Sustainability of consumption patterns: Historic and future trends for Europe

The EU FP7 research project \u93European Policies to Promote Sustainable Consumption Patterns\u94 (EUPOPP) analyses the impacts of policy strategies and instruments on consumption patterns in order to identify which sustainable consumption policies and instruments are effective, can be improved, and be implemented successfully. A focus is on the need areas of food, and housing, i.e. the residential sector excluding transport. The historic food consumption data showed an increase for the product groups cereals, fruits meat, and vegetables. Only for dairy products a slightly decline occurred. On the base of the historic food consumption, a trend projection of future development in all 27 European member states until 2030 was developed. The trend projection indicates a slight overall increase of per capita consumption of food products, but was differentiated using cultural and regional context factors. Exceptions of the overall trend are per capita consumption of fruit and vegetables in Southern Europe and in the overall consumption of dairy products which all decline slightly until 2030. Sustainability potentials were estimated in quantitative terms based on material flow analysis. The potential to reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions by changing the average EU 27 diets towards both sustainable and healthy food was identified to be in the order of 50 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, while in the housing sector, the total sustainable potential by 2030 was determined as approx. 700 million t of CO2 equivalents, taking into account the full life-cycles of energy supply and use. The assessment relates to environmental and economical indicators which allow quantifying primary energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, resource use, costs and employment effects