Energy Sufficiency—Managing the rebound effect
New ECEEE concept paper co-authored by CUSP researchers Birgitta Gaterleben and Angela Druckman
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Energy Sufficiency—Managing the rebound effect
The potential for energy sufficiency to reduce energy use and emissions is gaining increasing attention. One reason is that improvements in energy efficiency have not reduced energy consumption by as much as anticipated. This is partly due to various rebound effects—namely behavioural responses to improved energy efficiency that offset some of the potential energy and emission savings.
A new report by former SLRG colleagues Steve Sorrell, and CUSP researchers Brigitta Gatersleben and Angela Druckman examines the nature of these effects, and asks the question: can greater use of sufficiency policies and actions help to tackle negative rebounds, or will it create rebounds itself?
The report explores the relationship between rebound effects and energy sufficiency, using both economics and social psychology and arguing that both these perspectives are needed to fully understand the effects. It looks at the evidence for the nature and size of rebound effects from improved energy efficiency and suggests ways in which energy sufficiency actions could reduce them. It also investigates how energy sufficiency actions can lead to rebound effects of their own and examines how careful policy design can be used to minimise or avoid increased energy use where this is not improving wellbeing.>
Links
- You can download the paper on energysufficiency.org.
- Mapping rebound effects from sustainable behaviours, an SLRG research project with Steve Sorrell, Angela Druckman, Mona Chitnis and Tim Jackson.
Giorgos Kallis’ Degrowth | A review by Sarah Hafner
Giorgos Kallis’ Degrowth | A review by Sarah Hafner
Rethinking our economic paradigms is an urgent and fundamentally important task. Giorgos Kallis’ new book Degrowth is adding to a joint endeavour of postgrowth thinking, CUSP PhD candidate Sarah Hafner finds. It offers both, a justification as well as a vision and new imaginary for the degrowth agenda.
Rethinking the prevailing economic ‘growth’-paradigm in economics is an urgent and fundamentally important task. Equally important is it to think about ‘socially and environmental sustainable’ alternatives and the transition towards these alternative/s (see Jackson, 2017; Martínez-Alier et al., 2012).
Giorgos Kallis, Research Professor at the University Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and well-known for his contributions in the degrowth literature, opts exactly for this endeavour in his new comprehensive summary and thought-provoking book Degrowth. This blog provides a short review.
Economic approach / Economic system
The author himself situates his work at the interface of two approaches: the economic and the political or utopian one. This is also how this book review is structured.
The reader of the book learns quickly that in Kallis’ perspective degrowth “is not an economic theory, much less of an economic contradiction” and so, he clarifies from the beginning that his book doesn’t engage with tackling traditional growth and economic theories (see e.g. Lange, 2018 for an overview on the latter; as well as e.g. Jackson, 2017 and Jackson and Victor, 2018 for economic modelling work on this topic), and is focusing instead on the interrelations of the economic system with the political and societal/social system.
Degrowth, as developed in the book, stands in clear contrast to the prevailing capitalist system (see also Foster, 2011 or Jackson, 2017); well-being as a function (up to some level) of income and relative income (i.e. related to status and positional consumption; e.g. Kahnemann and Daeton, 2010; Easterlin, 1975), Kallis argues, is not a universal fact, but heavily related to the emphasized values in the current (capitalist) system.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
