The role of working time, consumption and mobility for declining German household GHG footprints: Kaya Decompositions for 2000 – 2019

Abstract

Abstract Understanding the drivers of household footprints is crucial for measures accelerating emission reductions. Well-documented drivers are demand, energy efficiency and decarbonization of energy supply, while working time and mobility have received little attention. Herein, German household energy and emissions footprints for 2000–2019 are investigated using Kaya Decompositions. We find that footprints are declining at -1%/year, due to improving energy efficiency and decarbonization overcompensating the growth of per-capita and per-hour incomes. GHG footprints are suggested to increase as a result of growing aggregate hours driven by increasing part-time employment while full-time employment is stable, even if falling average per-capita working time appears to have the opposite effect in the Kaya framework. Private mobility footprints decrease by -1.4%/year, driven up by growing distances, car-dominated modal splits and growing air travel, but overcompensated by improving energy efficiency, decarbonizing of mobility, slightly decreasing numbers of trips and stable expenditure on mobility. Remaining issues are the role of work-related trips, mobility on company expenses, delivery services, transport of goods, and more differentiated analyses of working arrangements across socio-economic groups. Part-time work, which is a form of working time reduction for which assumptions of the Kaya Decomposition look fairly realistic and could be useful for a policy-mix. However macro-economic feedbacks and potentially negative social side-effects need to be addressed to design equitable policy measures.