reciprocal relationships and mechanism design we study an incomplete information game in which players can coordinate their actions by contracting among themselves we model this relationship as a reciprocal contracting procedure where each player has the ability to make commitments contingent on the other players commitments we differ from the rest of the literature on reciprocal contracting by assuming that punishments cannot be enforced in the event that cooperation breaks down we fully characterize the outcomes that can be supported as perfect bayesian equilibrium outcomes in such an environment we use our characterization to show that the set of supportable outcomes with reciprocal contracting is larger than the set of outcomes available in a centralized mechanism design environment in which the mechanism designer is constrained by his inability to enforce punishments against non participants the difference stems from the players ability in our contracting game to convey partial information about their types at the time they offer contracts we discuss the implications of our analysis for modelling collusion between multiple agents interacting with the same principal

general equilibrium rebound from energy efficiency innovation abstract energy efficiency improvements rebound when economic responses undercut their direct energy savings i show that general equilibrium channels typically amplify rebound by making consumption goods cheaper but typically dampen rebound by increasing demand for non energy inputs to production and by changing the size of the energy supply sector improvements in the efficiency of the energy supply sector generate especially large rebound because they make energy cheaper in all other sectors quantitatively general equilibrium channels reduce rebound in u s consumption good sectors from 39 to 28 but increase rebound in the energy supply sector from 42 to 80

environmental regulation technological innovation and energy consumption a cross region analysis in china abstract china has encountered the environmental issues and energy pressures in the middle income stage strengthening environmental regulation is a crucial measure to prevent environment deterioration and energy dilemma this paper investigates the three types of environmental regulations on energy consumption using feasible generalized least squares method during 1997 2015 in direct and indirect path the main conclusions are as follows in the direct path the economical and supervised types of environmental regulations have inhibited energy consumption whilst legal environmental regulation has no significant impact as for indirect path the rebound effect of energy is greater than the energy conservation generated by technological innovation which is embodied as an inhibitory effect the effects of environmental regulation display regional difference the legal and supervised types of environmental regulations have significant cost effect and rebound effect on energy consumption in the entire samples on the contrary the economical environmental regulation shows the opposite sigh in eastern regions the counterfactual simulation results show that the net effects of environmental regulations on energy consumption are negative which is beneficial for relieving energy pressures based on the findings this paper provides pertinent policy implications

residential energy demand in oecd countries and the role of irreversible efficiency improvements abstract after undergoing substantial changes during a period of high energy prices household energy demand did not rebound in times of declining energy prices as might have been expected hence other factors such as irreversible improvements in technical efficiency must be understood in order to describe both past and future household energy demand in this paper we consider irreversible efficiency improvements as a major reason for the moderate growth in energy demand after the plummeting of the oil price in 1985 we test different econometric models to take into account efficiency indicators the major conclusions of our investigation are i price elasticities are different for rising and falling prices for the latter they are close to zero implying a low rebound effect in the residential sector ii technical efficiency is an important parameter for describing and forecasting energy demand and iii income elasticities turn out to be higher once we incorporate indicators of technological efficiency in the process of estimating energy demand

heterogeneous direct rebound effect theory and evidence from the energy star program abstract improvements in energy efficiency change the relative prices of energy services and thus the consumption of those services this so called direct rebound effect changes the energy savings that improved efficiency might otherwise achieve this paper develops a theoretical model that shows the sign of the direct rebound effect depends on the type of energy service empirical evidence from the 2009 residential energy consumption survey data shows a negative direct rebound effect for energy star dishwashers and a potentially positive direct rebound effect for energy star air conditioners negative rebound effects amplify energy savings while positive rebound effects offset energy savings from using more efficient technologies

global warming and energy demand list of tables list of figures list of contributors preface 1 global warming and energy elasticities terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstonepart 1 estimating long term energy elasticities 2 alternative approaches to estimating long run energy demand elasticities an application to asian developing countries ron smith and m hashem pesaran 3 a survey of international energy elasticities neil manning and jago atkinson 4 long run demand elasticities for gasoline thomas sterner and mikael franzen 5 responses of energy demand in uk manufacturing to the energy price increases of 1973 and 1979 80 alan ingham 6 elasticities for oecd aggregate final energy demand lakis vouyoukas 7 modelling uk energy demand derek hodgson and keith millerpart ii energy the economy and greenhouse gas abatement 8 endogenous technological progress in fossil fuel demand laurence boone stephen hall david kemball cook and clare smith 9 uk energy price elasticities and their implications for long term co2 abatement terry barker 10 price elasticity and market structure overcoming obstacles to ensure energy efficiency tim jackson 11 rethinking the use of energy elasticities stefan p schleicher 12 revisiting the costs of co2 abatement paul ekins 13 asymmetrical price elasticities of energy demand michael grubb14 conclusions terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstone bibliography index

energy savings and the rebound effect with multiple energy services and efficiency correlation abstract the rebound effect or the increased use of energy services following an increase in the efficiency of that service is widely studied in the literature but it is usually only considered in a single service environment such a framework ignores the potentially significant indirect rebound effects that occur through increased purchasing power for other services and does not allow for joint efficiency improvements across many services what we call efficiency correlation we develop a household production model with two energy services and distinct but simultaneous efficiency changes to test the implications of efficiency correlation on net energy elasticities and the rebound effect positively correlated efficiency choices across end uses not only increase technically feasible energy reductions but also drive additional rebound responses that erode these savings model simulations suggest that the rebound effects through the efficiency correlation channel are just as large as traditional direct and indirect rebound effects reported in the literature though they are offset by added technical energy savings moreover we find that negative correlation can significantly reverse any energy savings e g a household installs energy saving window panes but then trades in their sedan for a suv but current federal efficiency standards make this scenario unlikely this paper offers new insight into a host of additional behavioral responses to efficiency improvements particularly the incidence of efficiency correlation across different energy services and highlights its implication for realized energy savings

energy rebound effect in china s industry an aggregate and disaggregate analysis abstract considering the crucial role of industrial sectors in energy conservation this paper investigates the impact of output growth on energy consumption in china s industrial sectors with an index decomposition model and the energy rebound effect in the industrial sectors with a panel data model using the annual data during 1994 2012 the empirical results indicate that first industrial output growth is proved to be the major factor in promoting industrial energy consumption while energy intensity reduction and structure shifts across industrial sub sectors play the dominant roles in slowing down industrial energy consumption second there does exist energy rebound effect in china s aggregate industry which ranges from 20 to 76 during 1995 2012 or 39 on average in particular the energy rebound effect in manufacturing is relatively smaller during the sample period i e 28 on average finally the energy rebound effect in both china s aggregate industry and manufacturing exhibit an overall decreasing trend over time

the imperfect price reversibility of non transport oil demand in the oecd abstract this paper examines the price reversibility of oecd non transport oil demand and its components residual heavy fuel oil non transport distillates and other non transport oil products our purpose is to determine the extent to which the reductions in demand following the oil price increases of the 1970s have been and will be reversed by the price cuts of the 1980s the analysis is based on an econometric model which utilizes price decomposition methods to measure separately the effects of price increases and price decreases these methods allow empirical testing of irreversibility and hysteresis and should be applicable in other areas of economics where asymmetry of response or persistence of effect are evident based on the statistical evidence we reject the conventional specification of demand being perfectly price reversible we conclude that the response to the price cuts of the 1980s has been significantly smaller than to the price increases of the 1970s demand has followed a ratchet process price increases reduced demand substantially when demanders conserved and switched away from oil but price cuts did not reverse this process completely if at all this has important implications for projections of oil demand especially under low price assumptions the oecd s dependency on oil will not increase as much as some analysts may have feared there is however another aspect of imperfect price reversibility the possibilities of adjusting to future price rises may not be as great as they have been in the past the easiest and least costly demand savings have already been made and oil has been replaced by other energy sources in many uses what s done is done

economy wide estimates of energy rebound effect evidence from china s provinces abstract the ongoing debate on the magnitude of china s economy wide energy rebound effect re entails further investigations not only with more details but also with more credible methods in this study a modified two stage approach which could avoid methodological issues regarding re estimation is applied to estimate macroeconomic re with a data panel of 30 provinces in china during the period 1997 2015 in particular in order to comprehensively measure energy efficiency we construct a dynamic energy efficiency indicator which considers not only the static efficiency of energy use but also the technical change regarding energy usage using dynamic panel data models we estimate the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to energy efficiency which directly links to the measurement of re the short run and long run estimates of re are reported and the 95 confidence interval was computed for each sample based on the nonparametric bootstrap method to further analyze the macroeconomic re of different regions results indicate that the average re of all provinces is 88 55 in the short run and the average long run re is 77 50 the re in the developed eastern region continuously decreased while re in the western region increased to be the largest during the research period

the impact of improved mileage on gasoline consumption a simple two equation model is presented of the short run derived demand for gasoline that incorporates both the effect of price and income on attained fuel efficiency and at the same time the effect of price income and attained fuel efficiency on miles traveled the results of this effort have provided 1 further evidence regarding the price and income elasticities of gasoline demand and more importantly 2 the first reported estimate of the short run mileage elasticity of gasoline demand these findings are important in determining appropriate and effective policies for reducing gasoline consumption in that they influence the relative effectiveness of such policies as excise taxes versus fuel efficiency standards 9 references 3 tables

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

how households in pakistan take on energy efficient lighting technology abstract a household survey in pakistan is used to examine drivers of more efficient compact fluorescent light bulb cfl adoption and the impact of cfl adoption on the demand for lighting services higher price of a cfl to an incandescent bulb ib and limited knowledge about the life span of cfls versus ibs are found to lower adoption rates by as much as 20 while cfl adoption increases the technical efficiency of household lighting the lower cost for lighting services results in estimated rebound effects that decrease potential energy savings by 23 to 35 due to increased brightness and extended hours of use these findings have important implications for household welfare and cost benefit tradeoffs for cfl projects

an empirical study of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china transport sector accounts for about 8 of total energy consumption in china and this share will likely increase in the visible future improving energy efficiency has been considered as a major way for reducing transport energy use whereas its effectiveness might be affected by the rebound effect this paper estimates the direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china by using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system model and simulation analysis our empirical results reveal the existence of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china a majority of the expected reduction in transport energy consumption from efficiency improvement could be offset due to the existence of rebound effect we have further investigated the relationship between the magnitude of direct rebound effect and households expenditure it was found that the direct rebound effect for passenger transport tends to decline with the increase of per capita household consumption expenditure

evaluating environmental programs the perspective of modern evaluation research large scale environmental programs generally commit substantial societal resources making the evaluation of their actual effects on the relevant outcomes imperative as the example of the subsidization of energy saving appliances illustrates much of the applied environmental economics literature has yet to confront the problem of proper attribution of effects to underlying causes on a convincing methodological basis this paper argues that recent results in the econometrics and statistics literature on program evaluation could be utilized to advance considerably in this context in particular the construction of a credible counterfactual situation is at the heart of the formal statistical evaluation problem even when controlled experiments are not a viable option appropriate approaches might succeed where traditional empirical strategies fail to uncover the effects of environmental interventions

gasoline demand revisited an international meta analysis of elasticities meta analysis is used to determine if there are factors that systematically affect price and income elasticity estimates in studies of gasoline demand four econometric models are estimated using long run and short run price and income elasticity estimates from previous studies as the dependent variables explanatory variables include functional form lag structure time span national setting estimation technique and other features of the model structure elasticity estimates are found to be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of some measure of vehicle ownership static models appear to overestimate short run elasticities underestimate long run price elasticities but pick up the full long run income responsiveness there is variation in the elasticity of demand across countries especially in the short run and gasoline demand appears to be getting more price elastic and less income elastic over time

designing building energy efficiency programs for greenhouse gas reductions abstract costs and benefits of building energy efficiency are estimated as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in pittsburgh pa and austin tx the analysis includes electricity and natural gas consumption covering 75 of building energy consumption in pittsburgh and 85 in austin two policy objectives were evaluated maximize ghg reductions given initial budget constraints or maximize social savings given target ghg reductions this approach evaluates the trade offs between three primary and often conflicting program design parameters initial capital constraints social savings and ghg reductions results suggest uncertainty in local stocks demands and efficiency significantly impacts anticipated outcomes annual ghg reductions of 1 ton co 2 eq capita yr in pittsburgh could cost near nothing or over 20 per capita annually capital constrained policies generate slightly less social savings a present value of a few hundred dollars per capita than policies that maximize social savings however sectors and end uses targeted for intervention vary depending on policy objectives and constraints optimal efficiency investment strategies for some end uses vary significantly in excess of 100 between pittsburgh and austin suggesting that resources and guidance conducted at the national scale may mislead state and local decision makers results are used to provide recommendations for efficiency program administrators

the rebound effect in swedish heavy industry energy efficiency improvement eei benefits the climate and matters for energy security the potential emission and energy savings due to eei may however not fully materialize due to the rebound e

exploring the rebound effect from the perspective of household an analysis of china s provincial level abstract the existence of the energy rebound effect may partially even totally offset the expected energy savings in order to explore the status of the household rebound effect in china we manually compiled the provincial energy input output table of china then combining econometric methods input output analysis and the re spending model we conduct a detailed analysis of both the direct and indirect energy rebound effect from the household perspective in china under a unified research framework the results show there are significant differences in risk vulnerability regarding energy rebound effect among different regions qinghai is the most vulnerable province as 69 23 of its economic sectors could lead to a backfire effect two economic sectors have the potential to cause a backfire effect in thirteen provinces in addition the chinese government and its provincial government should take full account of the regional differences when formulating energy policies to alleviate the pressure on energy conservation and carbon emission reduction

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

efficiency effectiveness and implementation feasibility of energy efficiency rebates the renove plan in spain abstract state sponsored incentive policies frequently include subsidies or rebates for the purchase of more efficient appliances however more research is required into the effects of this tool in isolation a case in point is the so called renove plan in spain first the inefficiency losses dead weight losses associated with energy efficiency rebates must be taken into account such a policy may also encourage the large scale purchasing of energy efficient appliances which may finally result in an increase in electricity consumption rebound effect furthermore although a subsidy is more widely accepted than other tools from social and political viewpoints especially than taxes the fiscal consolidation challenge faced by many countries reduces the scope for environmental policy measures on the expenditure side of the budget and strengthens the need to use taxes to meet the agreed policy objectives this paper shows that the current application of the spanish renove plan with rebates on the dishwasher market for energy efficient appliances generates some welfare losses a rebound effect and a considerable deficit in public budgets the paper examines and assesses the effect of different combinations of taxes and rebates in the case of dishwashers in spain based on their performance in terms of economic efficiency environmental effectiveness and implementation feasibility

heterogeneity in german residential electricity consumption a quantile regression approach abstract in the absence of sufficient coverage of metering data on the electricity consumption of individual devices this paper estimates the contribution of individual appliances to overall household electricity consumption drawing on the most recent wave of the german residential energy consumption survey grecs moving beyond the standard focus of estimating mean effects we combine the conditional demand approach with quantile regression methods to capture the heterogeneity in electricity consumption rates of individual appliances our results indicate substantial differences in these rates as well as the end use shares across households originating from the opposite tails of the electricity consumption distribution this outcome highlights the added value of applying quantile regression methods in estimating consumption rates of electric appliances and indicates some scope for realizing conservation potentials

re evaluating the role of energy efficiency standards a behavioral economics approach abstract the economic models that prescribe pigovian taxation as the first best means of reducing energy related externalities are typically based on the neoclassical model of rational consumer choice yet consumer behavior in markets for energy using durables is generally thought to be far from efficient giving rise to the concept of the energy efficiency gap this paper presents a welfare analysis of energy policies that is based on a behavioral model of temptation and self control introduced by gul and pesendorfer 23 24 we find that in the presence of temptation i pigovian taxes alone do not yield a first best outcome ii when viewed as substitutes energy efficiency standards can dominate pigovian taxes and iii a policy combining standards with a pigovian tax can yield higher social welfare than a pigovian tax alone implying that the two instruments should be viewed as complements rather than substitutes

self selection bias in the evaluation of voluntary energy conservation programs while voluntary energy conservation programs have been extensively promoted by electric utilities and public utility commissions their effectiveness has been insufficiently critiqued this paper contributes to the growing evaluation of such programs by measuring the net energy savings directly attributable to an actual set of programs the analysis explicitly corrects for the self selection bias that can arise in program evaluation the correction is found to be important traditional evaluation methods are subject to considerable bias correcting for this bias the amount of program induced energy savings is found to be considerably less than traditionally believed copyright 1988 by mit press

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

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

household adjustment to gasoline price change an analysis using 9 years of us survey data this paper examines the dynamics and composition of household adjustment to changes in the real price of gasoline using a panel of us households by decomposing the demand for gasoline into the demand for vehicle miles traveled and the demand for household composite miles per gallon we are able to add rich detail to the description of how households respond to gasoline price changes while obtaining total price elasticity estimates well within the range found in the literature we find that consumers initially respond to a price rise with a much larger decrease in consumption than would be indicated by the total elasticity in addition households respond to price changes by adjusting vehicle miles traveled more than composite miles per gallon in the year after a price change

sharing resources the global distribution of the ecological footprint abstract this paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands as measured by the ecological footprint is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable just and efficient currently different nations place different demands on the environment i e the ecological footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe calculation of the gini coefficient for total ecological footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use calculation of the atkinson index shows how inequality in the ecological footprint is related to the inequality of income and environmental intensity

distributional effects of alternative vehicle pollution control policies abstract previous work shows that policies that subsidize new vehicles and tax size miles or gasoline efficiently reduce pollution less is known about their distributional effects this paper examines distributional effects by estimating the joint demand for vehicles and miles using the consumer expenditure survey greater price responsiveness among low income households enhances progressivity of gas or miles taxes across lower incomes and mitigates regressivity across upper incomes taxes on engine size or subsidies to new vehicles are significantly more regressive than gas or miles taxes

technological efficiency and the demand for energy road transport this paper reconsiders how far fuel efficiency induced by technological progress and presumably by high energy prices affects energy demand this investigation is motivated by one of the most important phenomenon of recent energy demand developments apparent asymmetry with respect to energy prices

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

durable goods and residential demand for energy and water evidence from a field trial this article describes a household production model in which energy efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more the model is estimated using household level data from a field trial in which participants received high efficiency clothes washers free of charge the estimation strategy exploits this quasi random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing during the field trial households increased clothes washing on average by 5 6 after receiving a high efficiency washer implying a price elasticity of 06 the complete model is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers

direct rebound effect on urban residential electricity use an empirical study in china abstract though improving energy efficiency is an important approach to decrease the energy consumption the rebound effect caused by technology progress negatively affects the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies this paper empirically investigates direct rebound effect of urban residential electricity use in china using china s 30 provincial government panel data from1996 to 2010 we build a co integration equation and a panel error correction model to analyze the direct rebound effect the results indicate that an obvious rebound effect in the chinese urban residential electricity consumption does exist specifically the long term rebound effect is 0 74 while the short term rebound effect is 0 72 therefore the rebound effect significantly impairs functions of energy efficiency policies for this reason chinese government should take the rebound effect into consideration when formulating energy policies

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

questioning demand a study of regretted purchases in great britain abstract this paper presents findings from a nationally representative household survey on the tendency to regret purchases across 20 product groups the survey reveals that the vast majority of adults in great britain 82 have regretted a purchase in the past post purchase regret is shown to be particularly prevalent for clothing footwear and takeaway food the tendency to regret purchases appears to reduce with age and to be more common amongst white collar rather than blue collar workers combining survey results with average price estimates gives an estimated aggregate annual expenditure on regretted purchases of 5 25bn equivalent to 2 10 of annual consumer spending on goods in great britain these findings are interesting because they suggest that there is a degree of self assessed over consumption that if reduced could help to reduce pressures on the environment

potential problems and limitations of energy conservation and energy efficiency abstract we discuss that whilst energy conservation and energy efficiency both ultimately have the same goal they attempt to achieve this via very different approaches we then discuss how both options face significant barriers to ultimately successfully reduce electricity consumption

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

rebound effect of transportation considering additional capital costs and input output relationships the role of subsistence consumption and unmet demand abstract the anticipated carbon mitigation through energy saving technology progress might be partially or even totally offset due to rebound effect a better understanding of rebound effect especially the underling mechanisms has important implications for energy efficiency policies to achieve the goal of sustainability previous studies usually ignore additional capital costs for adopting energy efficient equipment and indirect carbon emissions for providing new consumption bundles also the precise mechanisms of how living standard affects rebound effect are unknown using almost ideal demand system aids model and input output relationships among sectors this paper builds a method to estimate the rebound effect that allows for additional capital costs and carbon emission changes of all other goods and services due to backward forward linkages we find that rebound effect is over 100 for transportation in rural china even though additional capital costs would indeed reduce the magnitude and the results are quite robust to alternative settings as for the mechanisms rebound effect is divided into substitution and income channels by slutsky decomposition here we show that both of these two channels are dependent on living standard because of subsistence consumption and unmet demand carbon emissions of poor households will rebound more through income channel of unmet demand while rich households usually do not restricted by subsistence consumption and thus through substitution channel rebound of carbon emissions would be larger for rich households the opposite directions of mechanisms dig more information about the nonlinearity of rebound effect to income levels furthermore given the estimating results this paper gains several insights in terms of welfare benefits rather than just focuses on carbon reduction

the rebound effect some empirical evidence from india abstract the present paper looks at the effect of technical efficiency gains on energy use in three sectors in india at varying levels of aggregation high positive rebound implies that efficient technology unless supplemented by appropriate pricing policy will not be successful in containing demand however the main purpose of the paper is to focus on the unique mechanism of rebound that may occur in developing countries with unmet demand

renewable electricity generation in germany a meta analysis of mitigation scenarios german energy policy targets envision a share of electricity from renewable energy sources res e of at least 80 in 2050 how can the transformation of the german electricity sector be achieved and at what costs this paper addresses these questions by means of a meta analysis of 10 recent model based mitigation scenarios for germany it turns out that the scenarios exploit the three basic strategic options of increasing the share of res e domestic res e generation electricity demand reductions and res e imports to substantially different extents domestic res e generation increases in all scenarios particularly from onshore and offshore wind scenarios that rely heavily on reducing electricity demand require a relatively low expansion of domestic res e generation despite detailed technical analyses insights on the costs of the transformation remain limited a discussion of underlying scenario assumptions reveals that it is unclear whether i res e and system integration technology development will be as cost competitive as postulated ii implicitly assumed institutional requirements will be realized and iii relevant actors in the transformation process will be incentivized accordingly therefore future research should pursue a thorough assessment of strategic options for transforming the german electricity system that consistently integrates technologies institutions and actors

a time use perspective on the materials intensity of consumption abstract the ecological requirements to drastically increase the productivity of materials use call for improvements in the efficiency of consumption this eco efficiency discussion often takes a functional view on consumption noting that present consumption is inefficient and that it is not the products that the consumers want but the services that the products yield however contemporary consumption serves many needs that are not functional and universal but subjective and obscured from the producers this paper develops a time use approach towards consumption which makes allowance for the subjectivity of needs while still enabling the analysts to approach the concept of a sustainable lifestyle a distinctive premise of the analysis is that it assumes time and money not to be interchangeable and consumption to be limited by available consumption time instead of purchasing power this approach is demonstrated by linking the direct and the indirect energy use of finnish two person households to the data of a national time use survey the results are used to point out some of the potential time use rebound effects of such new eco efficient services that transfer activities from private households to the market actors

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