Researchers are finding that gains in energy efficiency in industrialized countries may actually result in increased energy consumption.
This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as “energy rebound” is the subject of an article published by the Breakthrough Institute, a US-based progressive think-tank.
It would be interesting to know if anyone studying biomass energy solutions in developing countries has found evidence of increased biomass energy consumption at a household level following improved efficiency interventions.
Here’s the article:
One of the most curious facts about energy is that economies use more of it even as they use it more efficiently. This strikes us as strange because many of us have heard that making cars, buildings, and factories more energy efficient is the key to cheaply and quickly reducing energy consumption, and thus pollution.
But energy experts have never seen this as particularly mysterious. As energy historian Vaclav Smil writes, “Historical evidence shows unequivocally that secular advances in energy efficiency have not led to any declines of aggregate energy consumption.” A group of economists beginning in the 1980s went further, suggesting that increasing the productivity of energy would have the same effect on the economy as making labor more productive, and that making labor more productive meant using more energy – that is, supplementing and then altogether replacing human labor with energy.
Efficiency advocates have long dismissed the evidence that there is significant “rebound” of energy use, suggesting it is only roughly 5 percent and thus fairly inconsequential. But these advocates typically focus on the relatively direct behavioral changes at the household or business level that are easiest to measure, while others note that the most significant rebounds are indirect and occur in places we consumers never see – in the production of energy, of raw materials, and consumer goods — not in “end use” consumer products.
Below, one of the leading energy efficiency economists, Harry Saunders, explains why energy efficiency does not decrease energy consumption in the way we are conventionally under stand it. In the process, Harry clarifies the controversy over his recent co-authored study for the Journal of Physics reviewing 300 years of lighting history and the likely impacts of new solid-state lighting technologies (e.g. LEDs). Against the claims that new lighting technology will reduce energy consumption, Saunders and his colleagues found that they will likely increase it – greatly expanding the global use of lighting in the process, especially in developing countries. Saunders clarifies some important questions, and explains the basics of “the rebound effect.”
With the new study, rebound has firmly moved from the theoretical to the empirical, and the implications of it must now be dealt with by all of us who were counting on efficiency to be an easy way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
-Michael Shellenberger, President, Breakthrough Institute
Read Harry Saunders article: Why Energy Efficiency Does not Decrease Energy Consumption
English 
French 
There are very few studies to date that I am aware of direct rebound effects (e.g. the micro-scale rebounds at the level of individual households), compared to the relatively plentiful studies of direct rebound in developed countries. Two I am aware of are below:
E.O. Zein-Elabdin. Improved stoves in Sub-Saharan Africa: the case of the Sudan, Energy Economics, 19(4): 465-475. 1997
Joyashree Roy. The rebound effect: some empirical evidence from India, Energy Policy, 28(6-7): 433-438. 2000.
Roy 2000 looks at the impact of free distribution of solar lamps to Indian rural villages.
Zein-Elabdin 1997 does look specifically at rebound from improvements in biomass (charcoal) cooking stoves in the Sudan. It finds direct rebound of 42%, meaning that if the efficiency of charcoal-burning stoves doubles in efficiency, rather than save 50% of energy consumption, energy consumption would only fall 50%*(1-42%) = 29%.
That’s not a bad thing though from a development perspective, because what it means is a house that now uses its more efficient stove to get more welfare out of it. Assume the following:
A standard stove provides 100 units of welfare by burning fuel at an efficiency of 1 unit of welfare per unit of fuel. The household thus consumes 100 units of fuel.
If we double the efficiency of the stove, so it now gets 2 units of welfare for each unit of fuel, the standard assumption is that this cuts household fuel consumption to 50 units, while still providing 100 units of welfare.
In reality, the cost of producing each unit of welfare is now lower, and since the household wants more welfare and until now they’ve been too poor to get all the welfare out of the stove they want, they’re going to use the stove more to get more welfare now that they can afford it. That’s the direct rebound effect. If its 42% for charcoal stoves in Sudan, as the Zein-Elabdin (1997) study finds, then what would happen is this: the household would use the stove 42% more, getting 142 units of welfare from the stove. At the newer efficiency of 2 units of welfare per unit of fuel, they’d now consume 71 units of fuel, not 50, eroding 42% of the expected reduction in energy demand of 50 units of fuel (total energy consumption falls from 100 units to 71 units rather than 50 units).
The household’s welfare improves, their fuel use still drops, though not in half. Good news still from a developmental perspective, just not as good from a climate perspective as we might have initially thought. The greenhouse gas impact of charcoal harvest, production and consumption doesn’t fall by 50% when the efficiency of the stoves doubles, by rather falls by a more modest 29%.
Make sense? Sorry for the long-winded explanation!
Jesse Jenkins
Breakthrough Institute