turning lights into flights estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for uk households energy efficiency improvements by households lead to rebound effects that offset the potential energy and emissions savings direct rebound effects result from increased demand for cheaper energy services while indirect rebound effects result from increased demand for other goods and services that also require energy to provide research to date has focused upon the former but both are important for climate change this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from seven measures that improve the energy efficiency of uk dwellings the methodology is based upon estimates of the income elasticity and greenhouse gas ghg intensity of 16 categories of household goods and services and allows for the embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves as well as the capital cost of the measures rebound effects are measured in ghg terms and relate to the adoption of these measures by an average uk household the study finds that the rebound effects from these measures are typically in the range 5 15 and arise mostly from indirect effects this is largely because expenditure on gas and electricity is more ghg intensive than expenditure on other goods and services however the anticipated shift towards a low carbon electricity system in the uk may lead to much larger rebound effects

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

the abatement of carbon dioxide intensity in china factors decomposition and policy implications to deal with the challenges brought about by climate changes china decided to reduce the carbon dioxide co2 intensity by 40 45 per cent from 2005 to 2020 using the decomposition technique this study finds that energy intensity is the most important force to drive the decline of co2 intensity between 1980 and 2008 followed by structural factors such as the adjustment of energy and industrial structure therefore any environmental policy to promote energy efficiency will play the biggest role in achieving the target of abating co2 intensity in 2020

does predicted rebound depend on distinguishing between energy and energy services pour analyser le role des services energetiques et des combustibles dans l effet de relance de la consommation d energie liee a des actions d amelioration de l efficacite energetique plusieurs approches sont utilisees et comparees celle de cobb douglas celle de leontief et celle de la croissance equilibree

decomposition of aggregate carbon intensity for the manufacturing sector comparison of declining trends from 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 abstract as with total energy consumption or aggregate energy intensity changes in aggregate carbon intensity may also be decomposed or attributed to changes in various components including fuel mix for electricity generation final energy mix sub sectoral economic activity and sub sectoral energy intensities the adaptive weighted divisia rolling base year index specification is applied to total carbon emissions from the manufacturing sector of 10 oecd countries for the period 1971 1991 declines in aggregate carbon intensity for these countries range from 70 and may be primarily attributed to decreases in energy intensity i e increases in the average factor productivity of energy however these declines in aggregate carbon intensity appear to have a complex linkage to increases in energy prices as well as changes in other determinants of gross industrial output

decomposition analysis of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china abstract electricity generation in china mainly depends on coal and its products which has led to the increase in co2 emissions this paper intends to analyze the current status of co2 emissions from electricity generation in china during the period 1991 2009 and apply the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique to find the nature of the factors influencing the changes in co2 emissions the main results as follows 1 co2 emission from electricity generation has increased from 530 96 mt in 1991 to 2393 02 mt in 2009 following an annual growth rate of 8 72 coal products is the main fuel type for thermal power generation which accounts for more than 90 co2 emissions from electricity generation 2 this paper also presents co2 emissions factor of electricity consumption which help calculate co2 emission from final electricity consumption 3 in china the economic activity effect is the most important contributor to increase co2 emissions from electricity generation but the electricity generation efficiency effect plays the dominant role in decreasing co2 emissions

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency 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

to reduce energy consumption and to maintain rapid economic growth analysis of the condition in china based on expended ipat model abstract as one of the important driving forces of world economic development china s rapid economic growth has not only supplied the world with a large number of manufactured goods but also caused china s sustained and rapid increase in energy consumption because of the characteristics of china s economic development and overall low productivity derive from them in many years according to the ipat model and its expansion this article figures out china s indicators of economic growth and changes in energy consumption brought by technological progress since 1986 empirical results show that despite many years efforts china s high speed economic growth is still largely dependent on massive energy consumption how to maintain rapid economic growth while reducing energy consumption china has faced the very problem it needs to address

designation and influence of household increasing block electricity tariffs in china abstract electricity is the guarantee of normal life and the electricity price is widely concerned as a developing country in the transition stage abundant policy implications are included in the electricity price in china thus whether to adjust the resident electricity price is a dilemma for the government however the current single tariff system cannot cope with the complex social and environmental problems a new price mechanism is indeed needed this paper tries to design an increasing block tariffs system with the consideration of residential income and electricity consumption the result indicates that the increasing block tariffs system with four tier structure is more reasonable for china although the increasing block tariffs will result in the increase of electricity price it is still acceptable and affordable the increasing block tariffs will greatly improve the equity and efficiency and promote the electricity saving and emissions reduction moreover the power companies will increase tariffs revenue which would use to the transmission networks investment in poor area in order to the offset the limitations of the increasing block tariffs the government should adopt some complementary measures

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

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

re spending rebound a macro level assessment for oecd countries and emerging economies abstract it is well known that energy conservation can lead to rebound effects that partly offset the original energy savings one particular rebound mechanism is re spending of money savings associated with energy savings on energy intensive goods or services we calculate the average magnitude of this re spending rebound for different fuels and countries and for both energy and carbon co2 emissions we find that emerging economies neglected in past studies typically have larger rebounds than oecd countries since such economies play an increasingly important role in the global economy the re spending rebound is a growing concern the re spending effect is generally larger for gasoline than for natural gas and electricity paradoxically stronger financial incentives to conserve energy tend to increase the rebound this suggests that with climate regulation and peak oil the re spending rebound may become more important we discuss the policy implications of our findings

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

empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in catalonia this paper reviews the empirical literature concerning the direct rebound effect in households it briefly analyzes the main theoretical and methodological aspects and finally estimates the magnitude of direct rebound effect for all energy services using electricity in households of catalonia spain using econometric techniques the main results show an estimated direct rebound effect of 35 in the short term and 49 in the long term the existence of a rebound effect reduces the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

rethinking economy wide rebound measures an unbiased proposal in spite of having been first introduced in the last half of the ninetieth century the debate about the possible rebound effects from energy efficiency improvements is still an open question in the economic literature this paper contributes to the existing research on this issue proposing an unbiased measure for economy wide rebound effects the novelty of this economy wide rebound measure stems from the fact that not only actual energy savings but also potential energy savings are quantified under general equilibrium conditions our findings indicate that the use of engineering savings instead of general equilibrium potential savings downward biases economy wide rebound effects and upward biases backfire effects the discrepancies between the traditional indicator and our proposed measure are analysed in the context of the spanish economy

naivete based discrimination we initiate the study of naivete based discrimination the practice of conditioning offers on external information about consumers naivete knowing that a consumer is naive increases a monopolistic or competitive firm s willingness to generate inefficiency to exploit the consumer s mistakes so naivete based discrimination is not pareto improving can be pareto damaging and often lowers total welfare when classical preference based discrimination does not moreover the effect on total welfare depends on a hitherto unemphasized market feature the extent to which the exploitation of naive consumers distorts trade with different types of consumers if the distortion is homogeneous across naive and sophisticated consumers then under an arguably weak and empirically testable condition naivete based discrimination lowers total welfare in contrast if the distortion arises only for trades with sophisticated consumers then perfect naivete based discrimination maximizes social welfare although imperfect discrimination often lowers welfare if the distortion arises only for trades with naive consumers then naivete based discrimination has no effect on welfare we identify applications for each of these cases in our primary example a credit market with present biased borrowers firms lend more than is socially optimal to increase the amount of interest naive borrowers unexpectedly pay creating a homogeneous distortion the condition for naivete based discrimination to lower welfare is then weaker than prudence

reform of refined oil product pricing mechanism and energy rebound effect for passenger transportation in china new huadu business school research fund china sustainable energy program of the energy foundation g 1203 15828 national social science foundation of china 12zd059 ministry of education 10gbj013

the effectiveness of energy efficiency improvement in a developing country rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea abstract the government of south korea considers an energy efficiency improvement policy an effective economic measure for climate change like many other governments but it is unaware of any rebound effect the unexpected result of energy efficiency improvement so the rebound effect of residential electricity use in south korea was estimated using two different scales in this paper at the macro level the rebound effect was estimated indirectly by using price elasticity and at the micro level the rebound effect of individual home appliances was estimated directly by using a non linear relationship between energy efficiency and energy use at the macro level the long and short term results of rebound effect were estimated at 30 and 38 respectively also at the micro level the rebound effect of air conditioners was 57 70 while refrigerators showed only a composite of rebound and income effects finally there was no backfire effect and efficiency improvement brought energy reduction in conclusion these suggest that rebound effect is an important factor that the government of south korea must consider when planning its energy efficiency improvement policy

the impact of increased efficiency in the industrial use of energy a computable general equilibrium analysis for the united kingdom the conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use however there is an extensive debate in the energy economics policy literature concerning rebound effects these occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services the response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain in this paper we use an economy energy environment computable general equilibrium cge model for the uk to measure the impact of a 5 across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors we identify rebound effects of the order of 30 50 but no backfire no increase in energy use however these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market key production elasticities the time period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

all school finance equalizations are not created equal school finance equalization has probably affected american schools more than any other reform of the last 30 years understanding it is a prerequisite for making optimal social investments in human capital yet it is poorly understood in this paper i explain why it differs from conventional redistribution because it is based on property values which are endogenous to schools productivity taste for education and the school finance system itself i characterize equalization schemes and show why some level down and others level up schemes that strongly level down have unintended consequences even poor districts can end up worse off i also show how school finance equalization affects property prices private school attendance and student achievement

estimating future elasticities of substitution for the rebound debate abstract because they lower the cost of using energy in production and consumption activities energy efficiency improvements may lead to a rebound effect in which the demand for energy increases to offset partly or completely the initial energy saving the magnitude of the rebound effect depends on 1 the extent to which the effective costs of energy services capital and operating actually decrease from efficiency improvements 2 the technical and economic ease with which energy and other inputs to production and consumption capital labour materials can be substituted when the effective cost of using energy does in fact decrease 3 the response of intermediate and final demands to changes in the cost of energy services structural change and 4 the response of energy service demand to changes in income estimates of 1 and 2 together which is the elasticity of substitution esub between capital and energy have been criticized in the past for either not being explicit about what is technically possible in future critique of top down or ignoring the intangible costs facing firms and households when considering and implementing energy efficiency investments critique of bottom up in this study we attempt to address these two concerns by using a technologically explicit and behaviourally realistic technology simulation model to estimate long run future esub values for capital and energy for the canadian economy our simulations suggest that the capital energy esub may be lower than assumed by most studies that ignore behaviour suggesting only weak substitution between capital and energy ironically this could mean that our energy efficiency efforts will be less effective than sometimes thought but that the rebound effect will also be relatively small however estimates of 3 and 4 must be combined with our findings to assess the full magnitude of the rebound effect

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