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Urbanization and climate change are amongst the greatest challenges of the 21st century. In the "Low Carbon Future Cities" project (LCFC), three important problem dimensions are analysed: current and future GHG emissions and their mitigation (up to 2050); resource use and material flows; and vulnerability to climate change.
The industrial city of Wuxi has been the Chinese pilot city of the project. To establish the pathway for a low carbon future, it is crucial to understand the current situation and possible future developments. The paper presents the key results of the status quo analysis and the future scenario analysis carried out for Wuxi. Two scenarios are outlined. The Current Policy Scenario (CPS) shows the current most likely development in the area of energy demand and GHG emissions until 2050. Whereas the extra low carbon scenario (ELCS) assumes a significantly more ambitious implementation, it combines a market introduction of best available technologies with substantial behavioural change. All scenarios are composed of sub-scenarios for the selected key sectors.
Looking at the per capita emissions in Wuxi, the current levels are already high at around 12 tonnes CO2 per capita compared to Western European cities. Although Wuxi has developed a low carbon plan, the projected results under current policies (CPS) show that the total emissions would increase to 23.6 tonnes CO2 per capita by 2050. If the ELCS pathway was to be adopted, these CO2 emission levels could be reduced to 6.4 tonnes per capita by 2050.
A reduction in working hours is being considered to tackle issues associated with ecological sustainability, social equity and enhanced life satisfaction - a so-called triple dividend. With respect to an environmental dividend, the authors analyse the time use rebound effects of reducing working time. They explore how an increase in leisure time triggers a rearrangement of time and expenditure budgets, and thus the use of resources in private households. Does it hold true that time-intensive activities replace resource-intensive consumption when people have more discretionary time at their disposal? This study on environmental issues is complemented by introducing the parameters of voluntary social engagement and individual life satisfaction as potential co-benefits of rebound effects. In order to analyse the first dividend, a mixed methods approach is adopted, enabling two models of time use rebound effects to be applied. First, semi-standardised interviews reveal that environmentally ambiguous substitutions of activities occur following a reduction in working hours. Second, estimates for Germany from national surveys on time use and expenditure show composition effects of gains in leisure time and income loss. For the latter, we estimate the marginal propensity to consume and the marginal propensity to time use. The results show that time savings due to a reduction in working time trigger relevant rebound effects in terms of resource use. However, both the qualitative and quantitative findings put the rebound effects following a reduction in working time into perspective. Time use rebound effects lead to increased voluntary social engagement and greater life satisfaction, the second and third dividends.
Modelling studies which project pathways for the future of energy in India currently have several implicit assumptions with regards to the social, institutional, and political changes necessary for energy transitions. This paper focuses on the specific question of land use change required for realising ambitious clean energy targets. Demand for land is likely to be a critical question in India's energy future given the challenges with land acquisition in the country as a result of high population density and significant rights enjoyed by landowners. Yet, there is a lack of literature relevant to India which makes a quantitative assessment of the land use impacts of different types of low carbon technologies. I calculate and compare the land requirements in India of ground based solar photovoltaic (PV) power, nuclear power, and wind energy. All three types of technologies are expected to grow substantially as a share of India's electricity mix in the coming years. The analysis suggests that land demands of ground based solar PV are likely to be substantial compared to wind energy and nuclear power, and some policy suggestions are provided which may help mitigate that challenge.
Addressing food waste prevention is one target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a major task for the UN Environmental Programme and the European Commission. It is promising in terms of its environmental saving potential. However, it also leads to consumers being able to save money, which they then are likely to spend, thus again causing a negative environmental impact. This dimension of the so-called indirect rebound effect, which prevents the desired ecological benefits from being achieved, is investigated in this paper. By using a single-region environmentally extended input-output model from a production perspective, the indirect rebound effects from food waste prevention in Germany are analysed. Any political action needs to consider not only a differentiation in income class, but also alternative concepts such as the principles of sufficiency in order to achieve all ecological benefits and specifically the third target of SDG 12.
Despite Germany's Paris Agreement pledge and coal exit legislation, the political debate around carbon-intensive coal remains heated. Coal power and mining have played an important, yet changing role in the history of German politics. In this paper, we analyze the entire parliamentary debate on coal in the German parliament (Bundestag) from its inception in 1949 to 2019. For this purpose we extract the more than 870,000 parliamentary speeches from all protocols in the history of the Bundestag. We identify the 9167 speeches mentioning coal and apply dynamic topic modeling – an unsupervised machine learning technique that reveals the changing thematic structure of large document collections over time - to analyze changes in parliamentary debates on coal over the past 70 years. The trends in topics and their varying internal structure reflect how energy policy was discussed and legitimized over time: Initially, coal was framed as a driver of economic prosperity and guarantee of energy security. In recent years, the debate evolved towards energy transition, coal phase-out and renewable energy expansion. Germany’s smaller and younger parties, the Greens and the Left Party, debate coal more often in the context of the energy transition and climate protection than other parties. Our results reflect trends in other countries and other fields of energy policy. Methodologically, our study illustrates the potential of and need for computational methods to analyze vast corpora of text and to complement traditional social science methods.
In order to make our lifestyles sustainable, changing our consumption patterns is fundamental. Hence, we need to better understand who the "consumers" are and to consider them as an active actor to directly engage for ensuring effective policies. In order to support a resource-light society, production and consumption need to be considered through an integrated system view; within this, consumers play an important role as co-acting subjects. Almost every activity in private life involves a form of consumption aimed at satisfying the subject's needs and often regarded through an economic lens. Sustainable development is not about abolishing private consumption, but rather about making it environmentally, socially and individually sustainable in its design, organization and realization, also involving ideas of simplicity or renunciation. In this paper, we will assess the status quo of the German and European debates on Consumer Research Policies and discuss the idea to link sustainability research and consumer research - where a strategic relation is currently missing. Within that discussion, an evidence-based and obligatory consumer research strategy in Germany and Europe would represent a significant improvement. A system view perspective is necessary to take into consideration the impressive amount of diversity, and to elaborate realistic economic and consumer policies. Therefore, we propose nine steps for understanding the role of the consumer in implementing sustainable development from a scientific and political perspective. The limitations of this paper are thus a result of the very diverse and often unclear policies and agendas produced by governments. The implementation of the proposed innovative research agenda for a future-orientated and sustainability-based consumer research is not free from challenges. Still, the paper suggests the first steps towards this direction. After a critical discussion of the current EU and German consumer and sustainability policies, nine differentiated and substantial ways to integrate and ameliorate them are proposed.
As society's reliance on software systems escalates over time, so too does the cost of failure of these systems. Meanwhile, the complexity of software systems, as well as of their designs, is also ever-increasing, influenced by the proliferation of new tools and technologies to address intended societal needs. The traditional response to this complexity in software engineering and software architecture has been to apply rationalistic approaches to software design through methods and tools for capturing design rationale and evaluating various design options against a set of criteria. However, research from other fields demonstrates that intuition may also hold benefits for making complex design decisions. All humans, including software designers, use intuition and rationality in varying combinations. The aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of what is known and unknown from existing research regarding the use and performance consequences of using intuition and rationality in software design decision-making. To this end, a systematic literature review has been conducted, with an initial sample of 3909 unique publications and a final sample of 26 primary studies. We present an overview of existing research, based on the literature concerning intuition and rationality use in software design decision-making and propose a research agenda with 14 questions that should encourage researchers to fill identified research gaps. This research agenda emphasizes what should be investigated to be able to develop support for the application of the two cognitive processes in software design decision-making.
Although smart energy technologies (SETs) can fulfill multiple tasks in increasingly decarbonized and digitalized energy systems, market diffusion is still limited. This study investigates which beliefs influence consumers' intention to adopt two smart-energy offerings, whether the rapid growth of the smart home market will now drive SET adoption, and if consumer-driven diffusion will lead to sustainability potentials being realized. Building on UTAUT2, a new theoretical model is proposed, and a consumer acceptance survey was conducted in Germany (n = 700). Results indicate that a growing smart home market will not increase SET adoption and that "adjustable green defaults" should be introduced.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes three approaches for countries to cooperate with each other in implementing their climate protection contributions. However, Article 6 sketches out only some basic contours; the details are to be filled in by further negotiations. This article surveys the views countries have submitted so far in order to identify the main issues at stake, points of controvery and convergence and possible ways forward. The submissions reveal some sharp differences in opinions on key issues such as the scope of the new mechanisms, how to operationalise the Article 6 requirement to increase ambition, whether to have international provisions on the promotion of sustainable development, and how to protect environmental integrity in the use of Article 6. The article concludes with a number of recommendations on how to address these controversies.
To contribute to a better understanding of consumer food leftovers and to facilitate their reduction in out-of-home settings, our study analyzes the effects of two common intervention strategies for reducing leftovers in a holistic behavioral model. Based on a quasi-experimental baseline-intervention design, we analyzed how the display of information posters and the reduction of portion sizes take an effect on personal, social and environmental determinants in a structural equation model. Applying data from online surveys and observations among 880 guests (503 baseline, 377 intervention) during two weeks in a university canteen, the suggested model allows to assign effects from the two interventions on plate leftovers to specific changes in behavioral determinants. Portion size reductions for target dishes are found to relate to lower levels of plate waste based on conscious perception, represented in smaller portion size ratings. Effects from seeing information posters are found to base on changed personal attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. However, depending on how an individual reacts to the information (by only making an effort to finish all food or by making an effort and additionally choosing a different dish in the canteen) there are opposite effects on these determinants and consequently also on plate leftovers. Overall, the differentiated results on intervention effects strongly support the benefits of more holistic and in-depth analyses of interventions to reduce plate leftovers and therefore to contribute to more sustainable food consumption in out-of-home settings.
What leads to lunch : how social practices impact (non-)sustainable food consumption / eating habits
(2017)
The field of nutrition will face numerous challenges in coming decades; these arise from global consumption patterns and lead to a high use of resources. Actors in the catering sector face difficulties in promoting their solutions for a more sustainable situation in their field, one of them being the lack of acceptance from consumers. We must ask the question of how to influence consumer behavior and bring forth a transition towards more sustainable food consumption. This paper presents results of a qualitative assessment of eating practices. A group of ten consumers participated in problem-centered interviews and provided data on their eating-out behavior over the course of two weeks. Using the theoretical approach of practice theory, the data gathered in this study were used to form an understanding of the practice of eating out with a focus on the daily routines that influence consumer choices. The results indicate that the practice of eating out is highly dependent on external factors. Busy lifestyles, mobility routines and a perceived lack of time prompt the decision to eat out. Consumers consciously do so to save time and effort and to streamline their schedules. Mobility seems to be an important driver for eating out. Participants try to limit the ways they undertake eating out yet often stop for a meal in-between appointments spontaneously. Findings suggest that nutrition knowledge and sustainable mindsets have little influence on the eating decisions away from home: Participants show a high level of distrust towards quality claims and put their health concerns aside eating out. We can conclude that the act of eating out is strongly influenced by daily routines and those practices that precede or succeed it. Changes in work and mobility patterns are very likely to have an impact on the way consumers eat away from home.
Renewable energy targets in the European Union (EU) have raised the demand for timber and are expected to increase dependence on imports. However, EU timber consumption levels are already disproportionally high compared to the rest of the world. The question is, how much timber is available for the EU to sustainably harvest and import, in particular considering sustainable forest management practices, a safe operating space for land-system change, and the global distribution of "common good" resources. This article approaches this question from a supply angle to develop a reference value range for the current as well as future sustainable supply of timber at the EU-27 and global levels. For current supply estimates, national-level data on forest area available for wood supply, productivity in that area, as well as the rate available for harvest were collected and aggregated into three potential supply scenarios. For future supply estimates, a safe operating space scenario halting land use change, a sensitivity analysis, and a literature review were performed. To provide both a comparison of global versus EU sustainable supply capacities and to develop a benchmark toward evaluating and comparing levels of consumption to sustainable supply capacities, per capita calculations were made. Results revealed that the per capita sustainable supply potential of EU forests is estimated to be around three times higher than the global average in 2050. Whether a global or EU reference value is more appropriate for EU policy orientation, considering both strengthened economic and cultural ties to the forest in forest-rich countries as well as the need to prevent problem shifting associated with exporting land demands abroad, is discussed. Further research is needed to strengthen and harmonize data, improve methods for modeling future scenarios and incorporate interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder perspectives toward the development of robust and politically relevant reference values for sustainable consumption levels.
The 2015 Paris Agreement relies on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to outline each country's policies and plans for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To strengthen global climate action and achieve the Agreement's temperature goal, it is crucial to enhance the ambition level of NDCs every 5 years. While previous studies have explored the ambition of initial NDCs, limited research has delved into the factors driving the enhancement or lack thereof in NDCs' emission reduction plans. This study employs a mixed-method design to investigate the determinants of NDC enhancement. First, we analyse the updated or revised NDCs of 111 countries using quantitative methods. Second, we conduct qualitative case studies focusing on Brazil and South Africa. Our findings reveal that countries that engaged in stakeholder consultations with civil society, business, and labour groups prior to developing their updated or revised NDCs were more likely to enhance their greenhouse gas reduction targets. These results are further supported by the case studies. South Africa conducted comprehensive consultations and submitted an enhanced GHG target, while Brazil, which did not arrange open consultations, did not improve its target. This study underscores the significance of comprehensive and transparent stakeholder engagement processes, highlighting their potential to drive enhanced NDCs. By involving diverse stakeholders, including civil society, business, and labour groups, countries can foster greater ambition and effectiveness in their climate action, ultimately contributing to the global effort to combat climate change.
How do recent changes in consumption in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic affect the avoidance of packaging waste? How can an increase in packaging waste be countered and the previous trend towards unpackaged and reusable solutions be revived and promoted?
To tackle these questions, we use a systemic approach that regards packaging as a network of interrelated interests of industry (manufacturing and logistics), trade (retail and catering), consumers and the waste management sector. To analyse this network, we applied three methods. First, we analysed secondary sources such as surveys. Second, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven actors from industry, consumer education and waste management in May and June 2020. Third, we used the questions from the interview guideline to do an online survey among representatives of the public waste management industry.
Water and energy are two pivotal areas for future sustainable development, with complex linkages existing between the two sectors. These linkages require special attention in the context of the energy transition. Against this background, this paper analyses the role of water availability in the development of solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants for the case of the Draa Valley in southern Morocco. Located in a semi-arid to arid mountainous area, the Drâa Valley faces high water stress - a situation expected to worsen due to climate change. At the same time, the region has one of the greatest potentials for solar energy in the world. To examine whether limited water availability could accelerate or delay the implementation of solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants, this paper compares regional water availability and demand in the Draa Valley for different scenarios, paying particular attention to potential socio-economic development pathways. The Water Evaluation and Planning System software is applied to allocate the water resources in the study region. The water supply is modelled under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 climate scenario, while the water demand for the Drâa Valley is modelled for a combination of three socio-economic and two energy scenarios. The climate scenario describes a significant decrease in water availability by 2050, while the socio-economic and energy scenarios show an increase in water demand. The results demonstrate that during a sequence of dry years the reservoirs water availability is reduced and shortages in water supply can result in high levels of unmet demand. If this situation occurs, oasis farming, water for drinking and energy production could compete directly with each other for water resources. The energy scenarios indicate that the use of dry cooling technologies in concentrated solar power and photovoltaic hybrid systems could be one option for reducing competition for the scarce water resources in the region. However, given that energy generation accounts for only a small share of the regional water demand, the results also suggest that socio-economic demand reduction, especially in the agricultural sector, for example by reducing the cultivated area, will most likely become necessary.
Electricity generation requires water. With the global demand for electricity expected to increase significantly in the coming decades, the water demand in the power sector is also expected to rise. However, due to the ongoing global energy transition, the future structure of the power supply - and hence future water demand for power generation - is subject to high levels of uncertainty, because the volume of water required for electricity generation varies significantly depending on both the generation technology and the cooling system. This study shows the implications of ambitious decarbonization strategies for the direct water demand for electricity generation. To this end, water demand scenarios for the electricity sector are developed based on selected global energy scenario studies to systematically analyze the impact up to 2040. The results show that different decarbonization strategies for the electricity sector can lead to a huge variation in water needs. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) does not necessarily lead to a reduction in water demand. These findings emphasize the need to take into account not only GHG emission reductions, but also such aspects as water requirements of future energy systems, both at the regional and global levels, in order to achieve a sustainable energy transition.
Wasting food, wasting resources : potential environmental savings through food waste reductions
(2018)
Food is needed to maintain our physical integrity and therefore meets a most basic human need. The food sector got in the focus of environmental policy, because of its environmental implications and its inefficiency in terms of the amount of food lost along the value chain. The European Commission (EC) flagged the food waste issue a few years ago and adopted since then a series of policies that partially address the problem. Among these, the Resource Efficiency Roadmap set the aspirational goal of reducing the resource inputs in the food chain by 20% and halving the disposal of edible food waste by 2020. Focusing on consumer food waste, we tested what a reduction following the Roadmap's food waste target would imply for four environmental categories in EU28 (European Union 28 Member States): greenhouse gas emissions, land use, blue water consumption, and material use. Compared to the 2011 levels, reaching the target would lead to 2% to 7% reductions of the total footprint depending on the environmental category. This equals a 10% to 11% decrease in inputs in the food value chain (i.e., around half of the resource use reductions targeted). The vast majority of potential gains are related to households, rather than the food-related services. Most likely, the 2020 target will not be met, since there is insufficient action both at Member State and European levels. The Sustainable Development Goals provide a new milestone for reducing edible food waste, but Europe needs to rise up to the challenge of decreasing its per capita food waste generation by 50% by 2030.
A future-oriented and sustainable "Leasing Society" is based on a combination of new and innovative serviceoriented business models, changed product and material ownership structures, increased and improved eco-design efforts, and reverse logistic structures. Together these elements have the potential to change the relationship between producers and consumers, and thereby create a new incentive structure in the economy regarding the use and re-use of resources. While the consumer in a leasing society buys a service (instead of a product), the producer in a leasing society retains the ownership of the product (instead of selling it) and sells the service of using the product. This creates producer incentives to re-use, remanufacture, and recycle products and materials and could become a cornerstone of the circular economy, depending on how the leasing society is implemented. While a predominantly positive picture of the success of a leasing society model and related business cases emerges from the bigger part of the available literature, this paper argues that the resource efficiency of respective business cases is highly dependent on the specific business case design. This paper develops a more cautious and differentiated definition of the leasing society by discussing relevant mechanisms and success factors of leasing society business cases. The leasing society is discussed from a micro business-oriented and a macro environment-oriented perspective complemented by a discussion of conditions for successful business models that reduce environmental impacts and resource footprints.
The paper summarises the findings and the work carried out within the Voluntary Agreements - Implementation and Efficiency project and examines five agreement schemes in the field of industrial energy efficiency in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France and Sweden. It provides a brief characterisation of the different approaches and discusses the related implementation effort and transaction costs. An assessment of performance and environmental effectiveness is given, followed by a discussion of the transferability of voluntary agreements among countries and to the European level.
Vision development towards a sustainable North Rhine-Westphalia 2030 in a science-practice-dialogue
(2017)
The paper presents the results of a participatory vision development process in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in Germany. The vision development was part of a scientific research project that accompanied the development of a sustainability strategy for NRW at state level. The Sustainability Strategy NRW was adopted in July 2016 and contains parts of the vision developed in the research project: Sentences from the narrative text vision and proposed targets and indicators that back-up the vision for a sustainable NRW in 2030 were used by the state of NRW. The vision was developed in iterative steps in three consecutive dialogue rounds with different stakeholders from science and practice. The paper presents the methodological approach and the results of the vision formulation process. The paper discusses the lessons learned from the vision development - from both practical and theoretical perspectives of transition management. The paper explores the relevance of setting ambitious targets for sustainable development as part of a state strategy by taking the proposed target of a "4 × 25% modal split" by 2030 as an example. The project demonstrated that a participatory approach for vision development is time and resource consuming, but worth the effort as it improves the quality and acceptance of a vision. Furthermore, the project demonstrated that transformative science contributes valuable inputs for sustainability transitions and for facilitating participatory vision development.