Energy requirements for securing wellbeing in Switzerland and the space for affluence and inequality

The idea that human needs should be secured for all people is largely uncontroversial, and recent research demonstrates that decent living standards could be secured for all, globally, with far lower energy and resource use than today. However, how the energy requirements of decent living vary across populations is poorly understood – particularly in high-income countries—and important questions regarding inequality remain unexplored. Here we show how, with a fairer distribution of energy, Switzerland could dramatically reduce energy consumption while securing wellbeing for all. We advance previous work on energy and wellbeing by decomposing an established net-zero scenario into the energy required to support human needs, and that related to affluence or excess. We estimate decent living energy in 2050 at 19.5 gigajoules per capita (18–26 gigajoules in varying subnational contexts), making it only ~13% of Switzerland’s 2019 energy footprint, and ~23% of that projected in the net-zero scenario. This highlights the theoretical potential for affluent countries to move towards a more just, egalitarian global distribution of energy and resource consumption, while securing wellbeing for their own citizens.