D1.2 Guidelines for application customization

The lifestyles approach to carbon footprint accounting and climate mitigation aims at shifting people´s lifestyles in line with climate targets. For achieving this goal, citizens´ and stakeholders’ engagement is essential to understand the range of needs and possibilities for changing consumption and other aspects of lifestyle.

Besides individual preferences and values, lifestyles are influenced by factors such as policies, socio-economic conditions, infrastructure, and others that tend to change across countries. These determine what choices are available, and what people require to be able to reduce their climate impacts.

With this in mind, in 2017 the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra developed a digital tool to collect individual carbon footprint data by providing to citizens a questionnaire (i.e. a test) on their lifestyle and consumption habits. After taking the test the citizens were presented with a series of alternative lifestyle options (or “smart actions”) with associated emission reductions. By committing to adopt a series of these actions, they were able to develop emission reduction pathways in line with climate targets. Overall, by December 2020, these commitments amounted to a total emissions reduction of over 6000 tonnes of CO2e.

Following this first application, the Horizon 2020 project PS Lifestyle, aims at expanding the user base and potential impact of the tool by adapting it to the context of eight European countries: Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and Turkey.

This report presents the methodology and the results of the localization of the tool in these countries. The methodology describes the collaborative approach with country partners that was followed for the localization. This is structured as a replicable set of steps that constitutes the blueprint for other localizations. The methodology includes the localization of the test, for example by filtering out not relevant questions, and the localization of the underlying data used for calculating the carbon footprints. The localization of the test also focused on aspects of inclusiveness, identifying groups that are, or are at risk of, being marginalized in each country, as well as other barriers to the accessibility of the tool.

The results describe the country-specific versions of the tool produced, as well as the main challenges identified in each country. The challenge areas identified and assessed across countries include complexity and comprehensiveness of the test, data availability, consumption domains of major impacts, and inclusiveness and accessibility.

Overall, the localization produced improved versions of the tool that will reach a broader and more diverse user base than its first application. Their implementation will potentially have a substantial impact in terms of emission reductions in Europe.

Publication Date: 11 Feb 2022

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