Dr Hazel Pettifor, Senior Research Associate, Oxford University

The drive to meeting the Paris Climate Agreement goals of limiting warming to below 2°C requires significant changes in how we live our lives. Yet, simulation models guiding climate policy tend to overlook a critical piece of information: our lifestyles. A recent study¹ introduces the LIFE model, a tool that enables the detailed representation of low-carbon lifestyle into energy system models. 

The LIFE Model

The LIFE model introduces four distinctive types, characterised by their engagement with low-carbon behaviours, and underlying motivations:

1. Resourceful Types: Highly engaged and enabled by supportive social and material contexts.
2. Active Types: Driven by personal goals like health and life satisfaction.
3. Constrained Types: Struggle with barriers including affordability and education.
4. Cautious Types: Have the resources but lack motivation to act.

By representing these groups in global integrated assessment models (IAMs), we can understand how final energy use changes over time in response to policy, technology shifts, and lifestyle change.

Proof of Concept Approach

We link the LIFE model to a global building stock model (MESSAGEix_Buildings), contrasting the impact of a range of mitigation scenarios. The largest reduction in household energy use occurs when we combine monetary policy with interventions aimed at changing mindsets, with disengaged lifestyle types becoming voluntary participants in a low-energy future. 

Figure, far right-hand column – shows the largest reduction in energy used for heating homes compared to SSP2+Values and SSP2_1.5^oC

Scaling Up the Vision

The LIFE model’s flexible design means it can be applied to IAMS across domains including transport, food, and housing. 

Key Messages

Policies that improve accessibility to low-carbon options are key.  Vulnerable groups are likely to be left behind in any transition due to financial constraints and  infrastructural barriers.

Widespread changes in societal values can accelerate the adoption of low-carbon activities. When low-carbon values and beliefs become part of mainstream identity.

*The LIFE model was developed as part of the PRISMA project. We demonstrated its application across three very different IAMs. To encourage greater adoption by the IAM community we have further documented open source code and continue to support this community in widening the representation of behaviour and lifestyle in their models.

This news is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under grant agreement No 101081604 – PRISMA.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the speaker(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

1. Endogenous simulation of low-carbon lifestyle change in global climate mitigation pathways
   DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/acf6d6 ↩︎