Abstract
As part of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE), at the University of Surrey, UK, this PhD study involves the development of a set of scenarios depicting the carbon intensity of UK household consumption over the next 20 years. A set of four scenario narratives are developed, accompanied by illustrative quantitative figures. The thesis sets out some of the background factors pertinent to this study, including economic, energy and environmental uncertainties, and establishes how household consumption is framed and understood in the present work. Accordingly, emissions embedded within goods and services imported from abroad are included in the accounting. A review of the scenario planning literature is provided, an investigation is conducted into the epistemological contribution that these scenarios might make, and the methodology adopted for this study is described, before the scenarios themselves are laid out. Key lessons from the scenarios are discussed, including: the importance of a coordinated international approach (if households are to be expected to engage proactively in environmental behaviour-change); the increasing dominance of embedded emissions in imports (as a share of total household emissions) in the event of significant decarbonisation in the UK; the centrality of social movements in driving political outcomes either for or against a low carbon transition; and the economic impact of energy and resource depletion and the divergence of subsequent responses according to the socio-political uncertainties used to frame these scenarios.