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Reducing consumption was one of the strongest conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which emphasized the climate benefits of lowering society’s demand for energy and materials.
“Reducing societal demand for energy and materials could mitigate up to around half of the emissions that we’re currently dealing with, without installing one additional solar panel or wind turbine,” said Eric Masanet. “This finding ended up being one of the key messages of the Sixth Assessment Report.”
Masanet, a professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and a Principal Investigator at the Marine Science Institute, has been invited to return as a co-author for the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). The IPCC, the United Nations body responsible for the world’s most authoritative climate assessments, is now beginning its next reporting cycle, with Masanet contributing again to the chapter on demand and services.
Modern wellbeing depends on goods and services such as food, housing, transportation and technology — all of which require energy and materials. AR6 found that substantial emissions reductions are possible by cutting waste and inefficiencies while still maintaining quality of life, placing demand reduction among the most immediate pathways toward net-zero emissions.
While today’s economy is largely driven by overconsumption, research indicates that high standards of living can be sustained with far fewer resources. Masanet’s work has shown, for example, that more material-efficient building designs could reduce demand for concrete — one of the most emissions-intensive materials — by up to 25%.
Reducing consumption will require shifts in cultural norms, policies and business incentives, but Masanet emphasizes that these changes also create economic opportunities, including new jobs and industries focused on smarter design, reuse, refurbishment and remanufacturing. He has also cautioned that climate strategies must not only promote clean technologies, but actively discourage high-emissions activities.
New challenges for AR7
Since AR6, research on large-scale demand reduction has expanded, refining strategies Masanet describes as “avoid, shift and improve.” At the same time, emerging technologies have introduced new complexities. While digitalization has historically improved efficiency, the rapid growth of AI-driven data centers is now sharply increasing energy demand.
Masanet recently co-authored a national analysis with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimating that U.S. data center electricity use could rise from about 2% in 2018 to 6–12% by 2028, driven largely by AI facilities that consume far more power than traditional data centers. A key goal of AR7 will be to evaluate whether AI ultimately delivers net climate benefits and how its impacts on power systems, emissions and water use can be managed through policy and regulation.
Increasing urgency
The IPCC’s seventh assessment will be developed by one of its most diverse author teams to date, with near gender parity and a majority of contributors from developing and transition-economy countries. For Masanet, the most significant change since AR6 is the growing urgency to act. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now exceed 425 parts per million, climate impacts are intensifying worldwide, and reducing demand represents an immediate, cost-effective way to curb emissions.
Adapted from original reporting by Harrison Tasoff, “UCSB professor tapped to co-author the seventh IPCC assessment report on climate change mitigation,” The Current, UC Santa Barbara, 2026.