Authors
Angela Druckman, Mona Chitnis, Steve Sorrell, Tim Jackson
Publication date
2011/6/1
Journal
Energy policy
Volume
39
Issue
6
Pages
3572-3581
Publisher
Elsevier
Description
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 …
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