Building Robust Housing Sector Policy Using the Ecological Footprint

The vulnerability of the urban residential sector is likely to increase without the mitigation of growing household Ecological Footprints (energy demand, CO2 emissions, and demand for land). Analysis comparing the effectiveness and robustness of policy to mitigate the size of the housing Ecological...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inResources (Basel) Vol. 7; no. 2; p. 24
Main Authors McBain, Bonnie, Lenzen, Manfred, Albrecht, Glenn, Wackernagel, Mathis
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2018
Subjects
Alternative energy sources
Building envelopes
Buildings
Carbon
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide emissions
Climate change
Cost control
Demand analysis
Ecological footprint
Ecological monitoring
Efficiency
Electric industries
Emissions
Emissions control
Energy demand
Energy industry
Energy policy
Energy shortages
Environmental impact
Households
Housing
Housing policy
Investigations
Population
Residential areas
Residential energy
Sustainability
Trends
Uncertainty
Urban sprawl
Urbanization
Queensland Australia
Australia
United States > US
Canberra Australian Capital Territory Australia
Germany
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Summary:The vulnerability of the urban residential sector is likely to increase without the mitigation of growing household Ecological Footprints (energy demand, CO2 emissions, and demand for land). Analysis comparing the effectiveness and robustness of policy to mitigate the size of the housing Ecological Footprint has been limited. Here, we investigate three mitigation options: (1) reducing housing floor area, (2) improving the building envelope efficiency, and (3) reducing the carbon intensity of the electricity sector. We model the urban residential Ecological Footprint for a sub-national case study in Australia but analyse the results in the global context. We find that all three mitigation options reduce the Ecological Footprint. The success of policy to reduce household energy demand and land requirements is somewhat dependent on uncertain trajectories of future global population, affluence, and technological progress (together, global uncertainty). Carbon emissions reductions, however, are robust to such global uncertainty. By reducing the Ecological Footprint of the urban residential housing sector we see a reduction in its vulnerability to future global uncertainty, global carbon price, urban sprawl, and future energy shortages. Over the long term, such policy implementation can also be highly cost effective.
ISSN:2079-9276
2079-9276
DOI:10.3390/resources7020024