Jevons’ Paradox revisited: The evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency

By S. Sorrell. 2009

715 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a9831f4399eab9e27e476dfd726cde07eab25fa

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Citations in the corpus

Long-Run Demand for Energy Services: Income and Price Elasticities over Two Hundred Years (2014, background): “” However, empirical studies have tended to find rebound effects that are smaller than what Jevons (1865) proposed, with energy consumption declining (all other things held constant), as a result of energy efficiency improvements (Greening, Greene, and Difiglio 2000; Sorrell 2009).”
The co-evolutionary relationship between Energy Service Companies and the UK energy system: Implications for a low-carbon transition (2013, background): “Subject to take-back or ‘rebound effects’ (Sorrell, 2009; Sorrell and Dimitropoulos, 2008) under which more efficient provision stimulates additional service demand, these reductions in primary energy consumption translate into reductions in GHG emissions, an achievement that forms an integral…”
The 21st century population-energy-climate nexus (2016, background): “Despite increasingly energy efficient vehicles, appliances, and consumer electronics throughout the developed world, rebound effects (Sorrell, 2009) and global economic development (Wolfram et al., 2012) have led to overall growth in global per capita energy consumption.”
Redefining green growth within planetary boundaries (2018, result): “The literature on this is large, but the empirical findings – particularly on macroeconomic rebound – are inconclusive (Santarius et al., 2016; Sorrell, 2009).”
“Rebound” Effects from Increased Energy Efficiency: A Time to Pause and Reflect (2013, background): “Useful insight from an engineering perspective is provided by Sorrell (2009).”
How to deal with the rebound effect? A policy-oriented approach (2016, background): “For instance, as Sorrell (2007), Herring and Sorrell (2009) note, the rebound effect tends to be larger for general purpose technologies, such as fuels, as they have strong complementarities with existing and new technologies and are transversally applied, leading to economy-wide rebound effects.”
Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: Radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world (2016, background): “By 2030, the company claims that ‘users’ will likely have emitted 20.9 million tonnes less of GHG emissions when compared to in the EU this figure does not account for the very real possibilities of services like Airbnb having a notable ‘rebound’ effect (Schor 2015; Sorrell, 2009).”
Understanding the Jevons paradox (2016, background): “Indirect effects may stem from how the money saved, either by producers or by consumers, from improvements in efficiency is spent, where the goods and services purchased with the savings necessitate resource consumption (Greening, Greene, and Difiglio 2000; Gillingham et al. 2013; Sorrell 2009).”
A Microeconomic Framework for Evaluating Energy Efficiency Rebound and Some Implications (2013, background): “Numerous papers have reviewed this literature, with Greening, Greene and Diﬁglio (2000) being the most widely referenced, and more recent contributions from Sorrell (2009), Jenkins, Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2011), and Azevedo, Sonnberger, Thomas, Morgan, and Renn (2012).”
Energy Conservation More Effective With Rebound Policy (2011, background): “…to believe, first, that an accurate estimation of rebound is very hard, and second, that many empirical studies of rebound have produced estimates that very likely underestimate the real effect, since upward biases are more noteworthy than downward ones (Polimeni et al. 2008; Sorrell 2007, 2009).”
Green economy and carbon markets for conservation and development: a critical view (2016, background): “The Jevons hypothesis holds that in a market economy, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other production inputs will decrease costs of production, resulting in lower prices and more induced demand for what is produced, leading in turn to more rather than less use of energy and materials ”
Environmental and climate innovation: Limitations, policies and prices (2013, neutral): “Stavins (2009) presents a similar reasoning.”
National and Sub-national Policies and Institutions (2014, background): “There may also be hidden benefits of regulations, 36 (Sorrell, 2009), such as improved amenities and “free drivers” (which would occur if nonparticipants 37 were induced to invest in energy efficiency because others in the program made such investments) 38 induced by regulation (Gillingham et al.”