top-down I/O based intensity data, annual carbon footprint per capita from nutrition, housing, mobility, consumer goods, and services of household consumption were estimated. Through visualization of the intensity and amount of service consumption in each domain, hot spots with high-intensity lifestyle areas were identified. Clustering model of consumers was developed using expenditure survey data and linked to the carbon footprint and service consumption data. In addition, long-term reduction targets of the carbon footprint from household consumption per capita in 2050 were determined based on the review of the existing emission scenarios towards the 1.5 and 2.0 degrees target. In order to examine reduction potentials towards 2050 targets, promising practices of lifestyles changes were identified based on literature review of existing studies on carbon footprint reduction. Based on the identified targets and practices, scenarios were established for carbon footprint reduction from lifestyles choices.