Jevons Paradox & the Rebound Effect with Leon Simons

Datum: 2-9-2024

In this Climate Chat episode, we discuss Jevons Paradox and the related Rebound Effect. Jevons Paradox says the the more efficiently a resource is used, the more that resource will be used in total.

This presents a challenge for climate solutions because it says that improving the energy efficiency of products will not necessarily result in lower energy use (in total) and may actually increase energy use! The Rebound Effect says that increases in efficiency do not result in the expected energy savings because the lower costs of using the more efficient product results in more total use of the product or that savings are used to buy or use other products or services that result in more energy usage than expected. The main difference between the Rebound Effect and Jevons Paradox is that the Rebound Effect applies to any reduction in expected energy savings while Jevons Paradox normally applies to reductions in energy savings that are more than 100% (i.e., energy increases). Efficiency improvements that result in increased total energy use are referred to as "Backfire."

Jevons Paradox on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_...

Rebound Effect on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound...)

We can stop the Rebound Effect by taxing the thing we don't want to expand. In the case of fossil fuels, this means putting a price on carbon. The best way to do that is the "Fee and Dividend" policy. Here is my TEDx talk on that: • A simple and smart way to fix climate...