(TED Talk) Amory Lovins: A 50-year plan for energy

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54. Grist: Does the rebound effect matter for policy?

http://grist.org/energy-efficiency/does-the-rebound-effect-matter-for-policy/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Does the rebound effect matter for policy?[/font]

By David Roberts

[font size=3]In my last post, I offered a brief introduction to the “rebound effect,” by which energy demand, after dropping in response to energy efficiency gains, “rebounds” back upward as the money/energy savings are spent elsewhere. The academic literature shows that rebound effects are real and in some cases substantial, but highly context-dependent and devilishly hard to measure. Go read that post for background.

The question for today’s post is: So what? What are the policy implications?

Discussion of rebound effects is often taken to be “anti-efficiency,” so the most important conclusion to emphasize is: The existence of rebound effects does not harm the case for energy efficiency. In any way. At all. Even a little.

Again: There is no argument for energy efficiency that is rendered moot or false by the existence of rebound effects. The rebound effect is an interesting side effect of energy efficiency but is in no case an argument against pursuing it. Efficiency is good for economic productivity; it is progressive, in that it helps the poorest (who spend the highest percentage of their income on energy) the most; it is labor-intensive, so it creates jobs; and it reduces conventional pollutants. No matter what the rebound literature ends up concluding, it remains true that we radically underinvest in energy efficiency relative to what is environmentally or economically optimal.

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