the carbon footprint of uk households 1990 2004 a socio economically disaggregated quasi multi regional input output model this paper presents a socio economically disaggregated framework for attributing co2 emissions to people s high level functional needs based around a quasi multi regional input output qmrio model the study in theory takes into account all co2 emissions that arise from energy used in production of goods and services to satisfy uk household demand whether the emissions occur in the uk or abroad results show that co2 emissions attributable to households were 15 above 1990 levels in 2004 and that although absolute decoupling occurred between household expenditure and co2 during the uk s switch from coal to gas in the early 1990s since then only slight relative decoupling is evident the proportion of co2 that arises outside uk borders in support of uk consumption is rising and reducing these emissions is particularly problematic in a global trading system investigation into the carbon footprint of different segments of the uk population shows wide variation the segment with the highest carbon footprint emits 64 more co2 than the segment with the lowest results show that recreation and leisure are responsible for over one quarter of co2 emissions in a typical uk household in 2004 we conclude that expanding lifestyle aspirations are significant factors in driving household co2 emissions but the study also emphasizes that attention must be paid to the infrastructures and institutions that result in considerable amounts of co2 being locked up in basic household activities through which people meet their everyday needs for subsistence protection and communication with family and friends the findings highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing uk policy makers and suggest that policies should be targeted towards segments of society responsible for the highest carbon footprints

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

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

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

white certificate schemes economic analysis and interactions with the eu ets this paper examines the economic environmental and distributional impacts of an idealised tradable white certificate twc scheme and shows how the impacts are modified when the scheme operates in parallel with the eu emissions trading scheme eu ets it uses simple graphical techniques to assess whether a twc scheme will increase decrease or have an ambiguous effect on electricity demand wholesale and retail electricity prices carbon emissions and investment in energy efficiency paying particular attention to the interpretation of additionality

the role of consumption patterns demand and technological factors on the recent evolution of co2 emissions in a group of advanced economies changes in production structures and modifications of patterns of consumption are key factors in the fight against environmental harm initiatives such as agenda 21 promoted by the un highlight the need to evaluate the relationships among factors of production and consumption innovation and demographics and the environment in the attainment of sustainable development in this context our work studies in depth those factors underlying the economic activity of households in a representative group of european union countries and the us within the framework of an input output model a structural decomposition analysis is considered in order to identify the weight that growth in demand changes in patterns of consumption changes in the distribution of income the substitution of inputs and changes in energy intensity have all had on the evolution of co2 emissions the work specifically seeks to identify common patterns and differential behaviors among productive sectors in the european social environment the results show that growth in demand and therefore in production largely absorbs the limited effect of technological and efficiency improvements and the incipient changes observed in consumption patterns

global technology learning and national policy an incentive scheme for governments to assume the high cost of early deployment exemplified by norway abstract in this paper it is argued that technology learning may be both a barrier and an incentive for technology change in the national energy system the possibility to realize an ambitious global emission reduction scenario is enhanced by coordinated action between countries in national policy implementation an indicator for coordinated action is suggested targeted measures to increase deployment of nascent energy technologies and increasing energy efficiency in a small open economy like norway are examined the measures are evaluated against a set of baselines with different levels of spillover of technology learning from the global market it is found that implementation of technology subsidies increase the national contribution to early deployment independent of the level of spillover in a special case with no spillover for offshore floating wind power and endogenous technology learning substantial subsidy or a learning rate of 20 is required combining the high learning rate and a national subsidy increases the contribution to early deployment enhanced building code on the other hand may reduce norway s contribution to early deployment and thus the realization of a global emission reduction scenario unless sufficient electricity export capacity is assured

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

forecasting scenarios for uk household expenditure and associated ghg emissions outlook to 2030 using the modelling tool elesa econometric lifestyle environment scenario analysis this paper describes forecast scenarios to 2030 for uk household expenditure and associated direct and indirect greenhouse gas ghg emissions for 16 expenditure categories using assumptions for real household disposable income real prices exogenous non economic factors exnef average uk temperatures and ghg intensities three future scenarios are constructed in each scenario real expenditure for almost all categories of uk expenditure continues to grow up to 2030 the exceptions being alcoholic beverages and tobacco and other fuels and gas and electricity in the low scenario leading to an increase in associated ghg emissions for most of the categories in the reference and high scenarios other than food and non alcoholic beverages alcoholic beverages and tobacco electricity other fuels and recreation and culture of the future ghg emissions about 30 is attributed to direct energy use by households and nearly 70 attributable to indirect energy uk policy makers therefore need to consider a range of policies if they wish to curtail emissions associated with household expenditure including for example economic measures such as taxes alongside measures that reflect the important contribution of exnef to changes in expenditure for most categories of consumption

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

carbon trading in the policy mix the kyoto protocol is stimulating the development of emissions trading schemes at the national and international levels these are being introduced alongside existing policy instruments such as carbon taxes and negotiated agreements leading to complex problems of policy interaction but the topic of policy interaction remains under researched this paper aims to improve understanding of such interactions by examining the conditions under which a cap and trade scheme for carbon dioxide emissions may usefully coexist with carbon energy taxes support mechanisms for renewable electricity and policies to promote energy efficiency the paper argues that each of these instrument combinations may be acceptable provided they contribute to either improving the static or dynamic efficiency of the trading scheme or delivering other valued policy objectives but since the coexisting instruments may raise overall abatement costs while contributing nothing further to emission reductions the objectives and trade offs within the policy mix must be explicit

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

allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input output analysis we present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national ecological footprints by economic sector detailed final demand category sub national area or socio economic group this is done by combining existing national footprint accounts with input output analysis calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the united kingdom covering the reporting period 2000 ecological footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the coicop classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment the method presented enables the calculation of comparable ecological footprints on all sub national levels and for different socio economic groups the novelty of the approach lies in the use of input output analysis to re allocate existing footprint accounts in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data this extends the potential for applications of the ecological footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios policies and strategies on sustainable consumption the method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a national footprint account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available the approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between ecological footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers for these reasons the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of ecological footprint accounts

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

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

economic energy and greenhouse emissions impacts of some consumer choice technology and government outlay options abstract the impacts of selected spending options in the australian economy are determined in terms of energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions and a range of economic parameters six case studies of one current practice and one alternative environmentally motivated spending option are carried out describing consumer choices technologies and government outlays the assessment method is based on input output theory and as such enables both the direct and indirect effects of spending to be quantified in general the results indicate that pro environmental objectives such as reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are compatible with broad socio economic benefits such as increases in employment and income and reductions in imports

higher wages for sustainable development employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage in global apparel supply chains abstract in this paper we explore how paying a living wage in global supply chains might affect employment and carbon emissions sustainable development goals 8 and 13 previous work has advocated using wage increases for poorer workers to increase prices for wealthier consumers thereby reducing consumption and associated environmental damage however the likely effects of such an approach remain unclear using an input output framework extended with income and demand elasticities we estimate the employment and carbon effects of paying a living wage to brazilian russian indian and chinese bric workers in the western european clothing supply chain we find negligible effects on carbon emissions but a substantial increase in bric employment under 3 scenarios of consumer behaviour changes in western european consumption lead to small decreases in global carbon emissions and bric employment however the increase in bric wages increases demand in bric this increased demand increases production which largely cancels out the carbon savings and generates net increases in bric employment we conclude by arguing that paying higher wages in global supply chains represents a good but not sufficient step toward achieving the sustainable development goals

exchange rate versus credit policy analysis with a monetary model of trade and inflation in india abstract a general equilibrium model of the trade balance and inflation in india is specified and empirically analyzed the model takes into account many important institutional features of india such as foreign exchange rationing and emphasizes the effects of monetary disequilibrium on the trade balance policy simulations compare the dynamic responses to devaluation with the responses to tight credit policy it is shown that the relative price effects of policies are often significantly offset by perverse liquidity effects which serve to raise absorption however the trade balance effects of devaluation are found to be more enduring than those of tight credit policy

who rebounds most estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different uk socioeconomic groups this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from various types of energy efficiency improvement and behavioural change by uk households and explores how these effects vary with total expenditure the methodology is based upon estimates of the expenditure elasticity and ghg intensity of 16 categories of goods and services and allows for the capital cost and embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves the study finds that rebound effects in ghg terms are modest 0 32 for measures affecting domestic energy use larger 25 65 for measures affecting vehicle fuel use and very large 66 106 for measures that reduce food waste furthermore measures undertaken by low income households are associated with the largest rebound effects with direct emissions forming a larger proportion of the total rebound effect for those households measures that are subsidised or affect highly taxed energy commodities may be less effective in reducing aggregate emissions these findings highlight the importance of allowing for rebound effects within policy appraisals as well as reinforcing the case for economy wide carbon pricing

measuring progress towards carbon reduction in the uk the uk climate change bill proposes to establish legally binding targets for a 60 reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 this paper discusses the challenges posed by measuring progress towards this target it takes as a premise that the conventional productionbased accounting framework enshrined in the unfccc emissions accounting guidelines is inappropriate for this task because it fails to account for the carbon traded across the uk national boundary accordingly it sets out a consumption based accounting framework using a two region environmental input output eio model which could in principle measure progress in reducing the emissions attributable to final consumers in the uk it illustrates the use of this framework to measure the reduction in carbon dioxide achieved by the uk between 1990 the kyoto base year and the year 2004 and compares this against the production perspective the results indicate that any progress towards the uk s carbon reduction targets visible under a production perspective disappears completely when viewed from a consumption perspective but the robustness of this conclusion depends critically on the accuracy of underlying economic and environmental data sets as well as specific assumptions concerning imports by analysing the consistency of uk input output data we conclude that eio is still some way from being able to answer the critical question of the carbon trade balance for the uk in these circumstances measuring real progress towards carbon reduction in the uk remains elusive

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