Addressing the prevailing mode of high-carbon lifestyles is crucial for the transition towards a net-zero carbon society. Existing studies fail to fully investigate the underlining factors of unsustainable lifestyles beyond individual determinants nor consider the gaps between current footprints and reduction targets. This study examines latent lifestyle factors related to carbon footprints and analyzes gaps between decarbonization targets and current lifestyles of major consumer segments through exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. As a case study on Japanese households, it estimates carbon footprints of over 47,000 households using expenditure survey microdata, and identifies high-carbon lifestyle factors and consumer segments by multivariate regression analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Income, savings, family composition, house size and type, ownership of durables and automobiles, and work style were confirmed as determinants of high-footprint Japanese households, with eight lifestyles factors, including long-distance leisure, materialistic consumption, and meat-rich diets, identified as the main contributory factors. The study revealed a five-fold difference between lowest and highest footprint segments, with all segments overshooting the 2030 and 2050 decarbonization targets. The findings imply the urgent need for policies tailored to diverse consumer segments and to address the underlying causes of high-carbon lifestyles especially of high-carbon segments.

Realizing a decarbonized society in consistent with the Paris Agreement, a fundamental transformation of the entire economic and social system is needed, and not only carbon intensive sectors but also all sectors and all stakeholders including households must be decarbonized. This chapter demonstrates increasing expectations for carbon pricing in Japan in this global policy context. After the review of the global trend of carbon pricing, historical progress of carbon pricing in Japan and the existing nation-wide carbon tax, i.e. the Global Warming Countermeasure Tax, is explained. There are also two sub-national carbon pricing schemes in Japan, Tokyo ETS and Saitama ETS, which are explained in Chaps.10.1007/978-981-15-6964-7_6and10.1007/978-981-15-6964-7_7respectively, and not focused in this chapter. We examine the claim that Japan has already implemented high level carbon pricing in terms of various forms of energy taxes. Based on the effective carbon rate which is defined by OECD as the sum of explicit carbon prices and fossil fuel taxes per carbon emission, the nationwide average effective carbon rate of Japan is lower than the average effective carbon rates of OECD countries and its key partner countries. The current carbon pricing schemes in Japan are too modest to realize decarbonization transition and there is a room to upgrade them to exploit full potential of carbon pricing. This chapter discusses adequate levels of carbon prices in compatible with decarbonization transition.

The Regional Circulating and Ecological Sphere (Regional-CES) is a guiding concept for environmental policies to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in urban and rural communities with maximum utilisation of local strengths and resources. To promote the Regional-CES concept as a useful guiding principle, a scoping project was designed to engage key stakeholders in selected Southeast Asian countries, namely, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, by organising workshops in these countries. These workshops consisted of sessions to explain the Regional-CES concept, discuss and identify opportunities for applying Regional-CES based on each country’s context, and share practices that may have been conducted under similar frameworks or concepts. Common obstacles include limited scientific understanding, ignorance of local needs and reality in the top-down decision-making process, and limited capacity of local agencies and society. Participants acknowledged the potential of the Regional-CES approach to advance transformative actions towards low-carbon society, resource circulation, and living in harmony with nature at regional, national and local levels, and the importance of aligning the Regional-CES concept to specific local contexts, such as local needs, policy relevance and priorities that could address social, economic and environmental challenges.