ERL特刊精选|关注向低碳社会转型的需求侧解决方案

02 7月 2024 gabriels

特刊详情

客座编辑

  • Felix Creutzig,全球共同体与气候变化墨卡托研究所;德国柏林工业大学
  • Joyashree Roy,亚洲理工学院
  • Jan Minx,全球共同体与气候变化墨卡托研究所;英国利兹大学

 

主题范围

Assessments on climate change mitigation, such as those advanced by the IPCC, need to be revisited to understand how accelerated actions can be achieved in the short and medium term with long term stabilisation impacts. The limitation of the assessment so far are threefold. First, mitigation scenarios focus on the long-term evaluating pathways in 2050 or 2100 and emphasize primarily supply-side technology driven solutions. Scenarios insufficiently address short-term individual, community scale, societal scale actions and lack detail in representing granular demand-side behavioural options. Second, mitigation assessments are dominated by engineers, quantitative modellers, and economists, but insufficiently reflect other social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, political sciences, and anthropology that have high resolution on agency, social and physical infrastructure, and culture. Third, the science of climate solutions lacks synthetic evidence that can be assessed efficiently. As a result, the IPCC has made little progress in understanding climate solutions adequately, i.e. what works well under what conditions. A systematic community effort is required in addressing these shortcomings.
Social sciences have identified important issues relevant for climate change mitigation. These include insights on diverse set of behaviour from psychology, the importance of social practices from sociology, the role of sustainability consumption from consumer studies, empirical results on political feasibility from political sciences, the system-wide impact across producers and consumers from industrial ecology, and normative insights on well-being and sustainable development from economics, sustainability sciences, and philosophy. A main issue is that the literature is exponentially growing, making literature analysis challenging, and disparate, and sometimes more based on marginal novelty rather than on building a systematic knowledge base. To foster knowledge synthesis, this focus issue is primarily, but not exclusively, interested in publishing systematic reviews. With these systematic reviews, knowledge will be aggregated comprehensively and in a transparent and reproducible manner, thus making it ready for assessments on climate change.

“Systematic review” refers to a whole suite of formal methods to aggregate evidence into discrete bodies of knowledge by reconciling evidence and understanding sources of variation in a rigorous way. Guided by the principles of reproducibility and transparency, they include formal quantitative methods for aggregating statistical and experimental research (such as meta-analysis), methods to review qualitative theory and evidence (such as meta-ethnographies), as well as methods to compile mixed quantitative and qualitative evidence (such as realist reviews). All approaches follow a clear methodological protocol involving the following steps: 1) clearly defining the research question; 2) systematically searching defined literature databases for a defined time period; 3) justifying and making transparent sources and selection of the literature; 4) systematically assessing the quality of the selected evidence; 5) justifying and making transparent methods used to synthesize the evidence based; and 6) appraising confidence in the results.

Specific questions that may be asked in the context of the specific studies include:

  • What are the essential services required for a good life?
  • What kind of configuration/technology/social and physical structure would enable minimal energy required to satisfy the services? Quantify this energy demand if possible, considering geographical, cultural, demographic, economic, distributional, and path dependency context where relevant
  • What drives demand in different contexts? (e.g. needs, social norm, status, advertising)
  • How could outcomes and policy measures be evaluated considering several normative categories:
    • Utilitarian metrics, such as costs
    • Hedonic metrics, such as happiness
    • Capabilities (Nussbaum’s 10 core capabilities)
    • Relational values connecting individuals with society and environmental qualities
    • Identify no-regret options
  • What are overall system configurations (technology, culture, organization, etc.) in the specific context studied, and which conditions would be enabling to transition this configuration to another low-carbon configuration with decent living standards?
    • List barriers to the adoption of the most energy-efficient or lowest-carbon mode/technology, e.g. costs, status, culture, competing norms, social norms, habits, etc
    • What are suitable sequences of measures to overcome these barriers?

This is the sister focus issue to the ERL focus on Evidence Synthesis for Climate Solutions. Systematic reviews may be listed within both focus issues simultaneously.


特刊文章

Editorial

Demand-side climate change mitigation: where do we stand and where do we go?

Felix Creutzig et al 2024 Environ. Res. Lett. 19 040201

 

Topical Reviews

Effectiveness of behavioural interventions to reduce household energy demand: a scoping review

Jordana W Composto and Elke U Weber 2022 Environ. Res. Lett. 17 063005

 

Status consciousness in energy consumption: a systematic review

Anjali Ramakrishnan and Felix Creutzig 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 053010

 

Demand side climate change mitigation actions and SDGs: literature review with systematic evidence search

Joyashree Roy et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 043003

 

When adaptation increases energy demand: A systematic map of the literature

V Viguié et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 033004

 

Reviewing the scope and thematic focus of 100 000 publications on energy consumption, services and social aspects of climate change: a big data approach to demand-side mitigation

Felix Creutzig et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 033001

 

Is working less really good for the environment? A systematic review of the empirical evidence for resource use, greenhouse gas emissions and the ecological footprint

Miklós Antal et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 013002

 

Climate change mitigation through dietary change: a systematic review of empirical and modelling studies on the environmental footprints and health effects of ‘sustainable diets’

Stephanie Jarmul et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 123014

 

Limiting food waste via grassroots initiatives as a potential for climate change mitigation: a systematic review

Nikravech Mariam et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 123008

 

Meta-analytic evidence for a robust and positive association between individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors and their subjective wellbeing

Stephanie Johnson Zawadzki et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 123007

 

Movements shaping climate futures: A systematic mapping of protests against fossil fuel and low-carbon energy projects

Leah Temper et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 123004

 

Saving resources and the climate? A systematic review of the circular economy and its mitigation potential

Jasmin Cantzler et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 123001

 

A map of roadmaps for zero and low energy and carbon buildings worldwide

É Mata et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 113003

 

Determinants of low-carbon transport mode adoption: systematic review of reviews

Aneeque Javaid et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 103002

 

Climate change mitigation in cities: a systematic scoping of case studies

Mahendra Sethi et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 093008

 

A systematic review of the energy and climate impacts of teleworking

Andrew Hook et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 093003

 

Quantifying the potential for climate change mitigation of consumption options

Diana Ivanova et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 093001

 

A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part I: bibliometric and conceptual mapping

Dominik Wiedenhofer et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 063002

 

Digitalisation of goods: a systematic review of the determinants and magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption

Victor Court and Steven Sorrell 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 043001

 

Material efficiency strategies to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings, vehicles, and electronics—a review

Edgar G Hertwich et al 2019 Environ. Res. Lett. 14 043004

 

Letters

Systematic map of determinants of buildings’ energy demand and CO2 emissions shows need for decoupling

É Mata et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 055011

 

Lifestyle changes in mitigation pathways: policy and scientific insights

Mathieu Saujot et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 015005

 

A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights

Helmut Haberl et al 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 065003


期刊介绍

Environmental Research Letters

  • 2023年影响因子:5.8  Citescore: 11.9
  • Environmental Research Letters(ERL)以金色开放获取模式出版,作者可选择将原始数据作为补充资料与文章一起发表。所有研究人员可以免费获取这些研究成果。ERL汇聚了关注环境变化及其应对的研究团体和政策制定团体的意见,涵盖了环境科学的所有方面,出版研究快报、综述文章、观点和社论。ERL顺应了环境科学的跨学科发表的趋势,反映了该领域相关的方法、工具和评估战略,得到了来自不同领域的广泛贡献。