defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

market barriers to energy efficiency abstract discussions of energy policy in an environmentally constrained world often focus on the use of tax instruments to internalize the external effects of energy utilization or achieve specified reductions in energy use in the most cost effective manner a substantial literature suggests however that significant opportunities exist to reduce energy utilization by implementing technologies that are cost effective under prevailing economic conditions but that are not fully implemented by existing market institutions this paper examines the theory of the market for energy using equipment showing that problems of imperfect information and transaction costs may bias rational consumers to purchase devices that use more energy than those that would be selected by a well informed social planner guided by the criterion of economic efficiency consumers must base their purchase decisions on observed prices and expectations of post purchase equipment performance if it is difficult or costly for individuals to form accurate and precise expectations the level of energy efficiency achieved by competitive markets will vary from the socially efficient outcome such market barriers suggest a role for regulatory intervention to improve market performance at prevailing energy prices

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

electricity curtailment behaviors in greek households different behaviors different predictors abstract this paper argues that electricity curtailment behaviors i e frequent and or low cost or free energy saving behaviors in households are distinct from one another and they thus should be analyzed and promoted we test this claim with data from telephone interviews with greek households in the capital city of athens n 285 analyzing the impact of a number of demographical structural psychological based on the theory of planned behavior and moral based on norms activation predictors though hierarchical binary logistic regression modeling we find that that each electricity curtailment behavior depends on a different mix of predictors with age gender and perceived behavioral control being statistically significant for most behaviors overall the psychological and the demographical structural clusters of variables substantially contribute to the explained variance of electricity curtailment behaviors the moral cluster s contribution is not statistically significant since moral concerns are largely interwoven in the psychological constructs

an examination of the equilibrium specification and structure of production for canadian telecommunications multiple output models of canadian telecommunications production are estimated under different production equilibria a specification test is conducted between the short and long run equilibrium models and the long run equilibrium is rejected in order to capture the nature of the disequilibrium a dynamic cost of adjustment model is estimated for bell canada there are significant adjustment costs and it is estimated that for 1 00 of marginal capital costs the carrier must incur an additional cost of 0 30 to install the new capital into the production process

the public private divide in household behavior how far into home can energy guidance reach abstract environmental problems in the energy system often originate from everyday activities and choices everyday activities in the home are part of the private sphere that can be contested in relation to energy policies this article discusses the public private divide in energy policies and how swedish municipal energy consultants understand the divide by analyzing the actions of energy consultants and their efforts to influence households as well as how households perceive this guidance i will discuss the public private discourse in relation to energy policy and how this discourse can be a restriction for the energy consultants to reach their full potential the consultants found it problematic to discuss behavioral issues because they did not know how to relate to people s everyday life activities without intruding on private and personal matters for the households tailored information and feedback was not perceived as the consultant trespassing in the private sphere instead the householders highlight the possibilities of such mapping lessoned learned from sweden is that state subsidies to local energy consultants is a good way to reach households but that they need to develop their methods and use more tailored information

empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect a review beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

on the effectiveness of private and public capital this study assesses the effectiveness of private and public capital investments in the performance of manufactures within the framework of the duality theory the response of costs of production and input utilization to changes in the stocks of private and public capital is measured by the appropriate elasticities obtained from a cost function instead of considering private capital either as a variable or fixed input on a priori grounds its nature is checked that is the study discriminates between a long and a short run situation the empirical exercise is made for the manufacturing industries in the spanish regions

productivity growth in canadian telecommunications canadian telecommunications firms do not price proportionately to marginal cost the prices of toll services tend to be above marginal costs whereas the prices of basic local services are typically set below marginal costs by regulators in such circumstances estimates of tfp growth using the conventional tornqvist divisia formula which weights outputs by revenue shares in determining the rate of growth of aggregate output is theoretically incorrect and needs to be replaced by a formula which uses cost elasticity weights empirically the conventional tornqvist index yields a very distorted picture of efficiency gains in the two largest canadian telephone companies during the 1980s for bell canada i calculate the upward bias to be approximately 75 percent over the period 1980 89 and 80 percent over the period 1985 89 for b c tel a similar calculation yields an upward bias of 37 percent over the period 1980 89 and 48 percent over the period 1985 89

energy consumption for space heating a discrete continuous approach energy demand for space heating is estimated using a discrete continuous choice model which focuses on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and energy consumption the model is estimated on norwegian micro data and the two stages of the model are estimated simultaneously the capital cost and the operating cost of the heating systems are both found to have a significant impact on the choice of heating system furthermore the results show that household characteristics are important variables in residential energy models energy price elasticities and income elasticities are also estimated

energy efficiency rebounding to a sound analytical perspective abstract recent controversy suggests that energy efficiency policies used to reduce carbon emissions might actually increase overall energy consumption the result would be an unintended increase in carbon emissions this paper examines the underlying issues of this so called rebound effect from both a historical perspective and through the results of a recent macroeconomic analysis completed for the united states depending on the assumptions of income and price elasticities as well as the supply demand interactions within a macroeconomic model the rebound effect might reduce overall savings by about 2 3 compared to a pure engineering analysis in other words an economy wide cost effective engineering savings of 30 might turn out to be only a 29 savings from a macroeconomic perspective despite the impact of a rebound effect the net result of energy efficiency policies can be a highly positive one

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

technical change markup divestiture and productivity growth in the u s telecommunications industry this paper examines the sources of productivity growth for the u s telecommunications industry from 1935 to 1987 these years encompass both the pre and post at t divestiture periods we formulate a structural model that accounts for both changes in the cost and the demand side of the industry we measure the contributions of aggregate demand information intensity of the economy price cost margins relative factor prices direct and indirect effects of technological progress and r d investment on total factor productivity tfp growth rate we show that tfp growth rate as conventionally measured is a seriously biased measure of rate of technical change in this industry

on the rebound feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in iea countries abstract the interaction or feedback between energy efficiencies or energy intensities and energy use has long been the topic of debate some have argued that energy efficiency improvements by reducing energy intensities and therefore lowering the cost of energy services would lead to rebound effects offsetting much or all of any initial savings in energy in this paper we analyse historical data on energy use efficiency and pricing in different sectors to try and identify rebounds for the period of our data since about 1970 we show that key measures of activity car use manufacturing output and structure house area etc have changed little in response to changes in energy prices or efficiency instead continuing their long term evolution relative to gdp or other driving factors while our analysis cannot disentangle more macro level economic feedbacks in a detailed way we show indirectly that such effects also appear to have been small over the 1970s and 1980s overall our analysis of disaggregated sectoral and subsectoral energy use and activity trends in a variety of iea economies suggests that any feedback effect is small compared to both the effects on energy use of changes in energy intensities and overall economic growth we conclude that most of the improvements in energy efficiencies led to reductions in energy intensities observed in the 1970s and 1980s weighted by 1990 activity levels intensities were roughly 15 20 lower in 1994 5 than in 1973 which in turn meant real savings of energy energy demand in iea countries is roughly this much below what it would have been for the same gdp had these savings not occurred rebounds may have taken back some of the overall savings but most remain even after the fall of oil prices in 1986 any boost to gdp as a result of these savings could not have been sufficient to increase energy demand enough to significantly alter these conclusions that the savings remained after the fall in oil prices supports the notion that net savings restrained energy growth relative to gdp in some formulations arise from technological progress even if energy prices do not increase how far this effect can reach however is a matter of considerable debate

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

a multi criteria evaluation of policy instruments for climate change mitigation in the power generation sector of trinidad and tobago even as small island developing states sids like trinidad and tobago t t increase industrialization and grapple with the challenges of increased pollution few studies provide guidance to policy makers of such countries on appropriate policy measures and instruments that can be implemented to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions here we apply a multi criteria evaluation methodology to ascertain preferences for policy measures and instruments in the power generation sector four broad policy measures and twelve policy instruments are assessed on criteria of environmental performance feasibility of implementation and political acceptability this method proves useful in t t since typical to many sids the intensive data required by other policy assessment methods is unavailable results indicate little difference in preference among the four policy measures thereby indicating that a multi pronged approach on several policy fronts is required the most preferred policy instruments to operationalize measures included provision of subsidies for energy saving technologies creating an industry wide carbon trading scheme and implementing a feed in tariff to increase the use of renewable energy sources this study therefore provides specific insights for policy makers in trinidad and tobago while also providing power generation sector specific guidance to other rapidly industrializing small island developing states

price effects of energy efficient technologies a study of residential demand for heating and cooling energy efficient appliances reduce the marginal price of the services they deliver this article shows empirically that such price reductions result in energy savings that are smaller than those engineering techniques generally project using econometric techniques with data from a unique utility experiment and a detailed engineering thermal load model we find that actual conservation is as much as 13 below engineering estimates for cooling and 8 12 below for heating customers who conserve electricity are also persistent their houses are comparatively warmer in summer and cooler in winter

economic fluctuations market power and returns to scale evidence from firm level data recent research on aggregate fluctuations coupled with ongoing work in industrial organization has renewed interest in the existence magnitude and cyclical pattern of market power and the extent of increasing returns to scale by exploiting restrictions from dynamic theory and information from financial markets we present a framework for generating quantitative evidence on market power and returns to scale tailoring the econometric model to firm level panel data we calculate the percentage differential between price and marginal cost the lerner index in terms of the parameters from the econometric system results for firms in eleven industries indicate that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the extent of market power industries with significantly positive lerner indices tend to have substantial increasing returns in the production technology we find that there is only a modest relation between our estimated lerner indices and traditional measures of market power and that when market power varies temporally it is usually procyclical thus variations in the markup of price over marginal cost may help dampen aggregate economic fluctuations

rejoinder natural monopoly and the bell system response to charnes cooper and sueyoshi our study of the bell system cost function shows that it is possible to reject the hypothesis that at t was a natural monopoly our study is based on a regression analysis of a translog cost function estimated on 1947 1977 data charnes cooper and sueyoshi charnes a w w cooper t sueyoshi 1988 a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup management sci 34 1 26 claim that they reverse our conclusion when they use goal programming estimators of a translog cost function estimated on exactly the same data that we use this claim is false there is no basis for comparing our estimates with their estimates because they in fact use different data than we use and estimate a different cost function than we estimate moreover when goal programming estimates and regression estimates based on the same data and similar cost function specifications are compared they yield similar estimates and produce the same inference about natural monopoly

dynamic factor demands and the effects of energy price shocks a dynamic model is used to understand how sharp changes in energy prices affect investment behavior employment and energy use the authors discuss the theory behind their model selection model specifications estimation methods and data list parameter estimates and elasticities for the selected model and describe the simulations they conclude that 1 the data strongly reject the hypothesis of constant returns to scale within their specification of aggregate production 2 the data indicate adjustment costs on labor are small and 3 their results help reconcile some of the conflicting estimates of energy demand elasticities appearing in recent literature 23 references 3 figures 3 tables

monopolistic resource extraction and limit pricing the market penetration of competitively produced synfuels this paper analyzes the market penetration of a competitively produced synfuel e g solar energy in a market that is initially dominated by a resource extracting monopoly the availability of the renewable substitute depends not only on the price cost ratio but also on the installed capacities which reflect historical investments as a consequence the resource monopoly faces a discontinuous residual demand schedule the dynamic interactions between the resource cartel and the synfuel industry are modelled as a differential game the open loop nash equilibrium is applied to this game it will be shown that the commodity price will exceed the production costs of the backstop and that the transition from the periods of resource dependence to the backstop technology will be gradual

consistent multi level energy efficiency indicators and their policy implications in order to cope with the global warming issue most of the asia pacific economic cooperation apec economies have made energy conservation policy a top priority in terms of their energy policies the energy efficiency indicators included in the present paper focus on the micro foundation aspects there are basically two types of energy efficiency indicators namely the economic thermodynamic energy efficiency indicators that use real gdp as the denominator and the physical thermodynamic energy efficiency indicators that are based on the output volume index while the common definitions and consistent methodology used in the present paper fulfill the iea pyramid eei concept the new methodology in this paper compares the decomposition effects between upstream and downstream industries when aggregating efficiency changes these decomposition effects can thereby provide valuable explanations for the energy conservation policy needed by energy policy and government administrators

a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup the recently implemented court decision to break up bell american telephone telegraph co to accord with u s anti trust laws represents a highly significant policy decision which is proving to be influential in other countries as well as the u s the telecommunication industry is of such size and importance that even relatively small economies that might be lost with bell s breakup as a natural monopoly could involve substantial welfare losses to consumers and producers studies commissioned by the u s justice department that approached this topic by econometric methods reported that the evidence failed to support the contention that bell was a natural monopoly here a goal programming constrained regression as developed in the management science literature uses the same functional form and the same data but nevertheless reverses the main findings of the econometric studies in every one of the 20 years covered this kind of difference in results obtained by two different methods of analysis poi

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

price cost margins exports and productivity growth with an application to canadian industries a model is estimated for oligopolistic industries producing multiple outputs in short run equilibrium outputs are sold domestically and exported while capital is treated as a quasi fixed factor the model is applied to the canadian non electrical machinery electrical products and chemical products industries the results show that there is significant oligopoly power in each of the industries and that the degree of this power differs between the domestic and export markets total factor productivity is decomposed price cost margins exert little influence but the rate of technological change returns to scale and the rate of capital adjustment determine productivity growth

the energy efficiency gap what does it mean abstract as renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues it has frequently been asserted that an energy efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use the critical questions is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency this paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are frequently brought to bear on this question by identifying the major conceptual issues that determine the set of feasible answers we identify five separate and distinct notions of optimality the economists economic potential the technologists economic potential hypothetical potential the narrow social optimum and the true social optimum each of these has associated with it a corresponding definition of the energy efficiency gap our analysis demonstrates that necessary preconditions for identifying the right measure of the energy efficiency gap include understanding and disentangling market failure and non market failure explanations for the gradual diffusion of energy efficient technologies

the efficient estimation of econometric models with rational expectations the efficient estimation of econometric models with rational expectations by the substitution method usually entails the use of a non linear simultaneous equations estimator and hence is not very attractive computationally it is shown that for a wide class of problems efficient estimates can also be obtained with standard estimation methods if instead an errors in variables approach is used for many other problems although not providing fully efficient estimates because rationality is not imposed the errors in variables method will still have a strong appeal because otherwise it uses all of the structural information in the model unlike the substitution method when an incomplete information set is used it guarantees consistent estimates and it is easy to compute

power to change analysis of household participation in a renewable energy and energy efficiency programme in central australia the australian government funded a national solar city program 2008 2013 to support communities to increase adoption of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy technology one community was alice springs a town with about 9000 households in the geographic centre of australia the programme offered a package of support free energy audits discounts for the purchase of renewable energy technology and energy efficiency measures and ongoing information households that adopted solar hot water and photovoltaic systems reduced their electricity usage immediately after adoption by 10 and 34 respectively and this was maintained in the long term a small rebound effect of 15 was observed in the photovoltaic adopters it was observed that on average households that adopted only energy efficiency measures did not have a significant reduction in their electricity usage over the long term however consistent with expectations this study did show that there was a significant correlation between the number of energy efficiency measures adopted and the greatest household reduction in electricity usage these contrary results indicate that there are additional factors involved the connection between the effective use of measures coincident behavioural change or increased energy awareness and greater energy reduction is discussed

energy saving and energy efficiency concepts for policy making departing from the concept of rational use of energy the paper outlines the microeconomics of end use energy saving as a result of frugality or efficiency measures frugality refers to the behaviour that is aimed at energy conservation and with efficiency we refer to the technical ratio between energy input and output services that can be modified with technical improvements e g technology substitution changing behaviour from one side and technology from the other are key issues for public energy policy in this paper we attempt to identify the effects of parameters that determine energy saving behaviour with the use of the microeconomic theory the role of these parameters is crucial and can determine the outcome of energy efficiency policies therefore policymakers should properly address them when designing policies

the rebound effect for space heating empirical evidence from austria abstract the major focus of this paper is to investigate the magnitude of the rebound effect for space heating in austria different approaches are applied and compared the most important result of this investigation is that despite the fact that all approaches applied have their weaknesses and some results were not highly significant the final outcomes of the different approaches show quite good coincidence they provide evidence of a rebound effect between 20 and 30 the most important conclusions for energy policy makers are i standards with respect to building codes are very important tools to increase the thermal quality of new buildings ii due to prevailing low energy prices a triggering tool which may be rebates or loans has to be implemented to increase the efficiency of the building stock

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas