Nick Bojda Change in Lifestyle Emission Potential Spring 2010 The Potential of Conservation Behavior Modeling CO2 Emissions Reduction for California Nick Bojda ABSTRACT Human activities have driven climate change by increasing greenhouse gases in the Earth s atmosphere potentially risking social and economic stability throughout the globe In order to understand the possibilities for abating continued climate change models have been developed to demonstrate the efficacy of different emissions reduction methods Increased adoption of long term energy conserving behaviors offer the ability to address the primary driver of increased emissions which is demand Studies involving behavior have avoided or minimized attention to conservation and lifestyle instead focusing on the short term and on efficiency This study models California household emissions from the current decade to 2050 seeking the largest emissions reductions from lifestyle shifts such as dietary and transportation changes It adapts a carbon footprint calculator to a hypothetical behavior adoption rate determining the long term scenario with existing examples of reduced consumption Results indicate that even slowly modified consumption behavior in the California household can help ensure the success of AB32 and the 2050 goals of California as well as ensuring demand is addressed and becomes a less forceful driver of environmental damages KEYWORDS Lifestyle Climate Change Carbon GHG Energy 1 Nick Bojda Change in Lifestyle Emission Potential Spring 2010 INTRODUCTION Human activities have driven climate change by increasing greenhouse gases GHG in the Earth s atmosphere with the largest contribution coming from fossil fuel use IPCC 2007 Climate change threatens to increase the frequency and magnitude of heat waves and tropical cyclones raise sea levels reduce biodiversity and damage ecosystems Adaptation to such variability is expected to be challenging in many world regions Schneider et al 2007 While the scientific community has been providing evidence for alarm fossil fuel use is expected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030 EIA 2009 Given these conditions it is critical to understand different societies potential to reduce GHG emissions through changed energy consumption patterns Today an active area of behavior and energy B E research seeks to understand and change people s behaviors with the end goal of reducing anthropogenic carbon emissions In the early 1970s a diverse mixture of business political and academic actors began the first generation of studies to develop demand side management DSM of the US energy system Lutzenhiser 1993 These DSM projects examined the efficacy of different approaches to curb household energy consumption such as educating consumers about their energy habits or incentivizing the purchase of efficient appliances Wilson and Dowlatabadi 2007 Going into the 1980s B E research findings were encouraging in this period social and behavioral factors curbed consumption growth by 20 Lutzenhiser 1993 But energy prices decreased in the mid1980s undercutting financial incentives along with social and political interest The output of behavior and energy research community dwindled into the next decade Lutzenhiser 1993 B E research reemerged with the surge in climate and energy concerns in the 2000s in 2006 the first annual Behavior Energy and Climate Change Conference took place and the event s attendance has been increasing every year BECC 2010 Researchers within the B E field have been modeling and estimating potential emissions reductions from behavior changes These B E models can be roughly categorized into either consumer oriented carbon footprint calculators or policy oriented models and estimations seeking to quantify the future energy savings from measures like DSM programs The carbon calculators give consumers an estimate of their current emissions profile and often recommend actions to curb energy consumption One such calculator1 is the Berkeley Institute for the 1 The Precourt Energy Efficiency Center lists several other calculators http peec stanford edu behavior tools php 2 Nick Bojda Change in Lifestyle Emission Potential Spring 2010 Environment s BIE Cool California model and website and this BIE model underpins the research discussed in this paper BIE 2010 Amongst the policy oriented projects there are three major recent works Gardner 2008 provides the first work which starts with an examination as to where households use the most energy and then focuses on what new behaviors or modifications save the most energy Second Laitner et al 2009 of the ACEEE uses a range of previous results and applies a Monte Carlo simulation to predict possible adoption and emissions reduction rates This work includes a very long list of actions but largely focuses on home efficiency measures Third Dietz et al 2009 model 10 year savings with bottom up engineering calculations multiplied by consumer adoption rates These rates are either estimated by experts or are rates of adoption in a possibly analogous project All three estimate potential in increasing frequency of behaviors such as decreasing water heater temperature or regular car maintenance All recommended actions are short term and explicitly avoid impacting lifestyle The B E field has focused on two areas of energy consumption reduction more efficient energy use and reduction of use Abrahamse et al 2005 This paper distinguishes these areas as efficiency and conservation The three future abatement models mentioned above are predominantly efficiency oriented and explicitly avoid direct lifestyle based impacts such as changes in diet or shifting personal transportation away from automobiles and toward lower carbon options Dietz 2009 Laitner 2009 Lifestyle based conservation actions are a currently under analyzed segment of behavior solutions yet they are essential to reduce demand the primary driver of increased emissions A more comprehensive set of models can help scale up behavior oriented energy solutions to match the business as usual demand To begin this area of investigation I have modeled the emission reduction potential of several long term conservation behavior changes The model is restricted to California to ensure that this work was an achievable first attempt and has the predictions scaled out to 2050 California provides more extensive data than many other states and regions The 2050 date was chosen to reflect the same time scale of
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