Economic structure and energy savings from energy efficiency in households

When an energy efficiency improvement occurs at the household level, several mechanisms, grouped under the name of the rebound effect, increase the available income and consumption, increasing the total energy consumption of the economic structure. The present research analyses the links between energy efficiency improvements in households, consumption, and the economic structure in an input-output framework. We examine, from an empirical perspective, the relationship between energy efficiency improvements and the economic structure, and between the direct and the indirect rebound effect. The limits of the input-output methodology in assessing the direct and indirect rebound effect have been empirically tested with respect to efficiency improvements of electricity uses in households in Catalonia

Les comunitats epistèmiques en el procés de formació de polítiques ambientals : el cas del canvi climàtic a Espanya

Aquest projecte té per objectiu avaluar l'existència, la composició, el paper i l'evolució d'una comunitat epistèmica en les polítiques contra el canvi climàtic a Espanya. Més concretament, els objectius principals són explicar la seva influència sobre aquest procés així com quins han estat els resultats de la seva actuació, tant sobre les polítiques domèstiques del govern espanyol com de la seva postura adoptada a l'arena europea i internacional

The influence of energy efficiency on other natural resources use: An input-output perspective

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%)

The rebound effect through industrial ecology’s eyes : the case of transport eco-innovation

Eco-innovation often underperforms due to behavioral and systemic responses to technical change leading to additional demand and environmental damage. This paradox, also known as the rebound effect, has puzzled for decades scholars from a myriad of disciplines, mostly due to the profound implications for achieving environmental targets. Within the different disciplinary understandings, concepts and methods from the industrial ecology domain offer unexplored potential for the study of the rebound effect. The transport sector, a vital engine of social progress and historically at the spotlight of environmental policy, is a perfect case study to unveil such potential. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the role of rebound effects in shaping the environmental performance of transport eco-innovation, and to investigate the value of applying concepts and methods from the realm of industrial ecology and other sustainability sciences. Through case studies, the value of this renewed perspective – the environmental rebound effect– is confirmed in the context of complex sustainability issues.Industrial Ecolog

Economy-wide rebound makes UK's electric car subsidy fall short of expectations

Environmental policies often underperform due to so-called rebound effects, namely behavioural and systemic responses to technical change leading to additional consumption and environmental damage. While evidence of rebound is abundant, studies generally focus on technical changes that are neither associated with specific technologies nor their production costs, making it difficult to connect these changes with the policies governing them. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes to combine a technology-rich model based on life cycle assessment and a behaviour-optimising model for the global economy based on computable general equilibrium modelling. This approach allows to quantify policy-induced economy-wide rebound effects for four relevant environmental impacts: climate change, acidification, photochemical ozone formation, and particulate matter. We apply this approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the United Kingdom's subsidy on electric cars. The results show notable economy-wide rebound effects associated with this subsidy: over or close to 100% (no environmental benefits) for acidification and particulate matter impacts, and a lower, yet notable, magnitude for climate change (~20–50%) and photochemical ozone formation (~30–80%) impacts. The results also show the important role of macro-economic effects from price changes, particularly how the shift from petrol to electricity triggered additional demand for cheaper petrol

Does the Circular Economy Grow the Pie? The Case of Rebound Effects From Smartphone Reuse

The environmental benefits of the circular economy (CE) are often taken for granted. There are, however, reasons to believe that rebound effects may counteract such benefits by increasing overall consumption or “growing the pie.” In this study, we focus on two main rebound mechanisms: (1) imperfect substitution between “re-circulated” (recycled, reused, etc.) and new products and (2) re-spending due to economic savings. We use the case study of smartphone reuse in the US to quantify, for the first time, rebound effects from reuse. Using a combination of life cycle assessment, sales statistics, consumer surveying, consumer demand modeling, and environmentally-extended input-output analysis, we quantify the magnitude of this rebound effect for life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. We find a rebound effect of 29% on average, with a range of 27–46% for specific smartphone models. Moreover, when exploring how rebound might play out in other regions and under different consumer behavior patterns, we find that rebound effects could be higher than 100% (backfire effect). In other words, we estimate that about one third, and potentially the entirety, of emission savings resulting from smartphone reuse could be lost due to the rebound effect. Our results thus suggest that there are grounds to challenge the premise that CE strategies, and reuse in particular, always reduce environmental burdens

A holistic approach to the environmental evaluation of food waste prevention

The environmental evaluation of food waste prevention is considered a challenging task due to the globalised nature of the food supply chain and the limitations of existing evaluation tools. The most significant of these is the rebound effect: the associated environmental burdens of substitutive consumption that arises as a result of economic savings made from food waste prevention. This study introduces a holistic approach to addressing these challenges, with a focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from household food waste in the UK. It uses a hybrid life-cycle assessment model coupled with a highly detailed multi-regional environmentally extended input output analysis to capture environmental impacts across the global food supply chain. The study also takes into consideration the rebound effect, which was modelled using a linear specification of an almost ideal demand system. The study finds that food waste prevention could lead to substantial reductions in GHG emissions in the order of 706-896 kg CO$_2$-eq. per tonne of food waste, with most of these savings (78%) occurring as a result of avoided food production overseas. The rebound effect may however reduce such GHG savings by up to 60%. These findings provide a deeper insight into our understanding of the environmental impacts of food waste prevention: the study demonstrates the need to adopt a holistic approach when developing food waste prevention policies in order to mitigate the rebound effect and highlight the importance of increasing efficiency across the global food supply chain, particularly in developing countries.IDB Cambridge International Scholarship, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Grant ID: BB/J014540/1

Nexus Strength: A Novel Metric for Assessing the Global Resource Nexus

The limited access to natural resources is a major constraint for sustainability at various spatial scales. This challenge has sparked scholarly interest in the linkages or nexus between resources, with a view to helping anticipate unforeseen consequences, identify trade-offs and co-benefits, and find optimal solutions. Yet, despite decades of research, limitations in the scope and focus of studies remain. Recently constructed multiregional input-output (MRIO) databases, which cover the global economy and its use of resources in unprecedented detail, allow systematically investigation of resource use by production as well as consumption processes at various levels and garner new insights into global resource nexus (GRN) issues. This article addresses the question of how to prioritize such issues. Using the MRIO database, EXIOBASE, we address the GRN considering five key resources: blue water, primary energy, land, metal ores, and minerals. We propose a metric of nexus strength, which relies on linear goal programming to rank industries and products based on its associated combined resource use and various weighting schemes. Our results validate current research efforts by identifying water, energy, and land as the strongest linkages globally and at all scales and, at the same time, lead to novel findings into the GRN, in that (1) it appears stronger and more complex from the consumption perspective, (2) metals and minerals emerge as critical, yet undervalued, components, and (3) it manifests with a considerable diversity across countries owing to differences in the economic structure, domestic policy, technology, and resource endowments