Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-5 (section)

== Executive Summary ==

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Assessment of the social science literature and regional case studies reveals how social norms, culture, and individual choices interact with infrastructure and other structural changes over time. This provides new insight into climate change mitigation strategies, and how economic and social activity might be organised across sectors to support emission reductions. To enhance well-being, people demand services and not primary energy and physical resources ''per se'' . Focusing on demand for services and the different social and political roles people play broadens the participation in climate action.

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=== Potential of Demand-side Actions and Service Provisioning Systems ===

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'''Demand-side mitigation and new ways of providing services can help''' '''''avoid''''' ''',''' '''''shift''''' ''', and''' '''''improve''''' '''final service demand. Rapid and deep changes in demand make it easier for every sector to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the short and medium term (''' '''''high confidence''''' '''). {5.2, 5.3}'''

'''The indicative potential of demand-side strategies to reduce emissions of direct and indirect CO''' 2 '''and non-CO''' 2 '''GHG emissions in three end-use sectors (buildings, land transport, and food) is 40–70% globally by 2050 (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Technical mitigation potentials compared to the 2050 emissions projection of two scenarios consistent with policies announced by national governments until 2020 amount to 6.8 GtCO 2 for building use and construction, 4.6 GtCO 2 for land transport and 8.0 GtCO 2 -eq for food demand, and amount to 4.4 GtCO 2 for industry. Mitigation strategies can be classified as Avoid-Shift-Improve (ASI) options, that reflect opportunities for socio-cultural, infrastructural, and technological change. The greatest ‘Avoid’ potential comes from reducing long-haul aviation and providing short-distance low-carbon urban infrastructures. The greatest ‘Shift’ potential would come from switching to plant-based diets. The greatest ‘Improve’ potential comes from within the building sector, and in particular increased use of energy-efficient end-use technologies and passive housing. {5.3.1, 5.3.2, Figure 5.7, Figure 5.8, Table 5.1, &lt;a class='section-link' data-title='Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation' href='/chapters/chapter-5'&gt;Chapter 5&lt;/a&gt; Supplementary Material II, Table 5.SM.2}

'''Socio-cultural and lifestyle changes can accelerate climate change mitigation (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Among 60 identified actions that could change individual consumption, individual mobility choices have the largest potential to reduce carbon footprints. Prioritising car-free mobility by walking and cycling and adoption of electric mobility could save 2 tCO 2 -eq cap –1 yr –1 . Other options with high mitigation potential include reducing air travel, heating and cooling set-point adjustments, reduced appliance use, shifts to public transit, and shifting consumption towards plant-based diets. {5.3.1, 5.3.1.2, Figure 5.8}

'''Leveraging improvements in end-use service delivery through behavioural and technological innovations, and innovations in market organisation, leads to large reductions in upstream resource use''' '''(''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Analysis of indicative potentials range from a factor 10- to 20-fold improvement in the case of available energy (exergy) analysis, with the highest improvement potentials at the end-user and service-provisioning levels. Realisable service-level efficiency improvements could reduce upstream energy demand by 45% in 2050. {5.3.2, Figure 5.10}

'''Alternative service provision systems, for example those enabled through digitalisation, sharing economy initiatives and circular economy initiatives, have to date made a limited contribution to climate change mitigation (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' While digitalisation through specific new products and applications holds potential for improvement in service-level efficiencies, without public policies and regulations, it also has the potential to increase consumption and energy use. Reducing the energy use of data centres, networks, and connected devices is possible in managing low-carbon digitalisation. Claims on the benefits of the circular economy for sustainability and climate change mitigation have limited evidence. {5.3.4, 5.3.4.1, 5.3.4.2, Figure 5.12, Figure 5.13}

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=== Social Aspects of Demand-side Mitigation Actions ===

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'''''Decent living standards and well-being''''' '''for all are achievable through the implementation of high-efficiency low demand mitigation pathways (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Decent living standards (DLS) – a benchmark of minimum material conditions for human well-being – overlaps with many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Minimum requirements of energy use consistent with enabling well-being for all is between 20 and 50 GJ per person per year (cap –1 yr –1 ) depending on the context. {5.2.2.1, 5.2.2.2, Box 5.3}

'''Providing better services with less energy and resource input has high technical potential and is consistent with providing well-being for all (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Assessment of 19 demand-side mitigation options and 18 different constituents of well-being show that positive impacts on well-being outweigh negative ones by a factor of 11. {5.2, 5.2.3, Figure 5.6}

'''Demand-side mitigation options bring multiple interacting benefits''' '''(''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Energy services to meet human needs for nutrition, shelter, health, and so on are met in many different ways, with different emissions implications that depend on local contexts, cultures, geography, available technologies, and social preferences. In the near term, many less-developed countries and poor people everywhere require better access to safe and low-emissions energy sources to ensure decent living standards and increase energy savings from service improvements by about 20–25%. {5.2, 5.4.5, Figure 5.3, Figure 5.4, Figure 5.5, Figure 5.6, Box 5.2, Box 5.3}

'''Granular technologies and decentralised energy end use, characterised by modularity, small unit sizes and small unit costs, diffuse faster into markets and are associated with faster technological learning benefits, greater efficiency, more opportunities to escape technological lock-in, and greater employment (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''')''' '''''.''''' Examples include solar photovoltaic systems, batteries, and thermal heat pumps. {5.3, 5.5, 5.5.3}

'''Wealthy individuals contribute disproportionately to higher emissions and have a high potential for emissions reductions while maintaining decent living standards and well-being (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''')''' '''''.''''' Individuals with high socio-economic status are capable of reducing their GHG emissions by becoming role models of low-carbon lifestyles, investing in low-carbon businesses, and advocating for stringent climate policies. {5.4.1, 5.4.3, 5.4.4, Figure 5.14}

'''Demand-side solutions require both motivation and capacity for change (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Motivation by individuals or households worldwide to change energy consumption behaviour is generally low. Individual behavioural change is insufficient for climate change mitigation unless embedded in structural and cultural change. Different factors influence individual motivation and capacity for change in different demographics and geographies. These factors go beyond traditional socio-demographic and economic predictors and include psychological variables such as awareness, perceived risk, subjective and social norms, values, and perceived behavioural control. Behavioural nudges promote easy behaviour change, for example ‘Improve ''’'' actions such as making investments in energy efficiency, but fail to motivate harder lifestyle changes ( ''high confidence'' ). {5.4}

'''Meta-analyses demonstrate that behavioural interventions, including the way choices are presented to consumers,''' [[#footnote-001|1]] '''work synergistically with price signals, making the combination more effective (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Behavioural interventions through nudges, and alternative ways of redesigning and motivating decisions, alone provide small to medium contributions to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions. Green defaults, such as automatic enrolment in ‘green energy’ provision, are highly effective. Judicious labelling, framing, and communication of social norms can also increase the effect of mandates, subsidies, or taxes. {5.4, 5.4.1, Table 5.3a, Table 5.3b}

'''Coordinated change in several domains leads to the emergence of new low-carbon configurations with cascading mitigation effects''' '''(''' '''''high confidence''''' ''')''' '''''.''''' Demand-side transitions involve interacting and sometimes antagonistic processes on the behavioural, socio-cultural, institutional, business, and technological dimensions. Individual- or sectoral-level change may be stymied by reinforcing social, infrastructural, and cultural lock-ins. Coordinating the way choices are presented to end users and planners, physical infrastructures, new technologies and related business models can rapidly realise system-level change. {5.4.2, 5.4.3, 5.4.4, 5.4.5, 5.5}

'''Cultural change, in combination with new or adapted infrastructure, is necessary to enable and realise many ‘Avoid’ and ‘Shift’ options (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' By drawing support from diverse actors, narratives of change can enable coalitions to form, providing the basis for social movements to campaign in favour of (or against) societal transformations. People act and contribute to climate change mitigation in their diverse capacities as consumers, citizens, professionals, role models, investors, and policymakers. {5.4, 5.5, 5.6}

'''Collective action as part of social or lifestyle movements underpins system change (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation. For example, climate strikes have given voice to youth in more than 180 countries. In other instances, mitigation policies allow the active participation of all stakeholders, resulting in building social trust, new coalitions, legitimising change, and thus initiate a positive cycle in climate governance capacity and policies. {5.4.2, Figure 5.14}

'''Transition pathways and changes in social norms often start with pilot experiments led by dedicated individuals and niche groups (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Collectively, such initiatives can find entry points to prompt policy, infrastructure, and policy reconfigurations, supporting the further uptake of technological and lifestyle innovations. Individuals’ agency is central as social change agents and narrators of meaning. These bottom-up socio-cultural forces catalyse a supportive policy environment, which enables changes. {5.5.2}

'''The current effects of climate change, as well as some mitigation strategies, are threatening the viability of existing business practices, while some corporate efforts also delay mitigation action (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''')''' . Policy packages that include job creation programmes help to preserve social trust, livelihoods, respect, and dignity of all workers and employees involved. Business models that protect rent-extracting behaviour may sometimes delay political action. Corporate advertisement and marketing strategies may also attempt to deflect corporate responsibility to individuals or aim to appropriate climate care sentiments in their own brand building. {5.4.3, 5.6.4}

'''Middle actors – professionals, experts, and regulators – play a crucial, albeit underestimated and underutilised, role in establishing low-carbon standards and practices (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Building managers, landlords, energy efficiency advisers, technology installers, and car dealers influence patterns of mobility and energy consumption by acting as middle actors or intermediaries in the provision of building or mobility services and need greater capacity and motivation to play this role. {5.4.3}

'''Social influencers and thought leaders can increase the adoption of low-carbon technologies, behaviours, and lifestyles (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Preferences are malleable and can align with a cultural shift. The modelling of such shifts by salient and respected community members can help bring about changes in different service provisioning systems. Between 10% and 30% of committed individuals are required to set new social norms. {5.2.1, 5.4}

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=== Preconditions and Instruments to Enable Demand-side Transformation ===

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'''Social equity reinforces capacity and motivation for mitigating climate change (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' Impartial governance such as fair treatment by law and order institutions, fair treatment by gender, and income equity, increases social trust, thus enabling demand-side climate policies. High status (often high carbon) item consumption may be reduced by taxing absolute wealth without compromising well-being. {5.2, 5.4.2, 5.6}

'''Policies that increase the political access and participation of women, racialised, and marginalised groups increase the democratic impetus for climate action (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''')''' . Including more differently situated knowledge and diverse perspectives makes climate mitigation policies more effective. {5.2, 5.6}

'''Carbon pricing is most effective if revenues are redistributed or used impartially (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' A carbon levy earmarked for green infrastructures or saliently returned to taxpayers corresponding to widely accepted notions of fairness increases the political acceptability of carbon pricing. {5.6, Box 5.11}

'''Greater contextualisation and granularity in policy approaches better addresses the challenges of rapid transitions towards zero-carbon systems (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Larger systems take more time to evolve, grow, and change compared to smaller ones '''.''' Creating and scaling up entirely new systems takes longer than replacing existing technologies and practices. Late adopters tend to adopt faster than early pioneers. Obstacles and feasibility barriers are high in the early transition phases. Barriers decrease as a result of technical and social learning processes, network building, scale economies, cultural debates, and institutional adjustments. {5.5, 5.6}

'''The lockdowns implemented in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that behavioural change at a massive scale and in a short time is possible (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' COVID-19 accelerated some specific trends, such as increased uptake of urban cycling. However, the acceptability of collective social change over a longer term towards less resource-intensive lifestyles depends on social mandate building through public participation, discussion and debate over information provided by experts, to produce recommendations that inform policymaking. {Box 5.2}

'''Mitigation policies that integrate and communicate with the values people hold are more successful (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Values differ between cultures. Measures that support autonomy, energy security and safety, equity and environmental protection, and fairness resonate well in many communities and social groups. Changing from a commercialised, individualised, entrepreneurial training model to an education cognisant of planetary health and human well-being can accelerate climate change awareness and action. {5.4.1, 5.4.2}

'''Changes in consumption choices that are supported by structural changes and political action enable the uptake of low-carbon choices (''' '''''high confidence''''' ''').''' Policy instruments applied in coordination can help to accelerate change in a consistent desired direction. Targeted technological change, regulation, and public policy can help in steering digitalisation, the sharing economy, and circular economy towards climate change mitigation. {5.3, 5.6}

'''Complementarity in policies helps in the design of an optimal demand-side policy mix (''' '''''medium confidence''''' ''').''' In the case of energy efficiency, for example, this may involve CO 2 pricing, standards and norms, and information feedback. {5.3, 5.4, 5.6}

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