What are the material requirements for eradicating hunger, providing safe shelter, adequate education, health care and mobility, and what energy growth and emissions would result from meeting these basic living standards? So far we understand energy needs only in the context of GDP growth, which doesn’t distinguish between growth in affluence and these basic living standards. Based on a new bottom-up analysis, I present new results on the energy and climate impacts of providing everyone with a basic living standard, defined for the first time in material terms, but based on universal principles of human well-being. I show, for instance, that eliminating ‘hidden hunger’ would reduce agricultural emissions; estimates of the energy needs for public transport in cities and solid homes with basic amenities, and for providing internet connectivity to all. These results not only inform future energy policy priorities, but also provide a basis to assess climate justice from a human rights perspective.
About the Speaker: Dr. Rao is a Project Leader and Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, where he is the principle investigator of a new research project funded by the European Commission to estimate energy and emissions threshold for providing decent living standards to all in key emerging economics, including India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia. His interests are in energy, poverty and climate change. He has a PhD from Stanford University in Environment and Resources, and Masters degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Technology Policy and Electrical Engineering. His publications can be found on his website (www.iiasa.ac.at/rao-narasimha)