monitoring changes in economy wide energy efficiency from energy gdp ratio to composite efficiency index since the 1973 world oil crisis monitoring trends in energy efficiency at the economy wide level has been an important component of energy strategy in many countries to support this effort various energy efficiency related indicators have been developed we examine some classical indicators which are often found in national and international energy studies in the 1970s and 1980s we then describe the recent developments in using the index decomposition analysis to give an economy wide composite energy efficiency index based on a bottom up approach this composite index is superior to the classical indicators as an economy wide energy efficiency measure and has lately been adopted by a growing number of countries for national energy efficiency trend monitoring

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

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 2 simulation abstract this is the second part of a two part paper that integrates economic and industrial ecology methods to estimate the indirect rebound effect from residential energy efficiency investments we apply the model developed in part one to simulate the indirect rebound given an estimate of the direct rebound using a 2002 environmentally extended input output model and the 2004 consumer expenditure survey in 2002 for the u s we find an indirect rebound of 5 15 in primary energy and co 2 e emissions assuming a 10 direct rebound depending on the fuel saved with efficiency and household income the indirect rebound can be as high as 30 40 in no x or so 2 emissions for efficiency in natural gas services the substitution effect modeled in part one is small in most cases and we discuss appropriate applications for proportional or income elasticity spending assumptions large indirect rebound effects occur as the u s electric grid becomes less carbon intensive in households with large transportation demands or as energy prices increase even in extreme cases there is limited evidence for backfire or a rebound effect greater than 100 enacting pollution taxes or auctioned permits that internalize the externalities of energy use would ensure that rebound effects unambiguously increase consumers welfare

reducing rebound effect through fossil subsidies reform a comprehensive evaluation in china abstract china has committed a sharp reduction in its carbon intensity by 2020 and proposed to take integrated policy package including energy subsidy reform to achieve this goal while energy efficiency improvement is the key influencing factor for this goal its effectiveness is significantly determined by rebound effect energy subsidy as an economic regulation policy would significantly affect rebound effect to explore how china s fossil subsidies reform would affect rebound effect this study conducts a comprehensive evaluation based on a multi sector computable general equilibrium cge model rebound effects at different technological improvement levels are investigated and the impacts of different subsidies reform scenarios on mitigating rebound effects and on the whole economy is analyzed the results provide significant policy insights firstly rebound effect does exist in china larger for electricity than for primary energies secondly by removing fossil energy subsides the rebound effect would be effectively mitigated and removing all subsides would reduce the rebound effect most however it would bring significant negative impacts on the macro economy thirdly an integrated policy with removal of fossil energy subsidies and increment of clean energy subsidies would be more effective greatly reducing rebound effect and also bring benefits for both economy and environment our findings would be critical for china s low carbon policy making in the future

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 1 theoretical framework abstract this is the first part of a two part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect given a direct rebound estimate that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally extended input output analysis the second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average u s household in terms of primary energy co2e nox and so2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity natural gas or gasoline services part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound by studying the two goods case and the n goods case we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint and inversely related to the direct rebound we also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound by assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect

achieving low carbon urban passenger transport in china insights from the heterogeneous rebound effect abstract the rapid increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions in china s passenger transportation sector threatens both the environment and the nation s energy security energy efficiency improvements leading to lower fuel consumption are therefore of considerable interest to policymakers trying to achieve low carbon travel however it is well established that higher miles per gallon efficiencies can by reducing the costs of travel lead to some level of increased personal travel the so called rebound effect this paper describes an empirical study to measure the size and also the variability in this effect at the provincial level and what this variability implies for a carbon tax policy this rebound effect is quantified using a two stage almost ideal demand system aids model a backfire effect i e the rebound is 100 is observed in urban passenger transport with disparities in the size of the rebound effect ranging from 114 to 153 among china s provinces the differences in economic development as well as related differences in consumers behavior especially in the behavior of marginal consumers have contributed to this heterogeneity with a larger carbon tax more than 110yuan tonne needed in richer provinces such as jiangsu zhejiang guangdong and fujian in order to bring about similar levels of carbon reductions nationwide

impact of foreign aid on the fiscal behavior of ldc governments abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of foreign aid on the behavior of the recipient governments specifically we look at a sample of less developed countries in south and southeast asia and study their response to foreign aid received their response is measured in terms of their public investment and consumption as well as taxation our paper attempts to make two new contributions to the literature first we try to estimate the impact of foreign aid on a sample of five south and southeast asian countries secondly we improve on the earlier method of a combination of single equation and two step least squares by estimating the whole system with a nonlinear three step least squares method the results confirm the hypothesis that aid does affect consumption investment and taxation of these governments but they also show that the relationship is a complex one in particular grants and loans have different effects on investment and taxation

measurement of energy rebound effect in households evidence from residential electricity consumption in beijing china abstract energy efficiency improvement policies have special significance for carbon emissions reduction and the mitigation of the effects of climate change however the energy rebound effect caused by technological progress will indirectly increase energy consumption the magnitude of the rebound effect largely determines the effectiveness of energy efficiency in mitigating energy consumption this study reviews the main theory behind estimated methods of energy rebound effect measurement focuses on constructing a double logarithm energy demand model and an error correction model of the asymmetric demand responses of electricity price changes to empirically analyse the direct rebound effect on residential electricity use in beijing it integrates consumer s demand theory with the embodied electricity of household spending from a seven sector environmental energy input output e i o analysis to estimate the indirect rebound effect the three income elasticity weight change and proportional re spending scenario simulation results show that residential electricity use in beijing exhibits a partial rebound effect and the long term direct and indirect rebound effects are 46 to 56 and the short term direct rebound effect is 24 to 37 finally the direct and indirect energy rebound effect for various income groups needs further research an appropriate policy mix should be adopted to mitigate effectively the rebound effect in china s current lower energy price and lower energy efficiency market

the impacts of removing energy subsidies on economy wide rebound effects in china an input output analysis abstract facing with the increasing contradiction of economic growth energy scarcity and environmental deterioration energy conservation and emissions abatement have been ambitious targets for the chinese government improving energy efficiency through technological advancement is a primary measure to achieve these targets however the existence of energy rebound effects may completely or partially offset energy savings associated with technological advancement this paper adopted a modified input output model to estimate the economy wide energy rebound effects across china s economic sectors with the consideration of energy subsidies the empirical results show that the aggregate rebound effect of china is about 1 9 in 2007 2010 thus technological advancement significantly restrains energy consumption increasing removing energy subsidies will cause the aggregate rebound effect declines to 1 53 specifically removing subsidies for coal and nature gas can reduce the rebound effects signifcantly while removing the subsidies for oil products has a small impact on rebound effect the existence of rebound effects implies that technological advancement should be cooperated with energy price reform so as to achieve the energy saving target in addition the government should consider the diversity of economic sectors and energy types when design the reform schedule

donors mechanisms for financing international and national public goods loans or grants this paper investigates whether three classes of donors multilateral organisations regional institutions and bilateral donors tailor their mix of grants and loans to reflect international benefit spillovers and recipient specific benefits derived from aid funded activities in developing and transition countries to account for recipient benefit shares donors should use a greater share of grants when supported activities yield a larger portion of international public benefits a greater reliance on loans is appropriate when a large portion of recipient specific benefits are associated with the assistance by reflecting recipient benefit shares in the grant loan mix donors assistance also promotes allocative efficiency using the credit reporting system crs database from oecd for 1980 2000 our analysis establishes that various donor classes apply different grant loan mixtures when supporting the environment health knowledge and governance sectors of recipient countries we employ analysis of variance and other statistical comparisons of the means to investigate differences among donor classes we demonstrate that bilateral donors do the best job in tailoring their grant loan mix to accord with the extent of international public good benefits embodied in the aid supported activity multilateral organisations grant loan mix is intermediate of the three types of donors with some evidence of them relying more on grants to finance activities that possess a larger share of international public good spillovers regional institutions however do not discriminate their grant loan mix by either sectors or the associated public good spillovers this finding suggests that regional development banks need to adjust their grant loan mix to better account for international benefit spillovers if these institutions are to warrant the increased funds to underwrite regional public goods that they have been seeking if however their mix is institutionally set then the stakeholders must give these institutions greater flexibility to tailor their grants and loans to who benefits from the aid supported public goods this is the first paper to empirically ascertain whether the grant loan mix is tied to the inherent publicness of the aid funded activities

dealing with environmental savings in a dynamical economy how to stop chasing your tail in the pursuit of sustainability abstract in most countries people are urged to change their pattern of consumption and lifestyle in a less energy consuming and more environmental friendly direction but gains in ecoefficiency are likely to be annihilated by a larger consumption the so called rebound effect resulting in an increased throughput in the economy here is an obvious contradiction another contradiction entails from the fact that most governments strive to promote economic growth which includes increased consumption the paper takes a look at various means to handle these contradictions in order to avoid or balance the rebound effect environmental policies including such measures as green taxes may redirect consumption from one kind to another but this demands that the alternative spending is less harmful than the one dissuaded from two other tested means are to alter the sector mix of the economy and to shorten the working hours work sharing to match the increasing efficiency

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

the ict electronics question structural change and the rebound effect abstract ict and related electronic appliances consumed 4 of global electrical energy in 2007 growing to 4 7 in 2012 with projections of continued increase in coming decades this is despite an average annual increase in energy efficiency of about 30 in ict electronics throughout the last 5 decades mainstream studies of energy related rebound effects have yet to produce a conceptual framework that adequately encapsulates a unique feature of ict electronics its tendency to induce changes in social practice and socio technical structures this study attempts to fill this gap surveying rebound effect literature it builds on studies which explore transformational change caused by energy efficiency increases it identifies structural changes in business education the military and households caused by energy efficiency increases in ict electronics which lead to a proliferation of ict electronic devices and consequently increased energy consumption it shows the cause and effect logic between energy efficiency and energy consumption in ict electronics and tentatively estimates rebound effects ranging between 115 and 161 in eight diverse empirical examples the history of ict electronics shows that energy efficiency increases inevitably lead to increases in energy consumption hence firm controls on co 2 e emission allowances may offer the best hope of curbing energy consumption and co 2 e emissions in this sector

firms compliance to environmental regulation is there really a paradox it has often been claimed that firms compliance to environmental regulations is higher than predicted by standard theory a result labeled the harrington paradox in the literature enforcement data from norway presented here appears at first glance to confirm this stylized fact firms are inspected less than once a year detected violators are seldom fined but still serious violations seem relatively rare however at a closer look the pattern seems less paradoxical enforcement of minor violations is lax but such violations do flourish serious violations on the other hand are subject to credible threats of harsh punishment and such violations are more uncommon this seems quite consistent with predictions from standard theory we argue that the empirical existence of the harrington paradox is not well documented in the international literature the claim that firms compliance with environmental regulations is generally higher than predicted by standard theory should thus be regarded as a hypothesis rather than an established fact

the private and social costs of planning delay this paper examines planning delay and identifies the difficulty in establishing an appropriate definition and measure of delay it then outlines an economic framework for the analysis of delay costs distinguishing between private costs and the various elements of social cost it shows that the costs of delay are contingent upon the restrictiveness of planning and should be assessed in relation to the benefits of planning control available estimates of delay cost are identified but are shown to be deficient even as measures of the private cost of delay various suggestions are made for the improvement of existing approaches but it is concluded that the assessment of private and social delay costs requires case study research which distinguishes between property sectors locations and different points in the cycle of property development

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

an empirical study on the rebound effect considering capital costs technological progress is one of the means of reducing energy usage and carbon dioxide co2 emissions however this reduction in turn leads to a reduction in the real cost of energy services per unit which results in an increase in the demand for energy services therefore a reduction in the anticipated co2 emissions caused by a technological improvement might be partially offset in response to the cost reduction previous studies have referred to this effect as the rebound effect a large amount of empirical evidence on the rebound effect exists however most of these studies assume an exogenous improvement in energy efficiency and thus capital costs that may decrease the magnitude of the rebound effect are not taken into account expressly this paper extends the scope of the research conducted by brannlund et al brannlund r ghalwash t nordstrom j 2007 increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect effects on consumption and emissions energy economics 29 1 17 in terms of two aspects i considering capital costs explicitly as additional capital costs and ii adapting an iterating procedure and estimating the rebound effect using japanese household data as a result of our empirical analysis we conclude that the rebound is approximately 27 however we also find that ignoring additional capital costs leads to an increase in the rebound effect in the case of japanese households the magnitude of the rebound effect increases to approximately 115 moreover our simulation study shows that only a one time iteration of brannlund et al brannlund r ghalwash t nordstrom j 2007 increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect effects on consumption and emissions energy economics 29 1 17 may lead to a biased result

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

differentiated effects of diversified technological sources on china s electricity consumption evidence from the perspective of rebound effect abstract technological progress is an effective way to improve electricity efficiency due to the existence of the rebound effect it is of great significance to optimize the technical power saving policy by examining the rebound effect caused by different technological progress paths based on the panel data of electricity industry in 30 provinces of china from 1997 to 2013 this paper systematically examines the rebound effects of electricity consumption under the two sources of technological progress namely independent innovation and technology import then it discusses the impact of coal electricity linkage policy the empirical results are as follows 1 without considering rebound effect independent innovation significantly promotes electricity conservation while the effects of technology import is not obvious 2 when considering the rebound effect electricity price declining driven by independent innovation is not conducive to electricity saving while electricity price declining driven by technology import has an electricity saving effect 3 the coal electricity linkage policy that began in 2004 not only reduced the rebound effect by increasing the flexibility of electricity prices to a certain extent and improved the electricity saving effect of independent innovation but also reduced the electricity saving effect of technology import

contract duration and relationship specific investments empirical evidence from coal markets this paper examines the importance of specific relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities data for 277 coal contracts are used to perform the analysis the results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage and rely less on repeated bargaining when relationship specific investments are more important

the rebound effect gender and social justice a case study in germany abstract energy efficiency increases are essential in reducing energy consumption and co 2 emissions policy is therefore rightly concerned about rebound effects which cause energy and co 2 emission reductions to be less than anticipated a policy dilemma is emerging in that less economically privileged groups tend to show the highest rebound effects some studies suggest policymakers may therefore be reluctant to support energy efficiency upgrades among such groups this paper argues this is based on a misunderstanding of the conceptual structure of the rebound effect firstly a mathematical analysis confirms that the rebound effect is merely a comparison of proportions not a measure of absolute levels of energy consumption which are the real cause of increased co 2 emissions secondly an empirical study of commute distances in north rhine westphalia germany s largest state reveals that female commuters show considerably higher rebound effects than male commuters both in time and cross sectional analyses however male commuters consume the most energy and produce the most co 2 emissions by every measure this resonates with recent studies showing the same disjunction between rebound effects and absolute consumption in home heating among poorer and wealthier households policy needs to focus on absolute consumption levels and be cautious in interpreting rebound effects

enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted in the united states empirical studies of the enforcement of continuous compliance with environmental regulations especially air and water pollution regulations have repeatedly demonstrated the following i for most sources the frequency of surveillance is quite low ii even when violations are discovered fines or other penalties are rarely assessed in most states iii sources are nonetheless thought to be in compliance a large part of the time the evidence for the apparently low level of enforcement activity is found in a number of case studies of state and local enforcement of air and water quality regulations conducted jointly by the environmental protection agency epa and council on environmental quality ceg together with periodic surveys of implementation of air and water quality legislation conducted by the general accounting office gao these surveys show

multilateral and bilateral loans versus grants issues and evidence this paper examines a wide range of issues relating to the mix between loans and grants as well as the degree of concessionality of loans a number of empirical tests are carried out based on annual panel data over 1970 to 1999 for 22 donor countries and 72 recipient countries based on the tests we observe that for bilateral donors past grant loan mix and hence reflows from past transfers do not influence the volume of current resource transfers our tests also show that the rate of official borrowing by the recipients and by deduction the extent of their past debt burden is positively influenced by the extent of the concessionality of such loans irrespective of whether it is in the form of subsidised interest rates or longer grace periods the paper concludes with a review of the circumstances in which grants soft loans and non concessional loans might have their respective comparative advantage as well as a discussion of the need so as to overcome the negative incentive problems of soft loans for a typical concessional loan package to be separated into two constituent parts this would enable the recipient to be given the grant component and the option to take from the non concessional loan component as much as desired

the effects of factor market distortion and technical innovation on china s electricity consumption abstract this study integrates neoclassical economics and institutional theory to examine the relationship between market factor distortion technical innovation and china s electricity consumption using business data from china 2008 2014 first we provide evidence that factor market distortion promotes electricity consumption of industrial enterprises in china secondly we divide technical innovation into traditional technical innovation and green innovation finding that the level of technical innovation has an inverted u shaped effect on the electricity consumption of industrial enterprises further we also provide evidence that factor market distortion amplifies the inverted u shaped effect of the technical innovation plot the results show that accelerating the reform of the market and promoting green innovation should be regarded as important strategies for national energy saving and emission reduction

scrutinizing the direct rebound effect for french households using quantile regression and data from an original survey abstract this article develops a quantile regression model to measure the magnitude of the direct rebound effect for residential electricity demand based on micro level data from an original survey of a representative sample of 2356 french households we explore the rebound effect for different groups of residents traditionally debate has focused on decreased prices for energy services due to efficiency improvements and their effects on energy demand the methodological innovation provided by this paper is that it implements two theoretical estimation strategies i energy efficiency elasticity of the demand for energy services and ii price elasticity of the demand for energy services our findings reject the hypothesis of a backfire effect in the context of residential electricity use specifically based on energy efficiency elasticity we provide evidence of a rebound effect of between 72 and 86 but with substantial heterogeneity among consumption quantiles our results show that the direct rebound effect has critical relevance for energy efficiency policy in the face of energy invisibility in france

regional level household energy consumption determinants the european perspective abstract starting from the assumption that household energy use is manifold and intertwined shaped by many factors which overlap not only at the individual level but also at a higher level of scales the paper developed a more integrated approach to its determinants to assess them and also to find out whether there is a difference between regional level factors that determine it universally and those that are context dependent the static and dynamic panel analyses were employed in 64 european regions over the period from 2005 to 2013 our findings suggest that there are common energy consumption determinants and those ones that are dependent on the regions level of development while the sign of the impact of the former is the same across regions the impact of the latter may differ depending on the character of the energy policy measures applied findings also suggest that energy policy authorities have opportunities to develop and encourage energy efficiency and sustainable use of energy of the household sector by creating regional specific demand side energy efficiency programs and measures as well as user practices in relation to technology

epa s voluntary 33 50 program impact on toxic releases and economic performance of firms abstract this paper examines the motivations for participation in the voluntary 33 50 program and the program s impact on the toxic releases and economic performance of firms in the u s chemical industry it demonstrates that the benefits due to public recognition and the potentially avoided costs of liabilities and compliance under mandatory environmental regulations provide strong incentives for participation after controlling for sample selection bias and the impact of other firm specific characteristics this paper shows that program participation led to a statistically significant decline in toxic releases over the period 1991 93 the program also had a statistically significant negative impact on the current return on investment of firms but its impact on the expected long run profitability of firms was positive and statistically significant

building energy efficiency a research branch made of paradoxes abstract the literature dealing with building energy efficiency has long since debated about the possible occurrence of the so called jevons paradox in a nutshell benefiting from energy savings due to transition to high performance buildings may the same savings cause a kind of rebound effect by acting as an incentive to increase consumptions on closer inspection this is not the only paradox affecting the research branch that focuses on the energy used by the buildings and the building industry a second paradox is that investments in energy efficient solutions may contribute to energy price control which in turn lends itself to make the same investments not profitable a third paradox lies in the need to adopt energy intensive materials in order to achieve substantial energy savings in operation hence sometimes we just substitute a certain amount of operating energy with a more or less commensurate amount of embodied energy here we argue that the joint consideration of the paradoxes mentioned above should not be neglected since it brings with itself several implications needing to be disentangled whether we aim to get further enhancements in this disciplinary field

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

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

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

a quantile approach to assess the effectiveness of the subsidy policy for energy efficient home appliances evidence from rizhao china abstract a one year subsidy program for energy efficient home appliances has been implemented in china we construct a dataset consisting of participant and non participant households in both urban and rural areas of rizhao city by applying a quantile regression and counterfactual analysis this study disentangles the impact of this subsidy program and inherent household attributes on per capita residential electricity consumption first contrary to the mean regression the elasticity of electricity consumption to household s income age education and energy saving awareness varies markedly across the electricity consumption distribution and shows discrepancy between urban and rural areas second while inherent household attributes are identified as a primary determinant to the changes in residential electricity consumption the effect induced by the subsidy incentive is more significant at the middle of the electricity consumption distribution than at the tails third there are significant rebound effects that lead to overall increase in household electricity consumption our results suggest that the disparity between urban and rural regions and targeted consumer behavior changes should be taken into account to ensure the effectiveness of a future energy efficient subsidy program

a theory of consumer boycotts under symmetric information and imperfect competition this article models strategic interactions between non identical duopolistic firms and a public interest environmental organisation eo that promotes green production practices by threatening consumer boycotts against brown producers the article describes when boycotts are deterred by prior firm commitments to be green and also when a boycott arises in equilibrium despite symmetric information when a boycott arises it is either a small persistent boycott against the small firm in the industry or a large transitory boycott against the large firm in the industry that prompts the target firm to accede to the boycott demands quickly

analysis of technological progress and input prices on electricity consumption evidence from china abstract this paper establishes a translog cost function model with productivity growth equations to study the influence of technological progress and price changes on electricity production factors and consumption within a unified analytic framework regression is applied to the panel data for seven regions in china during the period 1997 to 2013 the functions of production costs on factor substitution are analyzed based on the regression the influence of electricity price and technological progress on electricity productivity and the rebound effect of electricity are discussed electricity price can significantly and positively influence electricity productivity expressed by the total value of output consumed by unit electricity however the stimulation of technological progress is not notable the rebound effect of electricity computed based on an electricity price breakdown showed that values of the rebound effect in southwestern china and central china were higher than 100 while annual average values of the rebound effect in northeastern china and southern china were 60 39 and 81 47 respectively the area with the lowest annual average value for the rebound effect was northwestern china at 14 96

estimating broad brush rebound effects for household energy consumption in the eu 28 countries and norway some policy implications of odyssee data abstract currently there is a strong policy commitment in european union eu and organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries to increase the energy efficiency of residential buildings and it is widely assumed that this will naturally and automatically reduce domestic energy consumption however other factors such as fuel prices wages attitudes and lifestyles also influence energy consumption this paper calculates broad brush rebound effects based on changes in energy efficiency and energy consumption in each of the 28 eu countries plus norway for the years 2000 2011 in doing so it tests how well the assumption of energy efficiency leading to energy reduction stands up to scrutiny in these lands it uses the eu s odyssee database for efficiency and consumption figures and a commonly employed econometric definition of the rebound effect as an energy efficiency elasticity most older eu lands show rebound effects in the expected range of 0 50 however the range for newer eu countries is 100 550 suggesting that energy efficiency increases are not a good predictor of energy consumption a more in depth look at one country germany suggests these results underestimate the rebound effect significantly this also identifies research needs for specific energy consumption determinants in each country to find more precisely what is driving consumption levels

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

scenario based forecast for the electricity demand in qatar and the role of energy efficiency improvements abstract we model the electricity consumption in the market segment that compose the qatari electricity market we link electricity consumption to gdp growth and population growth building on the estimated model we develop long range forecasts of electricity consumption from 2017 to 2030 over different scenarios for the economic drivers in addition we proxy for electricity efficiency improvements by reducing the long run elasticity of electricity consumption to gdp and population we show that electricity efficiency has a crucial role in controlling the future development of electricity consumption energy policies should consider this aspect and support both electricity efficiency improvement programs as well as a price reform

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

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

greenwash vs brownwash exaggeration and undue modesty in corporate sustainability disclosure corporate greenwashing has accelerated in recent years bringing in its wake growing skepticism about corporate green claims although a theory of the drivers and deterrents of greenwashing has begun to emerge it is static in nature and does not incorporate the full range of ways in which firms can misrepresent their environmental performance our contribution is threefold first we extend the theory of organizational information disclosure to incorporate the possibility of undue modesty about a firm s environmental social and governance practices second we hypothesize about the drivers of exaggeration and undue modesty based on which of a firm s stakeholders are salient at a given point in time to do so we place the firm within a dynamic context that has largely been missing in the prior literature third we test our hypotheses using a data set that allows us to directly compare corporate green claims against actual performance results reveal that corporate output growth deregulation and low profits under deregulation significantly affect the choice between greenwashing and brownwashing the effects of growth and profits are mitigated by external scrutiny

measurement error and state dependent pollution control enforcement abstract a two group model of state dependent enforcement is applied to identical firms which minimize the expected present value of costs and fines measurement error affects the probabilities of transitions between groups and the receipt of fines it is shown that state dependent enforcement can reduce social cost below the level attainable with static enforcement and that differentiation in both monitoring probabilities and standards may be optimal however setting fines for both groups at the maximum is likely to be optimal comparisons between models and alternative model interpretations are offered

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

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

a reconsideration of enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted abstract harrington s 1988 model of state dependent enforcement of pollution standards indicates the potential for significant reductions in monitoring cost however this approach results in firms with identical pollution cost functions polluting at different levels and thereby failing to minimize control cost for a given total pollution reduction derivations indicate that a state independent approach with a modified standard will often yield a lower sum of pollution control and monitoring cost for a given level of pollution control

technological change and uncertainty in environmental economics abstract technological change is widely believed to play a crucial role in mastering the challenges of man made climate change the drivers and impacts of technological change have therefore become an important research issue in the field of climate economics while models to analyze the interactions between economy energy and the environment initially treated technological change as exogenous more recent modeling approaches often represent technological change as endogenously induced typically models of induced technological change in climate economics are based on perfect foresight in a deterministic world however both technological change and climate impacts are subject to large uncertainties that may substantially affect the design of efficient climate policies against this background the special issue presents five articles contributing to the study of uncertainty and technological change in climate change economics

imposing local concavity in the translog and generalized leontief cost functions abstract we propose and illustrate a method for imposing concavity at a single point which may result in concavity at many points in the familiar translog and generalized leontief cost functions while at the same time maintaining flexibility of the forms

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

energy use in the service sector an international perspective abstract this study presents the first international comparison of energy use and structure in the service sector of major oecd countries this sector includes offices hospitals schools stores and other buildings commonly referred to as commercial buildings the authors separate service sector energy use from other sectors examine differences in fuel mix energy intensity electricity use and conservation experience as well as fundamental differences in the extent and make up of the building stock and the climate most countries are seen to have reduced energy intensity since 1973 all have reduced the share of heating oil and increased the use of electricity both for space conditioning as well as for other building services the authors find that energy intensity in us commercial and institutional buildings is among the highest in the oecd while electricity intensities in norway canada the usa and sweden are well above those in other countries

social security in a moral economy an empirical analysis for java private transfer payments are modeled as outcomes of a constrained social choice pro blem facing donors the approach is applied to a large household leve l data set for java and hypotheses are tested concerning the performa nce of the moral economy as a social security system transfer be havior is found to be very different between rural and urban areas w hile transfer receipts and outlays are income inequality reducing in rural areas this is not the case in urban areas there is also evidence of transfers being targeted to disadvantaged households such as the sick elderly and for urban areas the unemployed copyright 1988 by mit press

environmental crime and punishment empirical evidence from the german penal code u s and e u environmental policy employ criminal sanctions to enforce compliance recent moves toward revising their use are based on little empirical evidence as to their effectiveness this paper exploits a unique dataset to study the deterrent effect of criminal enforcement the dynamic panel data analysis leads to three findings first criminal sanctions do provide the intended deterrent effects second standing trial provides one of the most significant deterrents rather than the probability of conviction or the magnitude of fines third public preferences regarding environmental quality and political economy variables affect reported environmental crime

exploring the diffusion of low energy houses an empirical study in the european union abstract diffusion of low energy houses is an important part of energy and climate policy in the european union eu and in individual eu countries key barriers to the adoption of low energy houses include additional construction costs and uncertainty surrounding actual energy and cost savings in this paper we econometrically analyze determinants of low energy house adoption including time and risk preferences we rely on original data from a large survey conducted among households in eight eu countries to our knowledge this is the first empirical study of low energy building adoption to rely on a demographically representative sample our set of covariates includes parameters of time and risk preferences that were elicited via state of the art incentivized multiple price list experiments and via self assessment scales we find mixed results for the effects of time discounting on low energy house adoption risk preferences do appear to matter as risk proneness increases so does the adoption of zero net or energy plus building but not passive houses consistent with the low cost hypothesis about environmental attitude and action we find no results for environmental attitudes and social norms

a new approach to measuring the rebound effect associated to energy efficiency improvements an application to the us residential energy demand this paper brings attention to the fact that the energy demand frontier model introduced by filippini and hunt 2011 2012 is closely connected to the measurement of the so called rebound effect associated with improvements in energy efficiency in particular we show that their model implicitly imposes a zero rebound effect which contradicts most of the available empirical evidence on this issue we relax this restrictive assumption through the modelling of a rebound effect function that mitigates or intensifies the effect of an efficiency improvement on energy consumption we illustrate our model with an empirical application that aims to estimate a us frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 states over the period 1995 to 2011 average values of the rebound effect in the range of 56 80 are found therefore policymakers should be aware that most of the expected energy reduction from efficiency improvements may not be achieved

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

substitution and price elasticity estimates using inter country pooled data in a translog cost model pooled data across several developing countries and the u s were used to estimate long run substitution and price elasticities ina translog framework for the paper iron and steel and aggregatemanufacturing industries while the quality of the estimates variesacross the several industry specific models the results suggest highervalues for these elasticities than appear commonly used in integratedassessment models estimates of own price elasticities of energy rangefrom 0 80 to 1 76 and are comparable to estimates from previouseconometric studies in the context of developed countries 0 77 to 0 87 substitution elasticities show wider variation across countriesand industries for energy and capital they range from 1 96 to 9 80 forlabor and energy from 2 61 to 7 11 and for energy and material from 0 26 to 2 07

the enforcement of pollution control laws inspections violations and self reporting targeting is the practice of inspecting firms most likely to violate a regulation this paper provides empirical evidence on the role of targeting in regulatory compliance i propose that self reporting by a firm is used to demonstrate that firms are willing to cooperate the results indicate that there is a one quarter penalty period following a violation inspections are also determined by the economic situation of the surrounding community demonstrating that targeting opens the door to interest group influence inspections that detect violations encourage self reporting showing that firms demonstrate their desire to cooperate with regulators by disclosing violations

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

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

voluntary pollution reductions and the enforcement of environmental law an empirical study of the 33 50 program abstract this paper studies determinants and effects of firms participation in the 33 50 program which is a voluntary pollution reduction vpr program initiated by government regulators we examine a wide range of explanations for voluntary corporate environmentalism and find evidence in support of an enforcement theory that predicts that 1 vpr participation is rewarded by relaxed regulatory scrutiny 2 the anticipation of this reward spurs firms to participate in the program and 3 the program rewards regulators with reduced pollution we also find that 33 50 participation was more likely for firms operating in states with larger environmentalist constituencies

corporate environmentalism and environmental statutory permitting abstract studies have shown that despite infrequent inspections and low penalties for statutory violations a large fraction of firms comply with environmental restrictions what then motivates compliance i investigate this question by focusing on the length of time it takes environmental agencies to process and issue new source construction permits pursuant to clean air act regulations and new industrial discharge permits pursuant to clean water act regulations i find that plants or firms with fewer instances of noncompliance receive permits for major projects more quickly in addition i find that permit delays are sensitive to economic conditions as well such as local area unemployment as far as voluntary pollution control behavior is concerned i find that regulators that issue permits for plant modifications focus primarily on statutory compliance but when permitting new plant construction where there is no plant compliance history to go on voluntary pollutant releases do matter

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 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

the reputational penalties for environmental violations empirical evidence abstract this paper examines the sizes of the fines damage awards remediation costs and market value losses imposed on companies that violate environmental regulations firms that violate environmental laws suffer statistically significant losses in the market value of firm equity the losses however are of similar magnitudes to the legal penalties imposed and in the cross section the market value loss is related to the size of the legal penalty thus environmental violations are disciplined largely through legal and regulatory penalties not through reputational penalties

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

estimating residential demand for electricity in the united states 1965 2006 abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in the us economy as a function of the per capita income the price of electricity the price of oil for heating purposes the weather conditions and the stock of occupied housing over the period 1965 2006 this paper has two novelties first the occupied stock of houses as a proxy for the stock of electrical appliances and second the identification of a possible equilibrium relationship among the variables is ascertained through the recently advanced ardl approach to cointegration our empirical findings give support to a stable long run relationship implying also short run and long run elasticities whose size and sign are comparable to other similar studies

estimating short and long term residential demand for electricity new evidence from sri lanka this study investigates the short run dynamics and long run equilibrium relationship between residential electricity demand and factors influencing demand per capita income price of electricity price of kerosene oil and price of liquefied petroleum gas using annual data for sri lanka for the period 1960 2007 the study uses unit root cointegration and error correction models the long run demand elasticities of income own price and price of kerosene oil substitute were estimated to be 0 78 0 62 and 0 14 respectively the short run elasticities for the same variables were estimated to be 032 0 16 and 0 10 respectively liquefied petroleum lp gas is a substitute for electricity only in the short run with an elasticity 0 09 the main findings of the paper support the following 1 increasing the price of electricity is not the most effective tool to reduce electricity consumption 2 existing subsidies on electricity consumption can be removed without reducing government revenue 3 the long run income elasticity of demand shows that any future increase in household incomes is likely to significantly increase the demand for electricity and 4 any power generation plans which consider only current per capita consumption and population growth should be revised taking into account the potential future income increases in order to avoid power shortages ill the country

energy efficiency fallacies revisited abstract a number of governments including that of the uk subscribe to the belief that a national program devoted to raising energy efficiency throughout the economy provides a costless indeed profitable route to meeting international environmental obligations this is a seductive policy it constitutes the proverbial free lunch not only avoiding politically unpopular measures like outlawing taxing or rationing offending fuels or expanding non carboniferous sources of energy like nuclear power but doing so with economic benefit the author of this contribution came to doubt the validity of this solution when it was offered as a way of mitigating the effect of the opec price hikes of the 1970 maintaining that economically justified improvement in energy efficiency led to higher levels of energy consumption at the economy wide level than in the absence of any efficiency response more fundamentally he argues that there is no case for preferentially singling out energy from among all the resources available to us for efficiency maximization the least damaging policy is to determine targets enact the restrictive measures needed to curb consumption and then leave it to consumers intermediate and final to reallocate all the resources available to them to best effect subject to the new enacted constraints and any others they might be experiencing there is no reason to suppose that it is right for all the economic adjustment following a new resource constraint to take the form of improvements in the productivity of that resource alone as many others have argued any action to impose resource constraint entails an inevitable economic cost in the shape of a reduction in production and consumption possibilities there would be no free lunch in the last few years debate about the validity of these contentions has blossomed especially under the influence of writers on the western side of the atlantic in this contribution the author outlines the original arguments for questioning whether raised efficiency leads to lower consumption reports more recent developments and offers some insights as food for further thought

impact of energy efficiency gains on output and energy use with cobb douglas production function abstract a special issue of energy policy 28 2000 was devoted to a collection of papers edited by dr lee schipper the collection included a paper entitled a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes in which it was argued that the impact of fuel efficiency gains on output roughly gdp is likely to be relatively small by cobb douglas production function however an error in the analysis leads to under estimation of the long term impact this paper first provides a partial equilibrium analysis by an alternative method for the same case and then proceeds to an analysis on the issue in a two sector general equilibrium system in the latter analysis energy price is internalized both energy use efficiency and energy production efficiency are involved

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

information as regulation the effect of community right to know laws on toxic emissions abstract there is growing academic and policy level interest in the use of information as quasi regulatory mechanisms such as toxic release inventory tri and green labels mandatory disclosure requirements have been touted as market based incentives that may affect firm behavior we provide new evidence on the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by examining firm behavior in response to disclosures of tri emissions we find that firms with the largest stock price decline on the day this information became public subsequently reduced emissions more than their industry peers this is consistent with the view that financial markets may provide strong incentives for firms to change their environmental behavior

communication energy efficiency and economic fallacies abstract the sharpening energy efficiency debate has revived claims that the apparent savings from using more efficient technologies would be largely offset by the macroeconomic response the tendency to use more energy services because they are made cheaper when energy price or availability constrains demand this is correct in more normal circumstances it may be true for efficiency changes which occur as part of general economic trends but not for policy driven measures aimed at bringing more efficient technologies into imperfect markets in such cases there will usually be real net energy savings only slightly smaller than those suggested by a simple engineering analysis and clear economic benefits

how large is the economy wide rebound effect abstract the size of the economy wide rebound effect is crucial for estimating the contribution that energy efficiency improvements can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for understanding the drivers of energy use economy wide rebound from an energy efficiency improvement includes changes in the use of energy to produce complementary and substitute goods or inputs and other flow on effects that affect energy use across the economy as well as the direct rebound due to energy users using more of an energy service that has become less costly as result of improved energy efficiency jevons first argued in 1865 that improvements in energy efficiency increase total energy use and in recent decades researchers have argued for and against this backfire hypothesis theory provides some guidance on the factors affecting rebound but does not impose much constraint on the range of possible responses historical evidence suggests that the improved energy efficiency of recent technology has not reduced energy use because consumption has shifted to more energy intensive goods and services simulations and econometric research have produced mixed results some recent general equilibrium studies find large rebound around 100 but more research is needed to confirm or refute these findings

power markets in transition decarbonization energy efficiency and short term demand response abstract energy efficiency and short term demand response are key issues in the decarbonization of power markets however their interaction and combined impact on market prices as well as on the supply side is yet to be understood we develop a framework to implement short term demand response and investments in energy efficiency in detailed partial equilibrium power market models we quantify our results using the eu regen model for the european power market under an 80 emission reduction target energy efficiency contributes only 11 of carbon emission reductions intermittent renewable energies such as wind and solar power account for the major share of 53 in comparison to a scenario without short term demand response and energy efficiency investments 70 gw gas power is decommissioned immediately and 180 gw less gas capacity is needed in 2050 which underlines the need for immediate action by policy makers to avoid locking the eu power market into an inefficient path

mutual insurance as an elusive concept in traditional rural communities during the last two decades economists have paid increasing attention to the role of informal risk sharing arrangements as a privileged way through which traditional rural communities can achieve a significant degree of protection against income fluctuations and other hazards beyond their control this article however argues that when they enter into such arrangements members of these communities are guided by a principle of balanced reciprocity they expect a return from any contribution or payment they make rather than by a true logic of mutual insurance more precisely they do not conceive of insurance as a game where there are winners and losers and where income is redistributed between lucky and unlucky individuals none the less traditional agrarian societies have proven able to develop a restricted range of sustainable forms of mutual insurance that avoid the aforementioned problem

the institutional environment for infrastructure investment the empirical evidence that links political institutions to economic outcomes has grown dramatically in recent years however virtually all of this analysis is undertaken using data from the past three decades this paper extends this empirical framework by performing a two century long historical analysis of the determinants of infrastructure investment in a panel of over 100 countries the results demonstrate that political environments that limit the feasibility of policy change are an important determinant of investment in infrastructure copyright 2002 oxford university press

adoption of pollution prevention techniques the role of management systems and regulatory pressures this paper investigates the extent to which firm level technological change that reduces unregulated emissions is driven by regulatory pressures and firms technological and organizational capabilities using a treatment effects model with panel data for a sample of s p 500 firms over the period 1994 1996 we find that organizational change in the form of total quality environmental management leads firms to adopt pollution prevention practices after controlling for the effects of various regulatory pressures and firm specific characteristics we find that the threat of anticipated regulations and the presence of complementary assets is important for creating the incentives and an internal capacity to undertake incremental adoption of pollution prevention techniques

aid conditionality and military expenditure reduction in developing countries models of asymmetric information this paper analyzes problems of implementing noneconomic conditionality such as military expenditure reduction in the granting of foreign aid given the presence of asymmetric information the authors present two conceptually separate principal agent models to capture the stylized facts of multilateral and bilateral aid negotiations respectively the first model is an application of the problem of adverse selection when there is more than one type of principal donor with varying objectives the second model extends moral hazard to double moral hazard where neither principal nor agent recipient can fully observe or verify each other s strategies copyright 1995 by royal economic society