Energy economics is a broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societies. Considering the cost of energy services and associated value gives economic meaning to the efficiency at which energy can be produced. Energy services can be defined as functions that generate and provide energy to the “desired end services or states”. The efficiency of energy services is dependent on the engineered technology used to produce and supply energy. The goal is to minimise energy input required to produce the energy service, such as lighting (lumens), heating (temperature) and fuel. The main sectors considered in energy economics are transportation and building, although it is relevant to a broad scale of human activities, including households and businesses at a microeconomic level and resource management and environmental impacts at a macroeconomic level.
An ecotax or green tax is a tax levied on activities which are considered to be harmful to the environment and is intended to promote environmentally friendly activities via economic incentives. Such a policy can complement or avert the need for regulatory approaches. Often, an ecotax policy proposal may attempt to maintain overall tax revenue by proportionately reducing other taxes ; such proposals are known as a green tax shift towards ecological taxation. Ecotaxes address the failure of free markets to consider environmental impacts.
The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region or the world. In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment.
In social behavior, downshifting is a trend where individuals adapt simpler lives from what critics call the "rat race".
Ethical consumerism is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment.
Eco-sufficiency, or simply sufficiency, refers to the concept or strategy to reduce the environmental footprint of modern societies. The term was popularised by authors such as Thomas Princen, a professor at MIT, in his 2005 book ‘The Logic of Sufficiency’. As a goal, sufficiency is about ensuring that all humans can live a good life without overshooting the ecological limits of the Earth, while at the same time defining what that good life may consist of. Princen argues that ‘seeking enough when more is possible is both intuitive and rational - personally, organizationally and ecologically. And under global ecological constraint, it is ethical.'
Climate ethics is an area of research that focuses on the ethical dimensions of climate change, and concepts such as climate justice.
The value-action gap is the space that occurs when the values or attitudes of an individual do not correlate to their actions. More generally, it is the difference between what people say and what people do. The phrase is associated with environmental geography, relating to attitudes and behaviors surrounding environmental issues. Numerous studies have reported an increase in global environmental concern, but have shown that environmental engagement is not adjusting in accordance.
Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan define it as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design can also be defined as the process of integrating environmental considerations into design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.
Sustainable diets are defined as "those diets with low environmental impacts that contribute to food and nutritional security and to healthy lives for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable, are nutritionally adequate, safe, and healthy, and optimize natural and human resources." These diets attempt to address nutrient deficiencies and excess, all of the while covering ecological phenomena such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and land degradation.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sustainability:
Sustainable consumption is the use of products and services in ways that minimize impacts on the environment in order for human needs to be met in the present but also for future generations. Sustainable consumption is often paralleled with sustainable production; consumption refers to use and disposal not just by individuals and households, but also by governments, businesses, and other organizations. Sustainable consumption is closely related to sustainable production and sustainable lifestyles. "A sustainable lifestyle minimizes ecological impacts while enabling a flourishing life for individuals, households, communities, and beyond. It is the product of individual and collective decisions about aspirations and about satisfying needs and adopting practices, which are in turn conditioned, facilitated, and constrained by societal norms, political institutions, public policies, infrastructures, markets, and culture."
Sustainability is a societal goal that broadly aims for humans to safely co-exist on planet Earth over a long time. Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and therefore vary in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national and individual level. Sustainability is commonly described along the lines of three dimensions : environmental, economic and social. Many publications state that the environmental dimension should be regarded as the most important one. Accordingly, in everyday usage of the term, sustainability is often focused on the environmental aspects. The most dominant environmental issues since around 2000 have been climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several "planetary boundaries".
A water footprint shows the extent of water use in relation to consumption by people. The water footprint of an individual, community, or business is defined as the total volume of fresh water used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers or producers, for a single process or for any product or service.
Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) is the calculated illustrative calendar date on which humanity's resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year. The term "overshoot" represents the level by which human population's demand overshoots the sustainable amount of biological resources regenerated on Earth. When viewed through an economic perspective, the annual EOD represents the day by which the planet's annual regenerative budget is spent, and humanity enters environmental deficit spending. EOD is calculated by dividing the world biocapacity, by the world ecological footprint, and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year:
Micro-sustainability is the portion of sustainability centered around small scale environmental measures that ultimately affect the environment through a larger cumulative impact. Micro-sustainability centers on individual efforts, behavior modification, education and creating attitudinal changes, which result in an environmentally conscious individual. Micro-sustainability encourages sustainable changes through "change agents"—individuals who foster positive environmental action locally and inside their sphere of influence. Examples of micro-sustainability include recycling, power saving by turning off unused lights, programming thermostats for efficient use of energy, reducing water usage, changing commuting habits to use less fossil fuels or modifying buying habits to reduce consumption and waste. The emphasis of micro-sustainability is on an individual's actions, rather than organizational or institutional practices at the systemic level. These small local level actions have immediate community benefits if undertaken on a widespread scale and if imitated, they can have a cumulative broad impact.
Individual action on climate change can include personal choices in many areas, such as diet, travel, household energy use, consumption of goods and services, and family size. Individuals can also engage in local and political advocacy around issues of climate change. As of 2020, emissions budgets are uncertain but estimates of the annual average carbon footprint per person required to meet the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees by 2100 are all below the world average of about 5 tonnes CO2-equivalent. And to meet 1.5 degrees 2.3 tonnes annual average is required by 2030. According to 66% of respondents to an EU climate survey, climate change will still be a severe concern by 2050.
Sustainable consumer behavior is the sub-discipline of consumer behavior that studies why and how consumers do or do not incorporate sustainability priorities into their consumption behavior. It studies the products that consumers select, how those products are used, and how they are disposed of in pursuit of consumers' sustainability goals.
Pro-environmental behaviour is behaviour that a person consciously chooses in order to minimize the negative impact of their actions on the environment. Barriers to pro-environmental behaviour are the numerous factors that hinder individuals when they try to adjust their behaviours toward living more sustainable lifestyles. Generally, these barriers can be separated into larger categories: psychological, social/cultural, financial and structural. Psychological barriers are considered internal, where an individuals' knowledge, beliefs and thoughts affect their behaviour. Social and cultural barriers are contextual, where an individual's behaviour is affected by their surroundings. Financial barriers are simply a lack of funds to move toward more sustainable behaviour. Structural barriers are external and often impossible for an individual to control, such as lack of governmental action, or locality of residence that promotes car use as opposed to public transit.
