Blog

In early 2023, we at GreenDependent decided to launch a 1.5° blog. This is because we think it's important to show how we in the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project team try to live a small (carbon) footprint life. That it can be possible – even if it is not always easy and we cannot (yet!) do all things 1.5° at the same time. And that there are many different ways to do it. As we often say in Hungary: everyone does it differently. 

Much of the debate on sustainability and environmental crises has focused on consumption, especially individual consumption. Many citizens in Europe do have the ability and agency (and thus the responsibility) to make sustainable choices in their lives. Avoiding flying or reducing our intake of meat are activities over which adults do (mostly) have agency over, which can play an important role in reducing our emissions. However, focusing too much…

Dr Zita Gellér is Chief Strategic Coordinator at the Ministry of Energy (formerly Ministry of Agriculture) in Hungary and National Coordinator of the EEA/EIONET and UNEP 10YFP. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project. In her workplace, she implements a number of green, community-based initiatives to help employees achieve the 1.5-degree lifestyles. Below, Zita has shared her experience about the Ministry's…

Aviation has a significant negative impact on our ability to achieve the Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Citizens are increasingly willing to adopt individual behaviour change and push for systemic changes that assist in reaching these goals. However, policymakers and society at large remain hesitant to impose any meaningful restrictions or limitations on air travel.  

We have previously blogged about our green event organisation practices*, now let's see how it works in action for a multi-day international event.

Despite climate change being high on the list of European voters' concerns, economic and social issues dominated the recent elections, posing a challenge to the EU's ambitious climate agenda in the upcoming legislative period. The EU 1.5° Lifestyles project highlights the need to integrate social policies with climate strategies to ensure a fair and inclusive transition.

In recent decades, the private sector has been widely perceived as the primary sector capable of meeting human needs. This view has prevailed at the household, community and national levels. However, the pursuit of profit has led to significant inequalities in access to services, over-consumption of the Earth's resources and environmental degradation, including greenhouse gas emissions. This has raised questions about the ability of existing…

At the end of last year, I was interviewed by the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE. They were interested in the carbon footprint of leisure flights to Finnish Lapland of 800,000 tourists per year. YLE reported a carbon footprint of approximately 600,000 tCO2e for these flights, after having consulted several research and environmental organisations.

Improving the energy efficiency of the buildings is one of the main policy objectives of the European policy initiatives, specifically, supporting the energy renovations among the existing building stock to reduce the energy consumption and the emissions. For instance, the European Commission delivered the EU Green Deal proposing a series of policy initiatives to ensure the climate neutrality by 2050 (European Commission, 2019). In the same vein…

In order to help mitigate climate change and its associated consequences, a change in our everyday lives is imperative. But what might these changes look like in concrete terms, and what compromises are we willing to make? In our second round of citizen thinking labs, we engaged almost 100 people, across five European countries, with visions of a 2030 future.  These visions involve profound lifestyle changes necessary to reduce personal carbon…