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UK households’ carbon footprints An analysis of the distribution of CO2 emissions and their association with socio-economic factors. LASS seminar Barriers to Environmental Sustainability II, 23 September 2009 Milena Büchs, Sylke Schnepf, Nick Bardsley. Introduction.
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UK households’ carbon footprintsAn analysis of the distribution of CO2 emissions and their association with socio-economic factors LASS seminar Barriers to Environmental Sustainability II, 23 September 2009 Milena Büchs, Sylke Schnepf, Nick Bardsley
Introduction • Drastic reduction of CO2 emissions will be required to prevent dangerous climate change • Most CO2 reduction policies will have direct financial impacts for UK households – due to an increase of energy prices • The distributive effects of CO2 reduction policies will depend on the distribution of CO2 emissions across households
Assumptions in the existing literature • On average, CO2 reduction policies are regressive
Gaps in the literature • No total emissions profile - including emissions from personal transport and indirect emissions • No systematic comparison of different areas of consumption such as home energy, personal transport and overall emissions (including indirect emissions) • Low correlation between income and emissions high variation of emissions within income deciles potential ineffectiveness of climate mitigation policies
Research questions • How are total CO2 emissions distributed across UK households? • What socio-economic factors are responsible for the variation of household CO2 emissions? • How do the patterns of distribution and impact of socio-economic factors differ in the areas of home energy, personal transport and overall emissions? • What are potential distributional impacts of climate change mitigation policies?
Data • Expenditure and Food Survey (2006-8) • Conversion of expenditure data into emissions for home energy, transport and indirect emissions • Energy statistics price data, DUKES • Data on annual passenger km per means of transport • REAP tool – emissions per £ expenditure • Limitations – conversion; infrequency of purchase
Methods • Inequality measures – Lorenz curves, gini coefficient • Descriptive quantitative analysis • Quantile regression, exploring variations across the emissions distribution • Quantile regression can be applied to sub-sections of the dataset, e.g. low and high income households