Missing carbon reductions? Exploring rebound and backfire effects in UK households

By Angela Druckman, Mona Chitnis, S. Sorrell, Tim Jackson. Energy Policy, 2010

433 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the UK's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the UK Government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets. However, due to the rebound effect, only a portion of the GHG emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice. For example, replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels. But this frees up money that may be spent on, for example, purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation. Alternatively, the money may be put into savings. Since all of these options lead to GHG emissions, total GHG savings may be less than anticipated. Indeed, in some instances, emissions may increase--a phenomenon known as 'backfire'. We estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by UK households is approximately 34%. Targeting re-spending on goods and services with a low GHG intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12%, while re-spending on goods and services with a high GHG intensity leads to backfire. Our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower GHG intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/451b0680c80297a41976549afaaa1fe2d2e91cd4

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Citations in the corpus

The Rebound Effect and Energy Efficiency Policy (2016, background): “A third approach is to use income elasticities that are based on how consumers’ demand for goods changes over time as income rises (Druckman et al. 2011).”
“Rebound” Effects from Increased Energy Efficiency: A Time to Pause and Reflect (2013, methodology): “More recent research (e.g. Druckman et al., 2011) has challenged this conclusion, a point that we return to below.”
Estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for U.S. households with input-output analysis. Part 2: Simulation (2013, result): “Our indirect rebound estimates are likely to be lower than those of prior indirect rebound studies (Alfredsson, 2004; Chitnis et al., 2012; Druckman et al., 2011; Freire-Gonzalez, 2011; Girod and de Haan, 2010;Murray, 2011; Nässén and Holmberg, 2009) because of our focus on the U.S., which…”
How to deal with the rebound effect? A policy-oriented approach (2016, background): “Therefore, it is important to raise awareness in both households and businesses so that reductions in consumption for the improved products (direct effect) are not invested in environmentally intensive consumption categories (Maxwell et al., 2011; Nørgaard, 2008; Druckman et al., 2011).”
Transforming Consumption: From Decoupling, to Behavior Change, to System Changes for Sustainable Consumption (2015, methodology): “, strong sustainable consumption researchers argue convincingly for a fuller understanding and appreciation of the logics and decision processes of the actors—consumers, business, and government—and the systemic nature of so-called lock-in of unsustainable activity.”
Values, identity and pro-environmental behaviour (2014, background): “with the risk of ‘rebound’ (‘greener’ behaviour in one domain leading to less sustainable behaviour in another) undermining any gains (Crompton & Kasser, 2010; Druckman et al., 2011).”
Who rebounds most? Estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different UK socioeconomic groups (2014, methodology): “The study builds upon earlier analyses by Druckman et al. (2011) and Chitnis et al. (2013).”
Carsharing’s Life-Cycle Impacts on Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2016, background): “…Source(s) High Impact Source(s) Carsharing Market Potential (% of US adult population) 3.0% Schuster et al. (2005) 10.0% Shaheen et al. (2006) 26.0% Duncan (2011) % Reduction in Private Vehicles Owned 10.0% Cervero et al. (2007) 21.0% Zhou and Kockelman (2011) 49.0% Martin and Shaheen…”
Low carbon lifestyles: A framework to structure consumption strategies and options to reduce carbon footprints (2016, background): “…if there are no direct rebound effects when the consumer has voluntarily chosen to consume less of a speci ﬁ c good or service, options under this heading may lead to indirect rebound effects which will lower the environmental bene ﬁ ts of the relevant action (Druckman et al., 2011; Sorrell, 2007).”