Who emits most? An analysis of UK households' CO2 emissions and their association with socio-economic factors

Effective emissions reduction policies are required to avoid dangerous climate change. The redistributive impacts resulting from those policies will be relevant for their public acceptability. This project first examines the distribution of CO2 emissions across UK households. Second, it will explore the potential distribution of financial burdens across UK households resulting from a range of climate change mitigation policies. Households that will be most vulnerable to CO2 reduction policies will be identified.
The project will develop a household emissions dataset by combining data from the Living Cost and Food Survey with energy prices and emission factors for specific expenditure items. This database will then be used to estimate the distribution of CO2 emissions across UK households, comparing different categories of emissions (home energy, transport, indirect and total household emissions).
The project will also analyse the impact of different socio-demographic factors on household CO2 emissions. In particular, we will compare the importance of different factors for low and high income households, enabling us to identify potentially vulnerable households in low income groups.