an evaluation of technical progress and energy rebound effects in china s iron steel industry abstract as a pillar industry in china the iron steel sector have under through rapid growth and technical progress for decades however energy polices aiming at energy savings may not be as good as expected due to the existence of rebound effects the motivation of the paper is to analysis the nexus between technical progress and energy rebound effects based on a three input trans log cost function model we first estimate the share equation and the corresponding price elasticity for each input factor then the rebound effect in china s iron steel industry over 1985 2015 is evaluated through decomposing the energy prices empirical results show that 1 the price elasticities of input factors are negative 2 energy capital and energy labor show substitute relationships 3 the average energy rebound effect in the isi is as high as 73 88 4 the energy rebound effect shows a downward trend before the 11th five year period and then an upward trend after that therefore policies proposals of lowering the rebound effect should be placed not only on technical progress but also on energy price reform by reducing energy subsidies and thus accelerating energy price marketization so as to promote energy substitution reduce energy rebound effect and produce further economic and environmental benefits

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

direct rebound effect of residential gas demand empirical evidence from france abstract energy policymakers are increasingly concerned about energy efficiency improvements as such improvements are considered to be a key strategy in reducing energy demand in the residential sector however energy efficiency investments may not yield the expected energy savings due to the rebound effect concept which leads to lower savings than expected when energy efficiency increases using the standard ols regression and autoregressive distributed lag cointegration ardl approach this paper provides estimates of the magnitude of the rebound effect for residential gas consumption in france using 1983 2015 annual time series data the methodology is based on estimates of the gas demand elasticity with respect to service price the empirical findings indicate that the variables used in the model are cointegrated and suggest the presence of an obvious rebound effect in residential gas use more specifically estimates of the direct rebound effect in residential gas demand are approximately 53 in the short run and approximately 60 in the long run our findings reject the hypothesis of a backfire effect regarding residential gas use in france and hence suggest incorporating carbon taxation energy efficiency and alternative energy in the formulation of an energy saving policy to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy in france

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

technological change and the rebound effect in the stirpat model a critical view abstract technological change is key to understand the explanatory variables behind environmental impacts in the context of the stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model an adequate representation and analysis of the significance of the technology variable t in the stirpat model becomes crucial even more if one aims to better understand underlying processes such as the environmental rebound effect e re a critical review of the application of the stirpat model has been conducted to understand the diversity and value of the variables scopes assumptions statistical approaches and the environmental impacts commonly studied the findings highlight that despite the multiple applications and the high potential of the stirpat model inconclusive results and or knowledge gaps remain notably 1 a geographical imbalance in the scope of studies 2 the almost exclusive focus on carbon emissions 3 a lack of agreement on the choice of data additional explanatory variables and regression models 4 a lack of consensus on how to approximate t and 5 a lack of explicit analyses of the e re our findings are useful to both policymakers and academics for method design further research and policy evaluation

energy conservation more effective with rebound policy this article sketches the problem of indirect energy use effects also known as rebound of energy conservation there is widespread support for energy conservation especially when it is voluntary as this seems a cheap way to realize environmental and energy climate goals however this overlooks the phenomenon of rebound the topic of energy rebound has mainly attracted attention from energy analysts but has been surprisingly neglected in environmental economics even though economists generally are concerned with indirect or economy wide impacts of technical change and policies this paper presents definitions and interpretations of energy and environmental rebound as well as four fundamental reasons for the existence of the rebound phenomenon it further offers the most complete list of rebound pathways or mechanisms available in the literature in addition it discusses empirical estimates of rebound and addresses the implications of uncertainties and difficulties in assessing rebound suggestions are offered for strategies and public policies to contain rebound it is advised that rebound evaluation is an essential part of environmental policy and project assessments as opposed to earlier studies this paper stresses the relevance of the distinction between energy conservation resulting from autonomous demand changes and from efficiency improvements in technology equipment in addition it argues that rebound is especially relevant for developing countries

the induced innovation hypothesis and energy saving technological change we develop a methodology for testing hicks s induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product characteristics model of energy using consumer durables augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the ine uence of government regulations for the products we explored the evidence suggests that i the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations ii the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others iii energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale iv this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy efficiency product labeling was required and v nonetheless a sizable portion of efficiency improvements were autonomous

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

fostering change to sustainable consumption and production an evidence based view this note from the field is an edited version of a policy brief summarizing the key findings from the first half of the sustainable consumption research exchange network score for the policy programs in the field of sustainable consumption and production scp we recommend a framework for action to change to scp that mentions the key domains to include food mobility and energy use housing the last two clearly related to urban development it should use a systemic perspective on the scp challenge and differentiate between developed fast developing and base of the pyramid economies score focuses mainly on developed economies and here we propose to differentiate between 1 measures that fit with mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could make operational agreements on implementation of instruments like green public procurement stimulating ecodesign etc 2 problems where a rough agreement on goals exists but where change is radical or means are uncertain and hence planning difficult here governments could foster visioning experimentation and support e g international collaboration in leapfrogging programs 3 problems that outright clash with the mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could foster informed deliberation on the more fundamental issues related to markets governance and growth 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

evidence of direct and indirect rebound effect in households in eu 27 countries abstract this research estimates the direct and indirect rebound effect of energy efficiency in households for the eu 27 countries the first twenty seven member states of the european union a hybrid methodology that combines econometric estimates environmental extended input output analysis and re spending models has been developed although most of the economies present values below 100 there are seven countries situated above this critical threshold by weighting individual estimates by gdp an average value for the overall eu 27 economy has been found between 73 62 and 81 16 these results suggest that the energy policy at the european level should be rethought if efficiency measures pursue reducing energy consumption and tackling climate change

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

meat consumption and production analysis of efficiency sufficiency and consistency of global trends abstract the sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing the traditional approach to monitoring these changes considers economic societal and environmental sustainability a strong case has been made however that a fourth dimension ethical should also be considered conventionally two main strategies have been used to assess the improvements in sustainability efficiency and sufficiency efficiency is usually linked with technological improvements and sufficiency is connected with a reduction in production or consumption we introduce a third strategy to the analysis namely consistency that is related mainly to the ethical dimension of sustainability trends of the indicators related to the three strategies are calculated on both a global and regional scale from 1962 to 2009 efficiency measured as land requirement for animal products has increased by about 13 percent globally sufficiency measured as the amount of meat consumed has declined by 91 percent and consistency measured as the number of animals slaughtered has declined by 264 percent in addition convergence analysis emphasizes that industrialized and developing countries are moving towards similar patterns of animal products consumption such results suggest that measures should be taken to develop a food system that is not only efficient but also ethically just

energy intensive lifestyles time use the activity patterns of consumers and related energy demands in finland time use survey data has been used to model household activities beyond market transactions accordingly measures such as the goods intensity of household activities and the energy and carbon intensity of household activities have been derived in this paper we build on this approach by using time use data to model the direct and indirect energy use of households from this we present a decomposition analysis of the changes in the embedded and direct energy consumption of finnish households from 1987 to 2009 relevant questions that arise include that of whether increases in total energy consumption are due to changes in activity patterns changes in the energy intensity of activities or due to demographic changes beyond the empirical work we suggest that time use approaches require a more explicit theorization of time

diverging pathways to overcoming the environmental crisis a critique of eco modernism from a technology assessment perspective abstract the current controversies on sustainable growth green growth and degrowth cover many issues in the relations between human behavior societal regulation and technology in face of the need to overcome the environmental crisis the point of departure of this paper is the observation that the roles of technology and of technological progress in realizing an ecologically sound development often are simply taken as mere assumptions or else are taken for granted the objective of this paper is to critically scrutinize assumptions and expectations of the eco modernist approach from the perspective of technology assessment in the context of the debate on growth and degrowth by reconstructing the basic arguments assumptions and premises of the eco modernist approach and their critical assessment the analysis culminates in the diagnosis of the eco modernist approach being morally hazardous because it expects to overcome the ecological crisis by technological progress and its acceleration only ignoring the ambivalences of technology and the issue of unintended side effects following this result conclusions will be drawn in two directions from the experience of technology assessment for degrowth and from degrowth thinking for technology assessment

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

what influences consumption consumers and beyond purposes contexts agents and history consumption of goods and services is a complex phenomenon at the root of environmental problems but it is still often framed in terms of individual behaviour which can be related to a lack of wide cross disciplinary explanations for consumption to contribute to filling this gap we conducted a literature review across ten disciplines we provide a cross disciplinary overview of what influences consumption juxtaposing dominant with less heard explanations for consumption and adding cross disciplinary evidence to counter the view of consumption as a chiefly individual phenomenon the resulting conceptual framework depicts consumption as influenced by three levels that undergo historical transformations the micro level of consumers purposes and products the meso level of the direct context in which consumption takes place and the macro level of societal contexts and agents future research should investigate which kinds of interactions between levels agents and contexts can lead to minimising social and environmental impacts of consumption

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

the rebound effect on road freight transport empirical evidence from portugal abstract because a large proportion of total operating costs for transportation companies goes towards energy a reduction in energy operating costs brought about by an increase in fleet fuel efficiency or an increase in operational efficiency results in a change in the relative cost of road freight transportation this fact could result in an increase in the demand for such services if this is true the result would be an increase in total fuel consumption consequently that part of the energy savings obtained through the increased energy efficiency would be lost the existence of a rebound effect is especially important in the road freight transportation sector and is crucial for the definition of a national energy policy in this study data from the road freight transportation sector in portugal for the years of 1987 through 2006 was analyzed it was determined that an increase in energy efficiency did not cause a backfire but did cause a total direct rebound effect of 24 1 in addition fleet operators were more inclined to adopt operational efficiencies than technological fuel efficiencies as a means of increasing the total operational efficiency

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

behavioral innovations the missing capital in sustainable development abstract many scholars argue that environmental issues can be addressed through technological innovation a proposal which echoes a lasting debate between environmental and ecological economics about the substitution rate between natural and manufactured capital in addition to these two established types of capital this paper introduces the idea of behavioral capital we define behavioral capital as the latent potential of behavioral change to affect improvement in environmental quality our contribution argues that technological and traditional regulatory innovations serve as insufficient tools for addressing modern environmental issues and ensuring sustainable development without discarding these solutions we contend that because human behavior is a significant contributor to environmental problems it should be regarded as a key component of continued solutions we suggest that the dual interest theory can serve as an integrative framework for behavioral innovations related to environmental issues in suggesting this we assume that behavioral innovations can both overcome some of the limitations of technological innovations and offer new solutions our main insight is to suggest that some depletion of natural capital but not all can be offset by behavioral changes without decreasing or even increasing subjective well being

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

an empirical analysis of joint residential electricity efficiency gains within and across end uses implications for demand side management to better understand the observed performance of demand side approaches on residential electricity use we develop and apply a mixed regression model of electricity consumption that includes marginal joint technical change for multiple residential electricity end uses air conditioning appliances devices and electric vehicles results indicate that the relative technical state of a home can significantly influence the performance of demand side interventions particularly the presence of a programmable thermostat within air conditioning we generally find that enough consistent technical improvement is needed to realize energy savings which could be due to engineering building performance or a declining marginal rebound effect as householders become thermally comfortable results indicate that homeowners do not leverage efficiency gains for appliance services but demonstrate mixed results when considering the expansion of electricity services householders may rebound into device loads albeit such results are not statistically significant however results indicate that householders do not leverage efficiency gains for electric vehicles these results demonstrate that the net effect of technological change in households is relative to a home s baseline technical efficiency and the degree to which homeowners seek new and existing energy services challenging empirical assessments that do not control for the technical state of multiple end uses

fiscal policy and co2 emissions of new passenger cars in the eu to what extent have national fiscal policies contributed to the decarbonisation of newly sold passenger cars we construct a simple model that generates predictions regarding the effect of fiscal policies on average hbox co 2 emissions of new cars and then test the model empirically our empirical strategy combines a diverse series of data first we use a large database of vehicle specific taxes in 15 eu countries over 2001 2010 to construct a measure for the vehicle registration and annual road tax levels and separately for the hbox co 2 sensitivity of these taxes we find that for many countries the fiscal policies have become more sensitive to hbox co 2 emissions of new cars we then use these constructed measures to estimate the effect of fiscal policies on the hbox co 2 emissions of the new car fleet the increased hbox co 2 sensitivity of registration taxes have reduced the hbox co 2 emission intensity of the average new car by 1 3 partly through an induced increase of the share of diesel fuelled cars by 6 5 percentage points higher fuel taxes lead to the purchase of more fuel efficient cars but higher diesel fuel taxes also decrease the share of more fuel efficient diesel cars higher annual road taxes have no or an adverse effect

rebound directed technological change and aggregate demand for energy abstract we analyse the long run role of energy in aggregate production the factor share of energy has been remarkably constant despite the relative decline in the price of energy we analyse possible explanations for this observation ruling out the idea that endogenous directed technological change has led to a failure of energy augmenting technology to keep pace with labour augmenting technology instead we propose a model in which a combination of income and substitution effects has driven both shifts in consumption patterns towards existing energy intensive goods and the emergence of new such goods

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

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

why are we growth addicted the hard way towards degrowth in the involutionary western development path abstract by questioning the origins of the inertia facing the degrowth movement this contribution identifies property as the constitutive institution of capitalism and property expansion as the dominant socioeconomic process leading world societies to economic path dependence techno institutional lock in and eco social impasse demonstrating why and how property based economic rationality subordinates ecological and social considerations to capitalist requirements this paper stresses both the need for an inversion in the hierarchy of social norms and the systemic opposition to such an inversion which emanates from the capitalist industrial expansion the text also brings to light some disregarded processes underlying the current economic crisis by pointing out the institutional and technological locked in situation into which the western development path has led our societies

strong sustainable consumption governance precondition for a degrowth path this paper aims to link two debates and literatures at the cutting edge of sustainable development research and governance sustainable consumption and degrowth interestingly these literatures have only recently started to exchange and integrate insights despite their similar interest in the fundamental systemic challenges to sustainable development the paper argues that this lack of connection is due to a predominance of perspectives in sustainable consumption governance that focus almost exclusively on questions of efficiency gains this weak sustainable consumption governance however is not able to address the challenges to sustainable development arising from overconsumption in general or the rebound effect and distributive issues in particular in contrast a strong sustainable consumption perspective provides a basis for a promising inquiry into the linkages between consumption and sustainable development as well as a fruitful exchange with degrowth specifically it allows the delineation of relevant insights on the role of values in governance obstacles to political reform and promising political strategies for the degrowth debate and literature

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

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

expectations information and migration the case of the west bank and gaza this study evaluates the determinants of palestinian migration from the west bank and gaza data are employed for the post 1967 period of israeli rule to specify and test competing models as well as the structure of expectations in the migration decision results of the analysis support a simple static expectation formulation as is consistent with much of the short term low mobility cost migration between the west bank and jordan findings further point to the importance of various israeli palestinian economic and political economic interactions in the determination of this controversial movement of population including those associated with employment opportunity for palestinian labour in israel elements of israeli west bank settlement policy and changes in local standard of living various policy implications of the research are indicated

mill s scissors structural change and the natural resource inputs to labour the environmental structural change strategy claims that by shifting our expenditures to economic sectors with lower environmental intensity absolute resource consumption and environmental impact can be lowered environmental input output methodologies for computing these intensities attribute no resource consumption to labour or households because these are not classified as sectors the suggestion that service sectors entail less environmental impact however loses force if a unit of labour contains embodied energy and attributing these inputs to labour drastically reduces intensity variation between sectors relative growth of service sectors has furthermore not been accompanied by decreased resource consumption thus models whose intensity computations cover not only inter firm payments but also labour earnings and household expenditures may have superior predictive power if moreover natural resource and labour inputs to product are incommensurable intensity ratios themselves have perhaps only monetary rather than real significance

heterogeneity in the rebound effect further evidence for germany rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced offset in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements using both panel estimation and quantile regression methods on household travel diary data collected in germany between 1997 and 2009 this study investigates the heterogeneity of the rebound effect in private transport with the average rebound effect being in the range of 57 to 62 our results are in line with a recent german study by frondel peters and vance 2008 but are substantially larger than those obtained from other studies furthermore our quantile regression results indicate that the magnitude of estimated fuel price elasticities from which rebound effects can be derived depends inversely on the household s driving intensity households with low vehicle mileage exhibit fuel price elasticities and hence rebound effects that are significantly larger than those for households with high vehicle mileage

3 d sustainability an approach for priority setting in situation of conflicting interests towards a sustainable development abstract this paper aims to provide a new approach to objectively assess hierarchies and priority setting in the relationship between environmental social and economic sustainability within sustainable development after a literature review several widely used conceptual figures diagrams describing this relationship were assessed using swot analyses in order to identify the major weaknesses in these pictorial descriptions based on the findings a new concept called 3 d sustainability has been developed and is presented visually as well as is described in the text this concept introduces and ranks criteria for the assessment of hierarchies within and conflicts of interests between social environmental and economic sustainability the three dimensions of sustainability these criteria are applied to several existing hierarchies and solutions to conflicts of interests based on the swot analyses the main shortcomings of the widely used conceptual figures were identified as 1 misinterpretation of embeddings 2 misjudgement of equity between the three dimensions of sustainability 3 a lack of expression of limitations and 4 lack of adequate decision support these shortcomings are overcome theoretically and in practice by 3 d sustainability a slightly more complex but conceptually richer figure than the widely used conceptual figures assessed in particular the shift of the burden of proof within the three sustainability dimensions is argued as a main solution the application of the criteria of 3 d sustainability to several real examples indicates its usefulness in decision support while justifying more sustainable hierarchies and solutions in the settlement of conflicts of interests within the three sustainability dimensions

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

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

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

energy requirements of household consumption a case study of the netherlands this article describes the results of several research programmes that together aim at the development and application of methodologies that enable the study of long term environmental effects mainly related to the total household energy demand of household consumption in relation to other economic sectors this is usually described as the household metabolism approach in this article we use energy consumption and co2 emissions as proxies for long term impacts on the environment the major long term environmental effects of several hundred dutch household consumption categories have been determined by means of the hybrid energy analysis methodology total energy consumption and related co2 emission data have been calculated as a function of household income and family type past trends have been studied by a time series 1950 1990 analysis technical reduction potentials have been calculated for mid and long term scenarios it is concluded that the set of methodologies described form a useful tool for the analysis of unsustainable trends in household consumption patterns and associated energy requirements in the past and the present the results indicate that present trends lead towards unsustainability however reversal of these trends is feasible if this starts in the immediate future and if it is maintained for decades c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

an ex ante evaluation of a white certificates scheme in the netherlands a case study for the household sector increased efficiency of energy demand is generally recognized as a very cost effective strategy to reduce energy requirements and the related environmental impacts e g the greenhouse effect in order to improve energy efficiency the use of innovative market mechanisms such as the white certificates whc has been proposed the basic idea underlying this policy instrument is that specific energy saving targets are set for energy suppliers or energy distributors these requirements must be fulfilled in a predefined time frame the focus of this paper is on the effect on energy efficiency improvement on the behavior of the end consumers and the market of energy efficiency measures furthermore we study the possible effects of whc in the netherlands by means of a theoretical analysis and an empirical bottom up model we compare concrete energy efficient technologies in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency improvement in combination with existing dutch policies for energy efficiency improvement in the built environment the contribution of this innovative scheme could enhance the accomplishment of energy efficiency targets in this paper two packages of energy saving measures of a whc scheme are studied for dutch households the costs of these technologies are estimated through the use of different discount rates which imply overcoming of the market barriers through the use of the whc a scheme that includes all available technologies as flexible options appears as a realistic solution and can generate cost effectively up to 180 pj primary energy savings and 4550 m cumulative net savings in the year 2020 at a discount rate of 5 under the precondition that the policy and administrative costs can be kept low

the economy wide impact of controlling energy consumption in indonesia an analysis using a social accounting matrix framework escalating oil prices and the need to control carbon emissions sound the alarm for indonesia to reduce or be more efficient in its energy use instead of eliminating the fuel oil subsidy to promote better and more efficient use of energy the indonesian government seems to be more in favour of restricting energy use by for example requiring all hotels restaurants night clubs and other business activities to close down by 1 am societies need to understand the full consequences of adopting restricting energy use and more efficient energy use strategies toward their incomes this paper aims to analyse the impact on the economy of energy policies aiming to reduce and to improve the efficiency of energy use particularly on the income of various household groups this paper will first construct a social accounting matrix for indonesia with detailed energy sectors and second utilise various multiplier analyses to observe and understand the impact of these 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

the role of public policy in advancement of product service systems this article discusses developments in the area of product service systems pss and the need to facilitate the proliferation of the pss approach through public policies the article argues that policies that establish the framework conditions for environmental improvement are preferable to detailed legislation as they favour environmentally superior pss however there is also a need for more specifically targeted policy measures that stimulate knowledge creation and dissemination in the pss area this article suggests that informative policy measures should be used by authorities and reviews the results from the functional programme of the swedish epa as an example of this type of policy c 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

the role of risk and trust attitudes in explaining residential energy demand evidence from the united kingdom recent research into the determinants of household energy consumption has aimed to incorporate findings from economics sociology and psychology in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors determining energy demand the current paper contributes to this nascent stream of literature by studying the relationship between risk attitudes trust propensity and energy consumption at the household level drawing on the british household panel survey a well known data set in the context of energy studies i show that trust is negatively correlated with household energy demand while higher risk tolerance leads to increases in residential energy use potential explanations for these findings are investigated suggesting that risk preferences may be related with overall appliance stock and the size of the rebound effect

moral hazard and adverse selection the question of financial structure this paper looks at the moral hazard and adverse selection problems confronting an entrepreneur offering securities to an uninformed but competitive financial market the adverse selection aspect of the problem is generated by the unobservable entrepreneur s ability to transform effort into value moral hazard arises because the investment decision is made subsequent to financing we consider the joint use of both debt and equity and characterize the equilibrium relation between capital structure and unobservable attributes it is shown that 1 investment and financing are not separable 2 there is an underinvestment problem for better firms and 3 simultaneous use of both debt and equity can resolve this difficulty we also establish a connection between expected terminal firm value and debt promised payment level and between share retention and standard deviation agency problems in corporate finance originated with the influential papers of jensen and meckling 11 myers 17 ross 21 and leland pyle 14 they show that the market imperfections induced by unobservable actions lack of contracting ability and information asymmetry generally lead to second best outcomes in which the distribution of corporate ownership is achieved only at significant cost these costs take the form of excessive perquisite consumption overinvestment underinvestment and incomplete diversification of personal investment portfolios moral hazard and adverse selection comprise two forms in which agency problems may take shape arrow 1 equates these two terms with hidden action and hidden information respectively moral hazard arises when the action undertaken by the agent is unobservable and has a differential value to the agent as compared to the principal adverse selection problems arise when the agent has more information than the principal the resolution of such difficulties has been explored in a number of contexts with both signals and contingent contracting mechanisms these definitions exclude certain agency problems in the delegation literature for which the preference incongruity results from a lack of precommitment rather than some exogenous feature of the model in corporate finance one would thus identify the jensen meckling paper with moral hazard because perquisites enter the insider s objective differently from outsiders while darrough is from columbia university and stoughton is from the university of california irvine the second author s research was partially supported by grant number 410 83 0786 r 1 from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada this paper was presented at the 1984 meetings of the western finance association in vancouver and at the 1985 european finance association meetings in bern we thank kose john and frans tempelaar for their comments at the meetings

interactions in swiss households energy demand a holistic approach abstract this article analyzes the interactions and possible trade offs between direct energy consumption and embodied energy requirement of households in switzerland in order to assess the net impacts of standard energy policies focusing exclusively on direct energy use direct and embodied energy demand of swiss households are estimated by combining consumption data of a national expenditure survey with data on energy intensity from life cycle analysis using a system of equations and an instrumental variable approach we find that both domains are driven by same determinants but that there is no evidence for significant substitution between them we also find an increasing effect of income on both domains with particularly important effects on embodied energy from a policy perspective our findings highlight a concern that economic growth could bring about an increasing global energy demand through energy requirement for non energy commodities however the wide spread policies targeting direct energy are unlikely to cause a substantial shift in household consumption to embodied energy

the influence of energy efficiency on other natural resources use an input output perspective abstract energy efficiency improvements reduce the costs of energy services and under some circumstances increase the available income this generates an additional increase of consumption of goods and services that need additional energy to be produced distributed and consumed this effect is known as the indirect rebound effect in the literature however beyond this additional increase of global energy consumption there is also a variation of the use of other natural resources due to the same mechanism this effect which we label as direct and indirect cross rebound effect is generally not considered by academia nor policy making when designing and implementing energy policies this research conceptualizes this effect develops a methodology for its estimation and provides estimates for the spanish economy results show that an energy efficiency in households could increase the use of minerals and water while reducing the use of energy fossil fuels and metal ores in spain these reductions however are lower than the expected ones from an input output perspective leading to positive direct and indirect cross rebound effects between 64 6 and 74 7 for energy equivalent to direct and indirect rebound effect 48 63 for fossil fuels 84 89 for metal ores backfire for non metallic minerals 147 134 and extreme backfire for water 1191 1628

technological change in economic models of environmental policy a survey this paper provides an overview of the treatment of technological change in economic models of environmental policy numerous economic modeling studies have confirmed the sensitivity of mid and long run climate change mitigation cost and benefit projections to assumptions about technology costs in general technical progress is considered to be a noneconomic exogenous variable in global climate change modeling however there is overwhelming evidence that technological change is not an exogenous variable but to an important degree endogenous induced by needs and pressures hence some environmenteconomy models treat technological change as endogenous responding to socio economic variables three main elements in models of technological innovation are i corporate investment in research and development ii spillovers from r d and iii technology learning especially learning by doing the incorporation of induced technological change in different types of environmental economic models tends to reduce the costs of environmental policy accelerates abatement and may lead to positive spillover and negative leakage

empirical analysis on energy rebound effect from the perspective of technological progress a case study of china s transport sector abstract energy rebound effect is a major issue in energy economics global energy and environmental problems have compelled the need for simultaneous attainment of economic development and energy conservation technological progress increases energy efficiency and saves energy but it also causes energy rebound effect which discounts the expected energy conservation china s transport sector is energy intensive therefore investigating rebound effect in china s transport sector has a very important significance for energy conservation and the formulation of related policies taking china s transport sector as a case study we used translog production function to measure the contribution rate of technological progress to output growth and estimated the rebound effect the results show that the average rebound effect was about 68 3 during 1981 2015 finally we provided relevant policy recommendations on the rebound effect based on the characteristics of energy use in china s transport sector

do high oil prices matter evidence on the mobility behavior of german households focusing on travel survey data from germany this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and fuel economy the analysis is predicated on the notion that car mileage is a two stage decision process comprising the discrete choice of whether to own a car and the continuous choice of distance traveled to capture this process we employ censored regression models consisting of probit and ols estimators which allows us to gauge the extent to which sample selectivity may bias the results our elasticity estimates indicate a significant positive association between increased fuel economy and increased driving and a significantly negative fuel price elasticity which ranges between 35 and 41 taken together these results suggest that fuel taxes are likely to be a more effective policy measure in reducing emissions than fuel efficiency standards

the economy wide rebound effect from improved energy efficiency in swedish industries a general equilibrium analysis the objective of this paper is to analyse the rebound effect from increased efficiency in industrial energy use in sweden energy efficiency improvements can have significant micro and macroeconom

how to deal with the rebound effect a policy oriented approach policy makers and environmental agencies have echoed concerns brought forward by academics about the need to address the rebound effect for achieving absolute energy and environmental decoupling however such concerns have generally not been translated into tangible policy action the reasons behind this inaction are not fully understood and much remains unknown about the status of the rebound effect issue on the policy agenda and policy pathways available such knowledge gaps may hamper the development of effective policies to address this issue in this paper we examine the extent to and ways in which the rebound effect is considered in policy documents and analyse thirteen specific policy pathways for rebound mitigation the effectiveness of the pathways is scrutinised and conclusions are offered to mitigate rebound effects the main policy conclusions of the paper are that an appropriate policy design and policy mix are key to avoiding undesired outcomes such as the creation of additional rebound effects and environmental trade offs from the discussion economy wide cap and trade systems as well as energy and carbon taxes when designed appropriately emerge as the most effective policies in setting a ceiling for emissions and addressing energy use across the economy

a consumption based approach to environmental kuznets curves using the ecological footprint indicator recent research suggests that consumption based measures offer an insightful perspective on the debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment in this article we deepen the

the macroeconomic rebound effect in china the rebound effect measures the fraction of an energy efficiency improvement that is offset by increased energy consumption a rebound effect can arise at both the microeconomic level and the macroeconomic level the macroeconomic rebound effect measures the effect of an increase in energy efficiency on overall energy demand after markets adjust and re equilibrate at the macroeconomic level energy efficiency gains can increase energy consumption through two channels the macroeconomic price effect and the macroeconomic growth effect in this paper we econometrically estimate the macroeconomic energy rebound effect in china our results show that there is a statistically significant macroeconomic price rebound effect for china for each province and for the short run intermediate run and the long run we also find some evidence of a macroeconomic growth rebound in the short run and the intermediate run for some years either nation wide or for some provinces in china moreover for some years and some provinces we cannot reject backfire the rebound effect is an important phenomenon that the government of china should not neglect when making energy policy as it affects how improvements in energy efficiency translate into changes in energy consumption

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

environmental rebound effect of energy efficiency improvements in colombian households abstract colombia aims to diversify and decarbonize its energy sector by encouraging the use of non conventional renewable resources policies and or measures to achieve this will presumably help to achieve national and international environmental goals yet potential rebound effects may reduce its efficacy by triggering additional demand and environmental burdens one of such rebound effects may take place as household demand rises in response to cheaper electricity prices due to the increasing shares of wind power this study assesses the environmental rebound effect ere in the household sector from increased shares of wind power into the colombian power grid across six environmental impacts and for the period 2020 2030 the method used combines life cycle assessment input output modelling energy system modelling econometrics and re spending modelling the results show that the ere has the potential to partially and even completely offset any environmental savings backfire effect depending on the specific impact year and modelling choices considered the magnitude of the ere as the percentage of potential environmental savings that are offset ranges highly across impacts from a negligible 1 eutrophication to a staggering 9241 photochemical ozone creation the ere has thus the potential to render decarbonization policies largely ineffective which calls for rebound mitigation policies such as environmental taxes

public economics yesterday today and tomorrow public economics that is to say the study of public intervention in the economy 1 has emerged from public finance in the 1950s to reach its autonomy at the beginning of the seventies with in particular the creation of the journal of public economics in 1971 with some oversimplifications we are going to argue that modern public economics was born from taking into account more or less explicitly the informational constraints of the state in its role of production allocation and distribution of resources the criticism of the benevolent state by the virginia polytechnic institute and chicago schools followed today by a renewal of political economy constitutes the second major key to read the new developments of public economics this leads us to a presentation in four parts section 2 will overview the implications of the arrow debreu general equilibrium paradigm in public economics section 3 will present some essential results obtained in public economics when the informational constraints of the state are taken into account the paradigm of the benevolent state will be criticized in section 4 section 5 will briefly sketch our view of the immediate future for public economics

decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth scenarios for energy use materials use and carbon emissions in recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use including materials and energy and carbon emissions leading to converging pressures of declining resource security rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices and climate change we ask whether well designed policies can reduce global material and energy use and carbon emissions with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards we use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally we apply a production territorial and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies a high efficiency outlook involving a global carbon price rising from 50 to 236 constant price per tonne of co2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency rising from 1 5 historically to between 3 5 and 4 5 in the scenarios and a medium efficiency outlook midway between the no change and high outlooks we find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent toe in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price less than half the level of the reference case 29 37 billion tonnes of co2 instead of 74 billion tonnes and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency 95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials we find that oecd economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth and that developing economies such as china could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost globally the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living the research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives the findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path

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

energy performance of dwelling stock in iceland system dynamics approach abstract despite the significant energy use in dwellings buildings have the highest energy savings potential among all sectors one of the main analytical challenges is how to capture the impact from inertia driven by the current dwelling stock thus a dwelling stock model was established to study the impacts of physical processes e g aging as well as the effect of social processes e g household energy conservation behaviors on energy demand for space heating in the icelandic dwelling stock the model is initialized in the year 2000 and then calibrated with datasets on the icelandic dwelling stock and hot water consumption for residential space heating analysis of the base scenario confirms that the improvement in the average energy intensity of total dwelling stock with regular turnover of the dwelling stock is insignificant and gradual which relates to the inertia of the existing stock the comparison of the results from two policy scenarios with the base case illustrates that the aggressive demolition is more effective compared to the aggressive construction in reducing the total energy demand for space heating the results of this analysis can support policy makers by providing insights regarding the potential impact of building energy efficiency policies ensuring an effective policy package

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