Topic
Rebound effect (conservation)
About: Rebound effect (conservation) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 773 publications have been published within this topic receiving 25741 citations.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors use the case study of smartphone reuse in the US to quantify the rebound effects from reuse. But they 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.
Abstract: 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 modelling, 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% to 46% for specific smartphone models. Moreover, when exploring how rebound might play out in other regions and under different consumer behaviour 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.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a thermodynamic-evolutionary theoretical framework was proposed to explain the rebound effect in energy conservation policies that aim to reduce energy consumption through energy efficiency development, and the authors showed that higher complexity, due to a greater energy density rate, counteracts the positive effects of energy efficiency.
77 citations
TL;DR: A stepwise, refined, and practical analytical framework to model the microeconomic environmental rebound effect (ERE) stemming from cost differences of electric cars in terms of changes in multiple life cycle environmental indicators is presented.
Abstract: This article presents a stepwise, refined, and practical analytical framework to model the microeconomic environmental rebound effect (ERE) stemming from cost differences of electric cars in terms of changes in multiple life cycle environmental indicators. The analytical framework is based on marginal consumption analysis and hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA). The article makes a novel contribution through a reinterpretation of the traditional rebound effect and methodological refinements. It also provides novel empirical results about the ERE for plug-in hybrid electric (PHE), full-battery electric (FBE), and hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) cars for Europe. The ERE is found to have a remarkable impact on product-level environmental scores. For the PHE car, the ERE causes a marginal increase in demand and environmental pressures due to a small decrease in the cost of using this technology. For FBE and HFC cars, the high capital costs cause a noteworthy decrease in environmental pressures for some indicators (negative rebound effect). The results corroborate the concern over the high influence of cost differences for environmental assessment, and they prompt sustainable consumption policies to consider markets and prices as tools rather than as an immutable background.
76 citations
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper verified the energy rebound effect in China's urban and rural residential buildings based on the LA-AIDS theory, and further estimated the building energy conservation by counterfactual analysis.
75 citations
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper explored the impacts of marketization on energy rebound effect and found that about 20% of originally expected energy conservation from energy efficiency improvement would be rebounded in 2013.
75 citations