Lifestyle changes in mitigation pathways: policy and scientific insights

This is the most obvious and frequent contribution in our sample. As pathways are used to inform decision-makers, we identified at least two types of information. First the quantification of the contribution of lifestyle changes to the climate mitigation effort. van Sluisveld et al (2016)* provides an example of a worldwide specific quantification using an IAM (IMAGE, lifestyle changes are represented through changes in some parameters), which is later put into perspective with other types of changes for the assessment of 1.5 °C scenarios (van Vuuren et al 2018*). Vita et al (2019)* provides a refined analysis thanks to a multi-regional input–output (MRIO) framework that has a superior ability to study changes in consumption patterns. It allows them to quantify separately the effects of a particularly wide set of lifestyle changes (e.g. local clothing; sharing and repairing practices, see also Annex 1). Whereas this kind of quantifications are rare for developing countries, Grottera et al (2020)* quantify different scenarios of lifestyle change in mitigation pathways through a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model grounded on an input-output framework for Brazil, allowing the exploration of systemic effects (on prices, incomes and growth). In a very recent study Millward-Hopkins et al (2020)* also developed an bottom up approach starting from the different components of lives (e.g. housing, food and mobility practices) to inform about the minimum energy needed to provide decent living with a global perspective in 2050.

Second, some of the pathways of our study provide another type of output by preparing decision-makers for the uncertainties of future lifestyles. These pathways, built on an exploratory approach (rather than a normative one), also include an exploration of lifestyle changes that are not necessary driven by sustainability. The five pathways described in Emelianoff et al (2013) are probably the most contrasted ones we observed (e.g. they include a society based on human enhancement technologies, another where 40% of the population live in sufficiency-oriented communities). These pathways were developed mainly through an interdisciplinary qualitative approach and quantified a posteriori at the household level through a carbon footprint approach. The pathways described in Millot et al (2018)* and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI (2019)* provide some other examples of such exploratory pathways, but with national or regional quantifications.

As previously noted, pathways are used as a medium to support participatory approaches with citizens or stakeholders (see an example in Fortes et al (2015); and an analysis in Elsawah et al (2020)) and to disseminate and communicate scenario results in order to enable different communities (e.g. scientists) to dialogue and work together (Waisman et al 2019). This is enabled as futures can be considered as 'boundary objects', as described by Star and Griesemer (1989) and Granjou and Mauz (2011). We identified several examples of such approaches.

One of the most notable is the exercise led by the Finnish Prime Minister's Office (2009)*, where an ambitious participatory approach was implemented to establish the mitigation strategy (including in particularly numerous stakeholder and expert workshops and in a posteriori consultation of citizens). Several lifestyle changes were considered in the four mitigation pathways. This exercise led to identify measures to encourage lifestyle changes (related to dietary shift, modal choice, and household location in particular). The MRIO modelling of Vita et al (2019)* are also derived from outputs of workshops where European citizens and other stakeholders produced their visions of sustainable lifestyles.

Another observed practice is the development of concrete narratives of life in 2050, consisting in describing future individual or household lifestyles in order to 'root' the low-carbon transition into everyday life. These characterizations take the form of household 'portraits'—i.e. descriptions of daily life (see ADEME and WeDemain 2015, Elioth 2017*, EPE 2019*). This helps us imagine the practical realities of life in a low-carbon world and share the challenges of the transition with citizens.

As argued e.g. by Beck and Mahony (2018), pathways play a role in framing the worldview associated with the necessary transition to achieve ambitious mitigation goals. These assessment exercises furnish 'policy-makers with the objects, variables and relations upon which they seek to exert influence' (Beck and Mahony 2018). Here we ask: to what extent do existing pathways contribute to placing lifestyle changes within the landscape of existing mitigation options (for policy-makers)?

We voluntarily included in our sample several pathways that are frequently referred to in scientific and political discussions on climate mitigation and energy futures. These include several of the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s pathways, several quantifications of the five shared socioeconomic pathways (Calvin et al 2017*, Fujimori et al 2017*, Fricko et al 2017*, Kriegler et al 2017*, van Vuuren et al 2017*), as well as prominent foresight studies from multinational oil and gas companies, and sets of pathways assessed within the IPCC's Special Report 1.5 °C. Our analysis shows that these pathways consider only a few lifestyle changes. Except for changes related to modal choice in mobility and, to a lesser extent, dietary shifts in several recent studies using IAMs, other lifestyle changes are rarely considered in these pathways, even if we can mention some recent—but still partial—efforts (Bertram et al 2018*, Grubler et al 2018*, Liu et al 2018*, van Vuuren et al 2018*). Changes in consumption patterns (e.g. durable goods, services), in cohabitation practices, in tourism and travel practices, in sharing practices, in household location or in relationship to space (e.g. virtual mobility or the size of the activity space) are for example rarely explicitly considered in this set of pathways.

Except for Prime Minister's Office (2009)*, the same observation can be made for the pathways that are the most integrated into political processes in our sample (e.g. DGEMP 2005*, DGEC 2008*, UK Government 2017*, European Commission 2018*, French Ministry of Ecology 2018*).

Among the other studies of our sample (that are more academic-oriented), we identified a significant amount of pathways that considered various lifestyles changes. Yet, considering the non-systematic and scattered character of this literature, combined with its academic orientation, raises the question of under which conditions these studies can have a significant power to frame worldviews.

This results led us to consider that this participates in a specific and potentially incomplete framing of the issue, leaving aside the possibility of lifestyle changes as a solution. These conventional modelling approaches generally fall short of capturing the lessons from the literature that demonstrates that demand is actually the result of an interaction between society and technical systems (Shove 2004, 2010, Geels et al 2017).

The political nature of lifestyle changes is probably one of the main reasons explaining why lifestyle changes are not considered in some prominent or governmental mitigation pathways. The cautious way in which lifestyles have been explored in the French Ministry of Ecology's exercise gives a practical illustration of the sensitivity of this issue (as reported by their authors). For example, the study was careful in its communication to avoid any expression that might suggest a trade-off in terms of comfort or affluence loss, and also considered an intensity and a scope of lifestyle changes restricted to the most consensual practices and changes (e.g. carpooling, modest dietary shift). Another illustration can be seen in the objections to the assessment of potentials associated with lifestyle changes identified by Dufournet et al (2019).

Lifestyles are a set of both practices and representations, which include values, cultural, and social factors. Considering their change therefore potentially implies transforming the balance of values and preferences in a given way, which is not necessarily consensual. Assumptions of change may also be perceived as undermining the individual freedom to compose one's lifestyle, whereas liberty is generally considered a pillar of the Western liberal democracies. This perception ignores, however, the fact that there are already a wide array of social, urban (Gudipudi et al 2019), country/regional (Ivanova et al 2017) or institutional (Munck Af Rosenschöld et al 2014) constraints and inertia that explain the extent in which individuals are limited in their agency to opt for low-carbon lifestyles. Considering the policy decisions that influence the course of changing lifestyles is therefore far from neutral. This aspect is all the more crucial given that scenarios, like the ones gathered by the IPCC in their report, have performative power, i.e. they can transform 'purely speculative visions into politically powerful visions of actionable futures' (Beck and Mahony 2018).

Moreover, some lifestyle changes are connected to more global debates on economic growth and changes in consumption patterns (e.g. less material consumption, more shared goods, less travel by plane), and these debates are key determinant of political and social acceptance (Akenji 2014, Wiedmann et al 2020). Lifestyles changes are also connected to development paths (e.g. urbanization, motorization), which can lead to difficult political debates. For example, there is an apparent contradiction between the promotion of dense urban areas to enable sustainable mobility (e.g. Creutzig et al 2016, de Coninck et al 2018) and the persistence of aspirations for individual housing (see e.g. the international survey described in Descarrega and Moati 2016). Lifestyles, as a holistic concept, cannot be reduced in scenarios to the representation of independent consumption choices without losing its political meaning, which is precisely what needs to be discussed so that it can be integrated into action strategies. Thus, it challenges both the mediation role of scenarios and the production of robust knowledge on the potential of lifestyles changes (implementation feasibility).

The global and qualitative reflection process that fixed overall lifestyle hypotheses had to go through an interpretation exercise in order to translate the resulting qualitative assumptions into quantitative assumptions that could be fed into the models. At a macro level, O'Neill et al (2017)'s work has been an important first step in providing qualitative narratives for mitigation pathways modelling. Despite methodological efforts, this approach necessarily involves the reductive prism of modelling tools: the analysis of lifestyles must be done within a predetermined framework that is fairly constrained by the modelling structures, which were not initially conceived to accommodate lifestyle changes. We identified several limits, in particular: some indicators are too aggregated (e.g. final energy/capita, annual passenger-kilometres/capita); some sectors are frequently not included in the modelling scope (e.g. aviation, food); the most-common GHG accounting approach (territorial-based) is not satisfactory to consider changes in consumption patterns; certain assumptions will be precisely described, while others will remain partially or completely inexplicit. This is of particular importance when pathway development includes a participation process: an inadequate modelling framework can be prejudicial to the consideration of lifestyle changes in collective discussions. In addition, by analysing the methodological challenges of connecting qualitative and quantitative analysis in scenario building processes, Elsawah et al (2020) identify in their recent review other sources of tension and challenges: how to conserve consistency and scientific credibility? Which output (storyline or modelled scenario) is the final benchmark of the study? These methodological difficulties give rise to a several experimentation and approaches, as we will see in the next section.

None of the pathways in our broader sample satisfactorily investigated the policies that may influence future lifestyles, their cost-effectiveness, their consequences on well-being and, ultimately, their legitimacy. The case of Grubler et al (2018) is representative in this respect. The assessment shows the benefits of following a low-demand pathway with, in particular, a moderate increase in activity levels (at least in the global North), but no science-based policy advice on how to achieve this or analysis on the potential implications, for example, in terms of well-being. In other words, relying on a set of simplified assumptions is useful to get an order of magnitude of the impact in terms of emissions, but says little about the conditions of implementation and may not be sufficient to serve as a basis for discussion among stakeholders. By extension, it may lead to the consideration of lifestyle changes as zero cost options (Bertram et al 2018). This is a limitation to producing policy relevant pathways, which should provide lessons in terms of means of implementation.

However, the human and social sciences have a lot to say about understanding changes in lifestyles: drivers (e.g. household life-cycle, values), constraints (e.g. infrastructure lock-in, social norms), and the dynamics at play (e.g. rhythms, sequences). This knowledge has been applied to mitigation issues bringing out several active research fields, e.g. sustainable consumption, sustainable mobility.

Yet, as an extension of the quantification challenge, there is a broader challenge related to the integration of social science knowledge in quantitative foresight exercises, because of epistemic differences (Geels et al 2016, Elsawah et al 2020). The different dimensions of lifestyles and their associated dynamics are hardly understood by rational choice theory, which dominates the techno-economic models analysed by Rosenbloom (2017). In a field historically dominated by economists, engineers and modellers, most of the most visible pathways are based on the same epistemic approach, in particular concerning agents (e.g. access to information, rational choice, fixed preferences) and the role of market prices. They also share a positivist approach that seeks to identify deterministic laws through a mathematical approach (Geels et al 2016). This shared set of approaches and disciplines allows for a unified and powerful production of knowledge but may be an obstacle to the integration of social sciences that do not share the same epistemic approach, and are not necessarily familiar with or inclined to consider foresight approaches. For example, some sociological approaches, which generally have a lower propensity for normativity, are more oriented towards highlighting the diversity and evolution of values and practices than toward identifying the regularity of behaviours that could be projected. As observed by Trutnevyte et al (2019) a merging strategy between modelling approaches and social sciences comes 'at a significant cost of simplifying complex descriptions from social sciences into model equations'. We consider that this can both reduce the willingness of social scientist to contribute to the building of pathways and the quality of the explicit knowledge produced by the scenarios.

Quantification challenges mainly concern well-established modelling frameworks, which were initially designed to deal primarily with technical and technological choice issues. There are, however, initiatives that could provide relevant alternatives or complements for further consideration of pathway lifestyles, as the use of MRIO frameworks—of which Vita et al (2019) present a detailed implementation—and, more generally, input-output frameworks.

Other works have proposed frameworks that allow the influence and constraints of social and spatial structures to be better integrated, with rich representations of the heterogeneity of populations and their practices based on the exploitation of surveys on mobility, housing, expenditures or time-use (Weber and Perrels 2000, Raux and Traisnel 2007, Le Gallic et al 2017). However, these data intensive initiatives are subject to limitations in terms of data availability and comparability, particularly when working at the international level. Work to build harmonized datasets, such as that which exists for time use (Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS)), could be valuable to overcome these difficulties.

Also in the direction of introducing richer representations in modelling frameworks, we can mention research that allows the consequences of lifestyle changes on the economic system to be taken into account using hybrid and CGE models, such as in Grottera et al (2020).

Another direction offers a relevant compromise in terms of simplicity and transparency—favourable in particular to participatory processes—while providing a sufficiently detailed framework for discussing lifestyle changes. It includes research based on calculators as (European Climate Foundation 2018, Moreau 2020, Strapasson et al 2020).

The literature on IAMs identified the need to integrate learnings of various social sciences in order to go further in the understanding of what makes lifestyles change, their inertia, the impact of policy interventions etc, as well as the related methodological challenges (Trutvenyte 2019, van den Berg et al 2019). Recent articles explore avenues for new approaches: improving the modelling of lifestyles, by detailing representations or by integrating new equations representing social phenomena, appears to be a privileged direction (Mccollum et al 2017, Trutnevyte et al 2019, van den Berg et al 2019). This direction can be seen a as a deepening of the reference work that sought to better represent lifestyles in the pathways (van Sluisveld et al 2016, Grubler et al 2018).

This direction certainly promises a range of benefits in the representation of these issues and their quantification. Yet this may not be enough to overcome the political and scientific challenges described above. As described in section 4.1.3, we consider that the integration of social sciences knowledge into modelling faces strong epistemic and disciplinary limits, which in turn could reduce the policy relevance of the scenarios.

Moreover, it is necessary to think about the scope of relevance of the models. A growing complexity has limitations due to black box effects, difficulty of calibration and validation, uncertainties, capacity to be used and understood, i.e. issues that have been identified for IAMs (Gambhir et al 2019, Haikola et al 2019, Mundaca et al 2019) and in other modelling fields (e.g. Saujot et al 2016). This growing complexity could be rather an obstacle than an asset to overcome the challenge to deal with the political nature of pathways (Haikola et al 2019).

A promising approach for a bridging strategy has been described by Waisman et al (2019). This method has been concretely applied by more than 20 in-country teams to produce mitigation pathways, which are integrated into actual political processes in several countries. Designed and used to inform the post-Paris agreement process, this framework places stakeholder dialogue at the heart of the process to formulate narratives and to discuss uncertainties, while insuring consistency of the pathways construction. To achieve this, it combines a set of storylines with a dashboard of quantitative indicators, and leaves the choice of the model according to capacities and needs of the national context of the pathway. Lefèvre et al (2020) applied these methods and tools to the mobility sector in four countries, in order to broaden the analysis to various societal drivers of change (beyond technological change) and to deepen the question of mobility demand. This approach is based on the idea that integrating societal transformations into mitigation pathways does not necessarily require the sophistication of modelling tools but rather the construction of a toolbox (set of storylines, dashboard of indicators) with the right balance between ease of use and level of detail, in order to support the stakeholders and interdisciplinary dialogue. Nevertheless, to demonstrate that this is possible, additional developments of the tool box and a stronger involvement of stakeholders will have to be made (Waisman et al 2019, Lefèvre et al 2020).

The issue of well-being is central to climate change mitigation. It is reflected in particular in the fears expressed in developed countries regarding transition policies, which poses problems of acceptability and forms a political obstacle, and is the prism through which mitigation strategies are assessed.

The approach that first referred to and is still regularly used is to express welfare losses in terms of losses in overall consumption or gross domestic product (GDP) (Edenhofer et al 2014). The limitations of this type of approach, which are widely recognized (e.g. Stiglitz et al 2009), motivate research on other measures of social well-being, which have recently begun to be implemented in the field of climate change mitigation, as well as in the planetary boundaries framework (O'Neill et al 2018). For example, the latest IPCC Special Report 1.5 °C assessment (IPCC 2018) adopted an assessment based on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations (UN General Assembly 2015), whose use in this framework is considered to be part of a multidimensional approach to well-being (Lamb and Steinberger 2017), i.e. recognizing the existence of different irreducible and non-substitutable dimensions that contribute to people's well-being (e.g. food, health). The multidimensional nature of the lifestyle concept seems particularly well suited to the development of new approaches to well-being in the context of climate change mitigation.

The development of well-being approaches of mitigation pathways should be a new research direction, in line with existing efforts, such as the work of Vita et al (2018, 2020), Millward-Hopkins et al (2020) or of Steinberger and Roberts (2010) who highlight a decoupling of well-being from demand beyond a certain level of demand. Several conceptual and practical approaches also explore innovative solutions to reduce activity levels without compromising well-being through the concepts of prosperity (Jackson 2009), decent living (Millward-Hopkins et al 2020) or sufficiency (Bierwirth 2019). The concept of lifestyle is a pivotal notion for such research, which will thus contribute to improving the assessment of pathways in terms of desirability, and thus feasibility.

There are several reasons why the political nature of pathways should not preclude lifestyle changes from consideration in pathway development. Firstly, most changes related to technologies and to the socio-technical system are value-neutral only in appearance. As argued by Rosenbloom (2017): 'Techno-economic pathways are similarly inclined toward positivist ontological and epistemological assumptions, yet offer policy recommendations based upon implicit value judgements (e.g. the centrality of efficiency) that may mask political and ethical questions'. Secondly, any pathway includes assumptions about future lifestyles, even if they are in most cases implicit. Thus, any pathway is value-laden, at least through the conservation of values.

To manage these issues, one direction is to build on the proposals of the STS literature. Beck and Mahony (2018) suggest that experts and institutions that provide assessments should be more aware of the policy-performativity of their scenarios and invest in new framing and assessing methods (e.g. 'Responsible Research and Innovation'). In the same way Garb et al (2008) suggest strengthening collaboration between scenario practitioners, modellers, and social scientists by using the existing toolkit of social science research to discuss and analyse the 'social "work" of scenarios'. Sanwal et al (2017) analyse in the case of the IPCC how addressing controversial subjects like achieving well-being within a global carbon budget would involve investing in frameworks that better address interactions between science and policy. To start, future scenarios could include a specific effort in favour of transparency about implicit values and assumptions around lifestyle changes, and this could constitute a new type of dashboard. This direction could be seen as a development of the widely used framework of O'Neill et al (2017), which proposed a set of narratives to help make explicit the societal baseline of global scenarios.

Finally, another way of acknowledging the political nature of mitigation pathways would be to incorporate citizens' views in the process. Not only can scenario be mediation tools used to support participatory initiatives, as explained in the result section 3.3.2, but they can also benefit from inputs from citizens. For example, citizen climate assemblies, as organised recently in France and in the UK, can enter into a constructive dialogue with the experts, bringing their own political vision on the uncertainties, acceptability and equity of climate policies, including lifestyles changes. Given the potential of these kinds of exchanges, the future development processes of national low carbon scenarios could integrate, in parallel or upstream to the technical work, this type of citizen contributions, which could help to manage the eminently political questions included in these roadmaps.