Decent Living Energy

This project builds on past work by defining and quantifying “national” energy poverty, or the energy needed to eradicate poverty in developing economies. In its first phase, two expert workshops were held, one to define the research gaps and chart out the methodology for filling them, and a second expert elicitation to define the material components of a decent living standard. The first workshop established a number of collaborations among participants to address each research gap. The expert elicitation resulted in a consensus on a set of candidate constituents of a decent living standard, which is being drafted in a discussion paper. Several streams of research were also initiated, including developing an input-output model with uncertainty for calculating embedded energy; examining the evolution of household energy use with economic development; and analyzing historical trends in electric appliance acquisition in emerging economies. Project concepts and preliminary results from the historical analyses were presented at a number of conferences, including the European Alpbach Forum and Our Common Future under Climate Change scientific congress in Paris.

Figure 1. State of the art (green) and the ‘Decent Living Energy’ (blue) approach to assessing the greenhouse gas impacts of poverty eradication.

Last edited: 13 May 2016