Bridging the Gap – the Role of Equitable Low-carbon Lifestyles - Emissions Gap Report 2020 Chapter 6

Understanding the distribution of lifestyle emissions among populations and by activities is important for equitable targeting of mitigation measures, in order to encourage reductions from households with high consumption emissions and to avoid regressive impacts associated with imposing burdens on the poor (Rao et al. 2017; Roberts et al. 2020; Wiedman et al. 2020). Average consumption emissions vary substantially between countries. For example, current per capita consumption emissions in the USA are approximately 17.6 tons CO2e per capita, around 10 times that of India at 1.7 tons per capita. By contrast, the European Union (EU) and the UK together have an average footprint of approximately 7.9 tons per capita (see chapter 2).