Increasing positive climate impact by combining anti‐consumption and consumption changes with impact investing

Abstract

Household consumption leads to global warming potential impacts, for example, via energy consumption, production processes, and transportation. About 72% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are related to household consumption. Some of this consumption is nonessential and could therefore be reduced, leading to decreased GHG emissions. There is, however, a risk of a rebound effect if money saved by reducing consumption is used or invested in a way that leads to GHG emissions elsewhere. Therefore, in efforts to further mitigate climate change via anti‐consumption behavior or changes in consumption, it should be ensured that money saved is impact invested in climate change mitigating actions, thus creating a secondary impact. Previous studies have not considered the need to account for this double impact dynamic in climate change mitigation. An approach to calculate potential for double impacts is developed in this work. The article also presents quantitative GHG emissions reduction potentials, for example, some anti‐consumption actions and consumption changes as well as for possible impact investments.