 Mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions embodied in food through realistic consumer choicesC. Hoolohan, M. Berners-Lee, J. McKinstry-West and C.N. Hewitt Energy Policy, 2013, vol. 63, issue C, 1065-1074 Abstract: The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embodied in 66 different food categories together with self-reported dietary information are used to show how consumer choices surrounding food might lead to reductions in food-related GHG emissions. The current UK-average diet is found to embody 8.8kgCO2eperson−1day−1. This figure includes both food eaten and food wasted (post-purchase). By far the largest potential reduction in GHG emissions is achieved by eliminating meat from the diet (35% reduction), followed by changing from carbon-intensive lamb and beef to less carbon-intensive pork and chicken (18% reduction). Cutting out all avoidable waste delivers an emissions saving of 12%. Not eating foods grown in hot-houses or air-freighted to the UK offers a 5% reduction in emissions. We show how combinations of consumer actions can easily lead to reductions of 25% in food related GHG emissions. If such changes were adopted by the entire UK population this would be equivalent to a 71% reduction in the exhaust pipe emissions of CO2 from the entire UK passenger car fleet (which totalled 71MtCO2eyear−1 in 2009). Keywords: Food; Climate change; Greenhouse gas emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:63:y:2013:i:c:p:1065-1074 DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.09.046 Access Statistics for this article Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier |
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