Who emits most? Associations between socio-economic factors and UK households' home energy, transport, indirect and total CO2 emissions

• Published in: Ecological economics Vol. 90; pp. 114 - 123
• Main Authors: Büchs, Milena, Schnepf, Sylke V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.06.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied ecology; Appropriations and expenditures; Associations; Biological and medical sciences; Carbon dioxide emissions; Carbon emissions; Climate change; Climate change mitigation policies; Education; Environmental economics; Environmental policy; Fossil fuels; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Households; Income; Inequality; Living Costs and Food Survey; Location; Old age; Socio-economic factors; Surveys; Taxation; United Kingdom; United Kingdom; Europe; Western Europe; British Isles; Carbon dioxide emissions; Households; Socio-economic factors; Living Costs and Food Survey; United Kingdom; Climate change mitigation policies; Inequality; Environment economy; Policy; Costs; Gas emission; Energy transport; Carbon dioxide; Household; Ecology; Dynamical climatology; Climate change; Socioeconomic factor; Mitigation measure
• ISSN: 0921-8009; 1873-6106
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.03.007

Does the association between household characteristics and household CO2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy, transport and indirect emissions? This question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others. So far, this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household CO2 emissions. Using a representative UK expenditure survey, this paper compares how household characteristics like income, household size, education, gender, worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions. We find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains. In particular, whilst all types of emissions rise with income, low income, workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains, suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions. This demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains. •Associations between household characteristics and CO2 emissions vary across domains.•Claims regarding the fairness of CO2 reduction policies need to differentiate between emission domains.•Mitigation policies are likely to have fairer outcomes if they target transport rather than home energy emissions.