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Environmental impacts of the French households' final consumption

Panel: 1. Foundations of future energy policy

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Laurent Meunier, ADEME, France
Isabelle Vincent, ADEME, France
Eric Vidalenc, ADEME, France

Abstract

In order to fight against climate change, ambitious targets have been set, such as decreasing carbon emissions by 75% in France compared to 1990. Yet, focusing on territorial impacts leads to overlook import-embedded impacts. As a matter of fact, French territorial greenhouse gases (henceforth GHG) emissions have slightly decreased since 1990, whereas consumption-based emissions have been shown to increase. This is why we focus in this paper on consumption-based emissions rather than territorial emissions. Moreover, other environmental impacts are taken into account: air acidification (ACD), photochemical oxidation (PCO) and non-dangerous industrial wastes (NDIW). This paper provides a prospective analysis of the environmental impacts of household final consumption, which shows, among other results, that even if ambitious territorial objectives were achieved by 2030, consumption-based impacts would be out of the 2° pathway. Indeed, imports-embedded impacts will be hard to curb by 2030. However, further analysis is needed in order to understand whether the main driver is the level of consumption, or the level of impacts of abroad production.

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