Time Matters: The Carbon Footprint of Everyday Activities in Austria

Mitigating climate change to achieve the goal of staying below 2 °C of warming requires urgent reductions of emissions. Demand-side measures mostly focus on the footprints of consumption. Analysing time use can add to understand the carbon implications of everyday life and the potentials and limitat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological economics 2019-10, Vol.164, p.106357-106357, Article 106357
Main Authors: Smetschka, Barbara, Wiedenhofer, Dominik, Egger, Claudine, Haselsteiner, Edeltraud, Moran, Daniel, Gaube, Veronika
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon footprints
Climate change
Low carbon activities
Quality of life
Sustainable consumption
Time use
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Summary:Mitigating climate change to achieve the goal of staying below 2 °C of warming requires urgent reductions of emissions. Demand-side measures mostly focus on the footprints of consumption. Analysing time use can add to understand the carbon implications of everyday life and the potentials and limitations for decarbonising consumption better. We investigate the carbon footprints of everyday activities in Austria. We linked data from the Austrian Time-use Survey and the Austrian Household Budget Survey with the Eora-MRIO for 2009–2010 in order to estimate the household carbon footprints of all time-use activities. We introduce a functional time-use perspective differentiating personal, committed, contracted and free time to investigate the average carbon intensity of activities per hour, for an average day and for the average woman and man. We find that personal time is relatively low-carbon, while household as well as leisure activities show large variation in terms of CO2e footprint/h. The traditional gendered division of labour shapes the time-use patterns of women and men, with implications for their carbon footprints. Further research analysing differences in household size, income, location and availability of infrastructure in their relation to time use is crucial to be able to assess possible pathways towards low carbon everyday life. •Systems perspective on functional time-use, household consumption and footprints•Carbon footprint of time use of Austrian households in 2010 estimated•Average direct and indirect carbon intensity of time use of 1.3 kg CO2e/h•Gendered division of labour, time- and infrastructure-related constraints important
ISSN:0921-8009
1873-6106
DOI:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106357