rebound effect

Energy Efficiency Concept via Shutterstock

Trying to put the rebound effect for energy efficiency in its rightful place is like playing a game of wack-a-mole. Predictably every couple of years, someone new discovers the counter-intuitive appeal of showing how more efficient energy policies may lead to more energy use. Wham! Told you there’s something wrong with those clean-car standards. Well, not so fast.[read more]

With apologies for the dueling cliches in today's title, that image conveys the conflicting messages I received from a pair of events on the topic of energy efficiency this week. Yesterday I watched a panel discussion on energy efficiency finance, part of the valuable First Wednesday series of seminars from Resources for the Future in D....[read more]

Two recent articles have argued that as the energy efficiency of products improve, it becomes less expensive to operate these products and as a result, people increase their use of these products, increasing energy use and potentially wiping out the energy savings caused by the efficiency gains. In “Solid-State Lighting: An Energy-...[read more]

The New Yorker has done much to introduce non-scientists to scientific thinking (eg, Kolbert's articles on climate change), but now aims to confuse us, or so it appears, by presenting real concerns in a too simplistic manner. David Owen's recent article discusses Jevons Paradox in The Efficiency Dilemma (subscription required) has been...[read more]

By: John K. Norris, Contributing Writer to MyEnergySolution.comRecently, Michael Shellenberger, President of the Breakthrough Institute, posted an article by a leading energy economist, Harry Saunders - one of the authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Physics, explaining why energy efficiency does not decrease energy...[read more]

The Breakthrough Institute has midwived another denier myth with Jesse Jenkins' Michael Shellenberger's introduction to a blog post, “Why Energy Efficiency Does Not Decrease Energy Consumption.” The sensational headline caught my eye, and I found another unfortunate example of BTI’s sometimes incendiary approach to being provocative....[read more]

One of the most curious facts about energy is that economies use more of it even as they use it more efficiently. This strikes us as strange because many of us have heard that making cars, buildings, and factories more energy efficient is the key to cheaply and quickly reducing energy consumption, and thus pollution. But energy experts...[read more]

Energy writers who are in the green camp, continue to tout their belief in energy efficiency as a major tool in the effort to mitigate global warming. Nuclear critics like Amory Lovins have argued that efficiency produced "negawatts" make nuclear generated megawatts unneeded. Critics of the negawatts approach have noted that...[read more]