What are the social consequences of climate mitigation policies? Activities of international organizations have led to an increase of national policies for the mitigation of climate change. The question of who has to pay the costs of intensive public programs for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, however, is mainly addressed on the level of nations. So far research has widely neglected whether the costs of climate change mitigation policies are unequally distributed among socio-economic groups. As a consequence, the impact of climate policies on individuals’ life situation is largely unknown even though the design of, for example, a general tax on energy suggests a highly regressive effect on national patterns of housing utility costs among low income households. Taking into account that lower income groups of Western societies are also characterized by a significant smaller carbon footprint, the implementation of such policy instruments in the residential housing sector creates a challenge for social justice. This conflict between effectiveness in climate mitigation and unintended social consequences can theoretically be solved in two ways. First, depending on their design climate mitigation policies can simultaneously foster effectiveness and social justice. In this respect, climate policy instruments not only target higher income households, but also provide additional financial benefits in order to enable social redistribution. Second, social policy instruments in the residential housing sector can be used in order to compensate for rising poverty in housing utility costs among low income households as a result of climate mitigation measures. This paper investigates the institutional and financial response to the negative consequences of climate policies in the residential housing sector. The analysis is based on a comparison on climate and social policies in Austria, Denmark, and the United Kingdom and a longitudinal data analysis of housing utility costs from the EU-SILC study.
