In energy conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect (or take-back effect) is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These responses diminish the beneficial effects of the new technology or other measures taken.
The rebound effect is generally understood to mean that due to secondary effects, improvements in resource efficiency such as energy efficiency provide smaller reductions in the consumption of energy and/or material resources than are expected.
Hence rebound effects have been considered on both the supply and demand sides of renewable electricity increases. The main sources of renewable electricity are hydroelectric, biomass, solar and wind power, but the current big increases are in the latter two.
Energy rebound occurs when potential energy savings are diminished due to post-adoption behaviour. Here we review empirical studies on how six behavioural regularities affect three energy-relevant decisions and ultimately rebound: adoption of energy-saving products or practices, their intensity of use and spending of associated monetary savings.
Among economists, a conventional way to think about rebound is that it results from optimal adjustment to observable and perfectly known changes in marginal costs due to improvements in the energy efficiency of a product or technology. In accordance with this, rebound can be estimated as the combination of price and income effects.
Four types of rebound effect are considered: economy-wide effects, transformational effects, frontier effects, and international rebound effects. The rebound effect occurs within socio-technical systems (Geels, 2004) such as transport, energy supply and demand, and industry.
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In energy conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect (or take-back effect) is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These responses diminish the beneficial effects of the new technology or other measures taken. A definition of the rebound effect is provided by Thiesen et al. (2008) as, "the rebound effect deals with the fact that improvements i…