Conceptualizing supply- and demand-side climate change mitigation: A typology and new research directions

Despite broad scientific consensus on the urgent need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the question of how to achieve this remains contested. Existing proposals emphasize either supply-side or demand-side strategies, yet conceptual integration between the two is rare. This article develops a typology for climate change mitigation research by distinguishing two key dimensions: the primary entry point of intervention (supply-side vs. demand-side) and the dominant scope of intervention (individual vs. systemic). Within this typology, we identify four research perspectives – techno-innovation, individual decision-making, industrial transformation, and embedded lifestyles – and compare them in terms of their problem framings, disciplinary origins, forms of intervention, policy proposals, and target actors. Our typology shows that while mitigation strategies have become more diverse, they still tend to prioritize either supply-side or demand-side interventions, rather than integrating them as complementary pathways for social-ecological transformation. To address this gap, we propose three promising research directions: provisioning systems, sufficiency corridors, and social-ecological practices. These directions (1) analyze production and consumption as coupled systems, challenging the traditional supply-demand dichotomy; (2) frame climate change mitigation not only as a technological challenge but also as a call for absolute reductions in production and consumption; and (3) pursue transformative change on a systemic level, moving beyond the cumulative effects of individual decisions by emphasizing collective, rules-based interventions.