Rethinking Progress: The Impact of Sufficiency Policies on Sustainability in the EU

The use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to gauge economic success has been met with criticism, primarily for its narrow focus that overlooks critical environmental and social aspects of well-being. To tackle this issue, a new study by Eurac Research published on Journal of Sustainable Development Indicators, introduce an evolved version of the Sustainable Prosperity Index (SPI), inspired by the works of Jackson and Victor (2020), specifically tailored for the European Union (EU). The aim is to create a comprehensive sustainability metric that includes energy sufficiency—an often ignored facet in traditional beyond-GDP indices.

By utilizing a composite indicator approach, the SPI amalgamates economic, environmental, and social factors, with a particular emphasis on energy sufficiency across four high-energy consumption sectors: food, transport, housing, and consumer goods. Researchers computed the SPI for all EU countries under a standard Reference Scenario as well as various Sufficiency Scenarios to evaluate the impact of enhanced sufficiency measures on sustainability performance.

This is the first application of the Sufficiency Policy Index (SPI) at the EU27 scale, marking a significant milestone in the integration of sufficiency into a composite index of prosperity. By introducing a sufficiency threshold and simulating policy-driven future scenarios, this study assesses the impact of these policies on long-term sustainability.

“Results from the study are promising: SPI values increased by 1.2% to 2.3% in countries with high baseline consumption, underscoring the efficacy of sufficiency policies in improving sustainability outcomes. This highlights the power of demand-side strategies to complement decarbonisation efforts, reasserting that, in certain contexts, less consumption can indeed lead to better outcomes. The findings of this study open new avenues for rethinking how we measure progress in Europe. It underscores the importance of developing more inclusive, balanced, and future-proof metrics to guide decision-makers towards resilient, low-carbon prosperity” explains Filippo Beltrami, first author of the study.

The work has been developed within the FULFILL Project (Fundamental Decarbonisation through Sufficiency by Lifestyle Changes).