Tapping into household action to mitigate climate change

Households play a vital role in the fight against climate change. From simple everyday actions like switching off lights to more impactful measures like installing energy efficient heating and cooling systems, households can make a substantial contribution to emissions reductions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), implementing more ambitious demand-side policies could have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in key end-use sectors by 40-70% globally by 2050.

However, OECD analysis finds that while households express a willingness to change their behaviour to protect the environment, a significant gap remains between this willingness and the extent to which they are making impactful changes. 

Households account for nearly a quarter of global energy consumption and 11% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This makes improving energy efficiency, shifting to cleaner energy, and reducing households’ overall energy demand critical opportunities for emission reductions.

The 2023 OECD report How Green is Household Behaviour? Sustainable Choices in a Time of Interlocking Crises provides an overview of household choices related to energy use, transportation, food consumption, and waste in nine OECD countries. The findings are based on the OECD Survey on Environmental Policies and Individual Behaviour Change (EPIC), which covers a total of over 17,000 households in nine OECD countries.

Responses to the EPIC Survey suggest that decisions to save energy are driven by both financial savings (reported by 46% of households) and environmental concerns (30%). The report identifies several key areas where household actions can make a difference. It finds that while the majority of surveyed households implement simple gestures like consistently turning off the lights (92%), fewer engage in more impactful measures such as minimising heating and cooling (68%). More costly measures, such as installing renewable energy and low-emission technologies also remain limited, even among higher-income households. Among these households, for instance, only 29% have installed solar panels and 30% have adopted heat pumps.

If households are willing to engage, why does there remain so much untapped potential for their contributions? 

Recent OECD analysis identifies three key barriers that prevent households from making more environmentally sustainable choices: lack of awareness, affordability and feasibility.

These challenges pertain to household behaviours affecting energy – the focus in this blog – as well as transportation, food consumption and waste management.

1. Awareness. Many households are unaware of available technologies such as battery storage and heat pumps, which hinders their adoption. Lack of knowledge often extends to the benefits these technologies can provide, such as long-term cost savings and reduced environmental impact.

2. Affordability. Among surveyed homeowners, 29% of those who have not installed low-emissions energy equipment cite cost as the main reason for not doing so. Lower-income households are significantly less likely to install such equipment compared to others.

3. Feasibility. Practical constraints pose challenges for nearly half of non-adopting households. For example, landlord approval requirements and structural limitations often make it challenging for renters and apartment dwellers to install technologies like heat pumps and solar panels.

These barriers can be addressed by targeted demand-side policies that raise awareness, improve the affordability of key technologies, and help households overcome practical challenges. A recent OECD Net Zero+ Policy Paper explores some of the main barriers to impactful action and outlines policy solutions to address them – measures that could be reinforced by their inclusion in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

NDCs of the parties to the Paris Agreement could play an important role in promoting demand-side policies that can address barriers to household action. However, findings from the UNFCCC synthesis report on NDCs suggest that countries continue to place relatively less priority on demand-side approaches, such as efforts to increase energy efficiency and behavioural changes, relative to supply-side solutions like renewable energy projects and phasing out fossil fuels. 

In line with these findings, a recent study analysing the climate pledges of the highest-emitting countries reveals a significant lack of focus on demand-side mitigation approaches in NDCs. The study identifies nine “priority practices” as the most impactful and feasible behaviour changes to help reduce GHG emissions across various sectors, including energy, mobility, and food systems. Only three of these practices were consistently reflected in the NDCs submitted by 20 countries as of 2024. Moreover, just 12 of the 20 countries explicitly included measures to improve household energy efficiency.

Homes are a cornerstone of a sustainable future. Unleashing the potential of household contributions – from low-hanging fruits of everyday habits to more impactful measures – requires more decisive demand-side policy action. Ambitious NDCs set the direction for effective climate mitigation measures and contribute to growth and development. Achieving these objectives requires better integrating demand-side measures in NDCs and related policies. Countries that are still updating their NDCs, originally due in February 2025, have a timely opportunity to embed this shift now and tap into household action to mitigate climate change.