Can climate change policies be fair? A workshop on survey-based analysis of household CO2 emissions Event

Climate scientists present ever more stark diagnoses of planetary imbalance, increasing calls for emissions reduction policies. A key social research question is whether those policies will hit poorer households harder, or whether they can be designed to soften the impact on the disadvantaged. The workshop explores this question and related analytical issues. It focusses on the use of national scale consumption surveys to explore the distribution of CO2 emissions and effects of policies. Are the data up to the task? Which household characteristics are related to high emissions? Who are likely winners and losers from different policies?

Programme

10.15 Registration and coffee

10.30 Welcome and introduction

Part 1: Are the data up to the task? Estimating CO2 emissions from expenditure data

10.40 Using the Living Cost and Food Survey to estimate household CO2 emissions – Milena Büchs, University of Southampton

11.00 Practices by proxy: climate, consumption and water – Ben Anderson, University of Essex

11.20 Discussion

11.40 Comfort break

Part 2: The distribution of household CO2 emissions
11.50 Household characteristics and CO2 emissions – who emits most? - Sylke V. Schnepf, University of Southampton

12.10 Carbon mitigation policies, distributional dilemmas and social policies – Ian Gough, London School of Economics

12.30 Discussion

1.00 Lunch

Part 3: Can climate policies be fair?
2.00 Distributional impacts of climate change mitigation policies – comparing different areas of emissions – Nicholas Bardsley, University of Reading

2.20 Using the LCF to model the distributional impacts of UK climate change policy – Ian Preston, Centre for Sustainable Energy

2.40 Discussion and conclusions

3.00 Networking and coffee/tea/cakes