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The rebound effect is overplayed

The rebound effect is overplayed

Full Title:  The rebound effect is overplayed
Author(s):  Kenneth Gillingham and Matthew J. Kotchen, David S. Rapson, and Gernot Wagner
Publisher(s):  Nature
Publication Date: January 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):

 

Buy a more fuel-efficient car and you will spend more time behind the wheel. That argument, termed the rebound effect, has earned critics of energy- efficiency programmes a voice in the climate-policy debate, for example with an article in The New York Times entitled ‘When energy efficiency sullies the environment’.

The rebound effect idea — and its extreme variant the ‘backfire’ effect, in which supposed energy savings turn into greater energy use — stems from nineteenth-century economist Stanley Jevons. In his 1865 book The Coal Question, Jevons hypothesized that energy use rises as industry becomes more efficient because people produce and consume more goods as a result.

The rebound effect is real and should be considered in strategic energy planning. But it has become a distraction.

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