Arbeitsbereich

Bevölkerungsdynamik und Nachhaltiges Wohlbefinden

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

Demographic Change, Energy Demand, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Geleitet von Emilio Zagheni; Risto Conte Keivabu; in Zusammenarbeit mit Hossein Estiri (Harvard University, Cambridge, Vereinigte Staaten)

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Demographic change, energy demand, and greenhouse gas emissions are among the most important and interconnected drivers of ongoing climatic and societal change. Energy demand has been increasing consistently, despite technological advances that improve energy efficiency. Much of this increase is due to social and economic dynamics. For example, as the world population is aging, average income is rising, homes are getting larger, and energy demand is soaring. Furthermore, our global climate is changing, creating additional burdens on energy supply and even increased demand for energy.

An aging and wealthier world population has been considered a potentially important driver of the increase in CO2 emissions. For instance, energy demand at the residential level drives a large proportion of overall CO2 emissions, and age and income are likely to stratify patterns of energy consumption due to a number of economic and housing-related factors. However, it is not clear how these factors precisely contribute to differences in energy demand patterns by sociodemographic characteristics. Gaining a deeper understanding of the roles of age and income as micro-drivers of energy demand would thus help us better understand the relationship between climate change, energy demand, economic growth, and population dynamics. In addition, the findings could inform the implementation of climate mitigation policies. 

The populations most impacted by climate change are rarely the populations most responsible for global carbon emissions. Efforts to assign responsibility typically differentiate emissions across space and time but not across birth cohorts. Including younger birth cohorts complicates assessments as they have yet to emit as much carbon as older cohorts. Using formal demographic methods, we have developed an approach to estimate carbon emissions across space, time, and the life course, thus creating a unified carbon emissions identity comparable to other well-known carbon identities (Hauer et al., 2025). Our estimates show that globally, cohorts born between 1970 and 1990 have the highest lifetime emissions under a moderate emissions pathway, and cohorts born since 2000 have the highest lifetime emissions under a high emissions pathway. These results suggest that emissions pathways play the largest role in determining which cohorts will have the highest lifetime carbon emissions, with lower emissions pathways implicating earlier cohorts and higher emissions pathways implicating later cohorts.

Building on these findings, this project aims to develop statistical methods for estimating profiles of energy demand by age for individuals using household-level survey data. It also seeks to identify the direct link between age, income, and energy demand after accounting for the potential impact on energy demand of confounding variables, such as sociodemographic factors, housing characteristics, cultural determinants, local/regional/national institutional settings, and local/regional climatic conditions. Furthermore, the availability of projected future temperature data will enable us to consider how population aging, coupled with climate change, could alter energy demand. The overarching goal is to leverage solid statistical methods and a wide range of emerging data from the climate and social spheres in order to develop a fresh perspective at the intersection of population and climate change sciences that accounts for demographic dynamics and global warming.

Energieverbrauch von Privathaushalten in den USA nach Alter

Schätzungen der Muster des Energieverbrauchs in Privathaushalten nach Alter in den USA. Die Profile für Pseudo-Kohorten (Personen, die im gleichen Zeitraum geboren wurden und im Laufe der Zeit mit Querschnittsdaten verfolgt wurden) werden durch die Anpassung geglätteter Regressionslinien erstellt. © Estiri, H.; Zagheni, E.: Age matters: ageing and household energy demand in the United States Energy Research and Social Science 55, 62–70. (2019)

Publikationen

Hauer, M. E.; Hardy, D.; Zagheni, E.; Jorgenson, A.:

The birth cohorts most responsible for carbon emissions

SocArXiv papers. unpublished. (2024)    

Cimentada, J.; Klüsener, S.; Riffe, T.:

Exploring the demographic history of populations with enhanced Lexis surfaces

Demographic Research 42:6, 149–164. (2020)    

Estiri, H.; Zagheni, E.:

Age matters: ageing and household energy demand in the United States

Energy Research and Social Science 55, 62–70. (2019)