Energy Seminar: week 4: How will ending poverty impact climate change? A well-being centred approach to energy transitions


Narasimha D. Rao will speak in person at the Oxford Martin School. To watch online register below for TEAMS webinar link. Exceptionally this seminar is on MONDAY.

Although distributive justice is at the core of the climate challenge, energy transitions research is largely focused on aggregate techno-economic outcomes. How can we re-frame climate mitigation research to incorporate well-being outcomes and preserve development opportunities for those in poverty around the world? In this talk, I will discuss an integrated framework for interdisciplinary research that bridges social sciences with energy-economic models of climate mitigation. I will also present new empirical results to show that affluence, more than poverty eradication, drives climate change, even in the Global South. Less than a tenth of US energy consumption per capita would suffice to support basic well-being for all. Yet, there is significant potential for equitable, low-carbon development pathways. This framework can also be applied to affluent societies to investigate how drastic emissions cuts can preserve, if not enhance, human well-being.