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Rapid action to improve resource efficiency is essential for achieving climate mitigation goals. As they are likely to reshape everyday life in unexpected ways, new products, policies and business models will need to consider the public acceptability of resource-efficiency strategies, as well as the technical emission-reduction potential. Here, using consumption-based emissions modelling and deliberative public workshops, we find considerable public support for a range of resource-efficiency strategies that combined could reduce the carbon footprint in the United Kingdom by up to 29 Mt of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions (a 39% emissions reduction from household products, such as cars, clothing, electronics, appliances and furniture). Public acceptability is already high for strategies that aim to develop more resource-efficient products. Strategies that aim to encourage product sharing and extend product lifetimes were also perceived positively, although acceptance was dependent on meeting other important conditions, such as trustworthiness, responsibility, fairness, affordability, convenience, safety and hygiene.

© 2016 The Authors. Meeting the world's energy demand is a major challenge for society over the coming century. To identify the most sustainable energy pathways to meet this demand, analysis of energy systems on which policy is based must move beyond the current primary focus on carbon to include a broad range of ecosystem services on which human well-being depends. Incorporation of a broad set of ecosystem services into the design of energy policy will differentiates between energy technology options to identify policy options that reconcile national and international obligations to address climate change and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this paper we consider our current understanding of the implications of energy systems for ecosystem services and identify key elements of an assessment. Analysis must consider the full life cycle of energy systems, the territorial and international footprint, use a consistent ecosystem service framework that incorporates the value of both market and non-market goods, and consider the spatial and temporal dynamics of both the energy and environmental system. While significant methodological challenges exist, the approach we detail can provide the holistic view of energy and ecosystem services interactions required to inform the future of global energy policy.

The impressive development in global multi-region input–output (IO) databases is accompanied by an increase in applications published in the scientific literature. However, it is not obvious whether the insights gained from these studies have indeed been used in political decision-making. We ask whether and to what extent there is policy uptake of results from environmentally extended multi-region IO (EE-MRIO) models and how it may be improved. We identify unique characteristics of such models not inherent to other approaches. We then present evidence from the UK showing that a policy process around consumption-based accounting for greenhouse gas emissions and resource use has evolved that is based on results from EE-MRIO modelling. This suggests that specific, policy-relevant information that would be impossible to obtain otherwise can be generated with the help of EE-MRIO models. Our analysis is limited to environmental applications of global MRIO models and to government policies in the UK.

We present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national Ecological Footprints by economic sector, detailed final demand category, sub-national area or socio-economic group. This is done by combining existing National Footprint Accounts with input–output analysis. Calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the United Kingdom, covering the reporting period 2000. Ecological Footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the COICOP classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment. The method presented enables the calculation of comparable Ecological Footprints on all sub-national levels and for different socio-economic groups. The novelty of the approach lies in the use of input–output analysis to re-allocate existing Footprint accounts, in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data. This extends the potential for applications of the Ecological Footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios, policies and strategies on sustainable consumption. The method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a National Footprint Account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available. The approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between Ecological Footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers. For these reasons, the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of Ecological Footprint accounts.

Over the past two decades reductions in the final energy consumption of the productive sectors (industry, public administration, commercial services and agriculture), have made important contributions to overall reductions in UK final energy consumption. This study investigates the drivers of the reductions in final energy consumption in the UK productive sectors between 1997 and 2013 using a decomposition analysis that incorporates two novel approaches. Firstly, it uses results from a multi-regional input-output model to investigate how much of the structural change in the economy has been driven by outsourcing production overseas. Secondly, it utilises energy conversion chain analysis to determine how much increases in the conversion efficiency from final energy to useful exergy have contributed to improvements in final energy intensity. In aggregate all energy savings from structural change are attributed to outsourcing. Improvements in the conversion efficiency produced savings of a similar size. However energy savings from both factors have stalled since 2009. Improvements in useful exergy intensity, the useful exergy used per unit of monetary output, provided the biggest share of energy savings, but these savings are concentrated in a few sectors and rarely lead to absolute reductions in final energy use. All of this suggests that a return to the rates of energy reduction seen between 2001 and 2009 should not be taken for granted and that active policy interventions might be required to achieve further reductions.

Background: The consumption emissions of many developed countries including the UK are significantly larger than their territorial emissions – the focus of international mitigation commitments.Methods: The paper presents the development and application of a multiregional input–output based scenario tool to explore the impact of carbon reduction measures on territorial and consumption emissions.Results: Applying the tool to estimate the effect of current UK government's mitigation plans demonstrates that coupled with expected growth in the economy and population, ceretis paribus, territorial emissions would reduce by ∼40% by 2030 and consumption emissions would increase by ∼14%.Conclusion: The analysis puts the UK's own reduction efforts in the context of its wider emissions responsibility, highlighting the significance of carbon embodied in goods imported from non-Annex B countries.

With the UK's legislation of a 2050 net zero emissions target, there is urgent need for radical industrial decarbonisation. The steel sector represented 12% of UK industrial emissions in 2016 and is therefore a critical target for mitigation. Mainstream scenario analyses variously assume use of unproven Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or reductions to steel demand in order to reach a 1.5 °C compatible budget by 2050. This analysis aims to: a) assess the mitigation potential of current technology options (excluding CCS) towards a cumulative budget aligned to net zero and assuming constant steel demand; b) to evaluate the potential of material efficiency to close any mitigation gaps, (where material efficiency is providing the same useful ‘service’ with less input of energy-intensive materials); and c) to discuss the importance of sectoral budget assumptions and other uncertainties in estimating the scale of future mitigation required by the industry and the policy implications of this. We modelled four key technology scenarios including steel plant retrofit, replacement of steelmaking technologies to best practice standards, fuel shifts to greater Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) production, and implementation of selected novel technologies, under different ambition levels. Technology scenarios could reduce cumulative Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions (2016–2050) by as much as 44% against a constant baseline, whilst coupled technology and material efficiency scenarios could achieve reductions of as much as 53%. We also find that whilst grid electricity decarbonisation and earlier demand reduction can achieve additional mitigation, there may still be a need for some CCS capacity in the long-term to address residual emissions. In the most ambitious case, absolute GHG emissions from the steel sector reduced by 80% by 2050 against 2016 levels, assuming grid decarbonisation. We found that the most effective interventions were through established technologies, such as retrofit, replacement and EAF production, since they were immediately available, with the condition they are implemented faster than previously observed. Given the commercialisation constraints of novel technologies, structural shifts such as material efficiency and EAF production were considered highly important. However, structural changes are necessarily more complex to influence via policy, and there is little precedent for structural change by design in the UK. Our results show that only complementary scenarios combining material efficiency and technology options would achieve a level of mitigation near to net zero in the UK. We conclude that it is possible to achieve net zero emissions in the UK steel sector, but that this would require greater and earlier levels of material efficiency and some degree of CCS removal capacity.