Full Climate
Impact Assessment

System of use and delivery on human needs: Buildings

At the system level, all use of water in residential buildings is in focus, including toilets, baths and showers, clothes washing, and food preparation. Again, different heat sources are used, with the base case for 2024 being primarily natural gas and resistive electric heating.

In the counter-factual case, in 2030 there is a shift to Altered products with their reduced water consumption and a 100% shift to the use of heat pumps for heating. For the 1.5 °C compatible scenario, some residences also use best practices covering all areas of water use, leading to greater water savings.

In total, around avoided emisisons are approximately 32 MtCO₂e per year in 2030 and 3.7 billion m³  of water is saved.

Impact on human needs and flourishing lives

The number of people who own Altered products, and a multiplication factor due to partnerships and clusters, leads to an estimation of the number of people influenced by Altered. Of these, a small percentage is assumed to be inspired to change their lifestyles more broadly, leading to more flourishing lives, with a shift from a Western average lifestyle to a EU average lifestyle for the majority, and more sustainable lifestyles for a smaller subset, leading to avoided emissions of 67 MtCO₂e per year in 2030.

Influencing society, it’s values and structures

Product feedback can lead to very weak or very strong low-carbon feedback, where products either do not support broader behavioral changes, or conversely where other resource-saving technologies are encouraged, leading to acceleration of half-earth compatible solutions.

Infrastructure feedback can lead to systems in which negative rebound effects are not prevented, or can lead to system solutions for positive-energy infrastructure that support broader consumption patterns with half-earth resource use extending into multiple sectors of water use.

Institutional feedback can either focus on developing available markets without advocacy for system change, or public support for 1.5 LED pathways and half-earth compatible solutions can create shifts in other areas of high water consumption, such as agriculture.