Blog

Co-creating a Sustainable Future with Citizens to Decarbonize the Building Stock in Spain

2024-02-13

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…

Visions of a 1.5° Future: Citizen Responses

2024-01-15

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…

Tackling inequality for social and climate justice - Fighting for a better world in a time of worsening crises

2023-12-04

In this blog post, Halliki Kreinin from the University of Münster/RIFS Potsdam reflects on the growth-dependence of welfare states and why it is a critical hurdle for social welfare and sustainability. To pave the way towards resilient growth-independent welfare states, our project advocates for policies that break the link between growth and well-being through redistributing wealth, combating inequality, and providing welfare outside of paid…

Keeping warm while aiming for 1.5° lifestyles – how does it work in practice? Practices and tips from the GreenDependent team

2023-11-13

More than 60% of home energy consumption is used for heating in an average European household, thus paying attention to our heating methods and practices not only help us in pursuing 1.5° or green lifestyles, but it is also important because small changes – without major investments – can lead to big impact.[1] You may know that lowering the indoor temperature by 1-2°C can result in 6-10% energy use (and thus carbon footprint) reduction, and if…

Sustainable vs. Fast Fashion: The role of social media

2023-10-19

In this month's EU 1.5° Lifestyles blog post, we're thrilled to have Katia Dayan Vladimirova, Senior Researcher at the University of Geneva, as our guide to the impacts of social media on our choices, behaviors, and attitudes, particularly concerning (un)sustainable ways of consuming fashion. Katia highlights the overconsumption fostered by these platforms as well as the potential, if any, that they hold as catalysts for meaningful conversations…

Avoiding and reducing food waste: this is how we do it in our GreenDependent households

2023-10-13

Reducing the carbon footprint of our individual and household food consumption is essential to minimise food waste in our homes. Of course, this is not only important in terms of reducing our carbon footprint, but also in terms of reducing the waste of resources used to consume other discarded, unused food and drink and the associated negative environmental and social impacts. Moreover, we can do all this basically without spending extra money…

Carbon footprint chronicles: A deeper dive into the footprints of our case countries in 2015, 2030, and 2050

2023-09-16

A previous blog post has detailed the carbon footprints for 49 countries and regions in 2015, 2030, and 2050 and how the EU 1.5° Lifestyles modelling team developed these footprint scenarios. In this post, we take a closer look at the household carbon footprints of the five case study countries of the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project.[1] The results in this post are based on our sustainable technological development scenario without lifestyle changes…

Rebounds and risks in adopting 1.5° lifestyles

2023-08-09

The EU 1.5° Lifestyles project has explored the significant behaviour changes needed for European citizens to truly adopt 1.5° lifestyles and we have interviewed “pioneers” who have adopted low-carbon lifestyles to tell us about what has helped them and what has been challenging.

Exploring the Potential Impacts of Lifestyle Changes on Economic and Welfare Systems

2023-07-21

In an effort to assess the potential effects of lifestyle changes on economic and welfare systems, a Policy Delphi process was carried out in several European countries. This innovative approach gathered expert opinions through a series of workshops, aiming to evaluate the feasibility and desirability of welfare system policies and business models that align with 1.5-degree lifestyles. In this blog post, we will delve into the methodology, key…

Where do you want to spend your carbon budget?

2023-06-16

There is more and more talk about carbon budgets in climate policy, but when it comes to business and lifestyles, this is not yet the case. Decisions as individuals and businesses are still made mostly based on resources such as money and time. When we measure environmental impacts, such as carbon footprints, we focus on what has already happened and what we might be able to learn from it. Why not flip the question and start talking from a carbon…