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The Brundtland Commission report 'Our Common Future' highlighted that residents in high-income countries lead lifestyles incompatible with planetary boundaries. Three decades later, consumption-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have continued to increase. To achieve 'well below 2°C' and 1.5 °C goals, consumption-related emissions must be substantially reduced in the coming decades. This paper provides insights on how to pursue 1.5 °C pathways through changes in household consumption. It draws on original data gathered in the project 'HOusehold Preferences for reducing greenhouse gas Emissions in four European High Income Countries' (HOPE) to analyse policies targeting and affecting direct and indirect GHG emissions in three household consumption categories (mobility, housing and food) in four countries (France, Germany, Norway and Sweden) and four medium-sized cities. This paper demonstrates discrepancies and similarities between current governmental policy approaches in the four countries and household perceptions of consumption changes with respect to policy mechanisms, responsibilities and space for acting on mitigation. Current demand-side policy strategies rely heavily on instruments of self-governance and nudging behaviour. Whilst some of our data suggests that households broadly accept this, it also suggests that governments could more actively lead and steer demand-side mitigation via adjusting and supplementing a comprehensive list of 20 climate policy measures currently in place in one or more of the case countries. The paper concludes by suggesting areas for more effective policy change and household-level climate change mitigation to feed the next update of climate pledges under the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All countries, including developing ones, have set climate change and energy security as clear target goals. They have developed programs and policies to reach their energy security, emission reduction, and environmental mitigation goals. Colombia has notably developed programs to promote renewable energies and efficiency. However, there is still a need to quantify the impact that these policies could have in the future. The aim of this paper is to quantify the emissions prevented by the implementation of two proposed Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), for which we built Colombia's energy system model in order to understand its effects on GHG emissions. The first NAMA replaces old refrigerators that continue using CFC compounds with efficient refrigerators that use HCFC compounds. The second NAMA seeks to secure new energy supplies through renewable sources for areas not connected to the grid. We also created a scenario that integrates both NAMAs to understand their combined effects on GHG emissions. The simulation shows that both NAMAs will allow to prevent the emission of 4.71 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2040, and that the faster they are implemented, the more GHG emissions will be avoided. The model is a framework available for further research in climate change mitigation and energy efficiency policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy efficiency improvement is expected to reduce energy consumption. However, actual energy savings can be lower than anticipated, called rebound effects. This article reviews previous studies that have used computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to study the rebound effects caused by energy efficiency improvements in the recent two decades until 2021. A systematic review approach has been adopted to select the focused studies, and keywords co-occurrence analysis has been used to explore the characteristics of the selected studies. We reported our findings on specific aspects of these CGE studies, including geographic location, time scale, and methodological features; how an energy efficiency improvement is introduced; and the levels of rebound effects estimated by these studies. These findings suggest specific potential research gaps. For example, few CGE studies have focused on Russia, India, and Africa; no production functional forms other than constant elasticity of substitution (CES) have been used in these CGE studies; and little attention has been paid to negative rebound effects in the short run and the cases of joint implementation of energy efficiency improvement and other policy measures that drive energy cost higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large literature suggesting that improvements in energy efficiency support efforts at climate mitigation. Addressing a conceptual gap in that literature, however, we evaluate whether there are any conditions under which policies to promote improvements in energy efficiency could be counterproductive to efforts to limit climate change to 1.5 °C global warming from pre-industrial times. We identify three conditions under which this could be the case. The first condition is if policies for energy efficiency have a political opportunity cost, in terms of crowding out or delaying policies aimed at decarbonizing energy supply. There is an extensive literature in the fields of political science and policy studies to suggest that this is possible, but there have been no studies examining whether it has actually happened or is likely to happen in the future. The second condition is if investments in energy efficiency improvements come at a higher cost, per unit of fossil energy avoided, than do investments in new renewable energy supply. Current cost estimates suggest that there are some energy efficiency investments for which this is the case, but it is difficult to predict whether this will remain the case in the future. The third condition is if policies for energy efficiency, or specific investments in energy efficiency, were to delay the complete decarbonization of energy supply by more than some critical value. We show that critical delay is quite short—measured in weeks to months—in the case of a 1.5 °C temperature target, assuming constrained availability of negative emission technologies. It is impossible to say whether any of these conditions is likely, but in theory, each of them would appear to be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]