Breaking bad habits
DEEP-DIVE: Behavioural change requires radical system change. Fossil energy incumbents are banking on that not happening.
Changing people’s behaviour is a big task. It means uprooting an entrenched economic model that has created untold prosperity while pushing us to the brink of ecological collapse. Technology won’t save us, but it might buy some time for Big Oil companies that find themselves on the back foot in the climate debate. In the second instalment of this two-part series, Energy Flux looks at the impediments to behavioural change and what’s at stake in the quest to bend the oil demand curve. Part one is free to read here.
An unprecedented attack on fossil fuel production and supply is gaining momentum. Last month’s historic shareholder rebellions at ExxonMobil and Chevron, and the landmark Dutch court ruling against Shell, could be seen as the opening salvos in a socio-political battle against hydrocarbons – a popular war on oil that is only going to intensify.
There is far less attention being paid to reducing demand for fossil energy and other natural resources. The International Energy Agency’s first 1.5C Paris-aligned pathway, which called for an end to fossil fuel investment to reach ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050, gave only a cameo role to behavioural change.
As explored in part one, there is enormous untapped emissions savings potential from curbing wasteful energy practices among the richest 10% of society – enough to save the other 90% from making any sacrifices whatsoever, while keeping the world on a Paris-compliant trajectory, according to one study.
Demand-side adjustments are lower risk than supply-side curtailments and bring co-benefits “for health, pollution, security, equity, living standards, and system costs”. That’s according to a 2018 editorial in academic journal Energy Efficiency.
This Energy Flux deep-dive, part two, seeks to understand why the ‘low hanging fruit’ on the decarbonisation tree is going unpicked, and what that means for the energy transition.
The consumption trap
Digging through academic literature for answers to this question, it becomes clear that looking at behavioural change makes little sense in isolation from the wider economic system in which we each live, work and relax.
How so? Human behaviour is limited by the economic, cultural and social context in which people find themselves. You can choose only from the options available to you, and these are determined largely by where you were born, when, and into which family.
A holistic approach is therefore needed to put demand-side emissions solutions in their proper context. And that means confronting thorny issues related to …
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