Suggested Citation:
Suh, Sangwon, Edgar Hertwich, Stefanie Hellweg, Alissa Kendall (2016) Life Cycle Environmental and Natural Resource Implications of Energy Efficiency Technologies. Journal of Industrial Ecology 20 (2), 218 - 222

The Paris Agreement reached in December 2015 by the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets a new course to limit global mean temperature increase to 1.5°C. Meeting this ambitious target would require a fundamental change in, among others, the way energy is transformed and utilized (IPCC 2014). However, our understanding of the environmental and natural resource implications of the changes needed in the energy system is still limited. In the effort to close this knowledge gap, the International Resource Panel (IRP) of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has been working on two reports: one on low-carbon electricity generation technologies, which was launched during the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Paris, and the other on energy efficiency technologies to be launched later this year. This special issue, Environmental Impacts of Demand-Side Technologies and Strategies for Carbon Mitigation, was designed in collaboration with the IRP to support the development of the second report on life cycle implications of energy efficiency technologies. In particular, the knowledge and data supplied by many contributors of this special issue were instrumental for the development of the upcoming IRP report, for which some of the articles of this special issue serve as technical appendix.