Affluent environmental practices – POAEE

The inequalities in greenhouse gas emissions and the disproportionate contribution of a small group of 'large emitters' is an emerging area of research (Mattioli et al., 2023). Indeed, targeting the energy practices of the rich are central in order to reach emissions targets, due to both their climate impacts and the social aspirations they help to maintain.

Yet the wealthy are a social group whose consumption practices - and energy consumption in particular - are little known (Observatoire des inégalités, 2022), and remain largely unaddressed by climate policies. Aside from studies focusing on the richest 1%, which do not capture the diversity of wealth, attention to domestic energy practices has focused mostly on vulnerable groups.

The ENER-RICHES project is part of this emerging subject by approaching consumption through the prism of social class, to articulate the structure of energy consumption among the rich with the politicization of these consumption habits. To do this, it draws on the two fields of political ecology and the theory of practices.

This research programme implemented with three hypotheses. It postulates that the social stratification of consumption is reflected in specific forms of energy consumption by wealthy households, and aims to objectify it with a survey. The second hypothesis is that wealthy households can yield significant political leverage, which is a factor of the invisibility of their energy consumption in climate policies. This is empirically addressed by studying the trajectory of the recommendation of the 2020 Citizens' Climate Convention. Finally, it explores the evolution of the window of acceptability in the public opinion when it comes to controlling the energy consumption of the wealthy, and aims to do so through an analysis of social networks.