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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
150671
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| Summary/Abstract |
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and several nations suggest that energy efficiency is an effective strategy for reducing energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Skeptics contend that because efficiency lowers the price of energy and energy services, it may actually increase demand for them, causing total emissions to rise. While both sides of this debate have researched the magnitude of these so-called rebound effects among end-use consumers, researchers have paid less attention to the conditions under which direct rebounds cause CO2 emissions to rise among industrial producers. In particular, researchers have yet to explore how organizational and global factors might condition the effects of efficiency on emissions among power plants, the world's most concentrated sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Here we use a unique dataset containing nearly every fossil-fuel power plant in the world to determine whether the impact of efficiency on emissions varies by plants' age, size, and location in global economic and normative systems. Findings reveal that each of these factors has a significant interaction with efficiency and thus shapes environmentally destructive rebound effects.
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| 2 |
ID:
136249
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| Summary/Abstract |
Under its recently proposed Clean Power Plan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives states several “building blocks” to choose from to reduce their power plants’ CO2 emissions, including improving plants’ heat rate efficiency. However, skeptics suggest that precisely because efficiency enhances electrical output, it may reduce power plants’ emission rates but increase their emission levels. Using the EPA’s new Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) data, this paper conducts the first analysis of the effect of thermal efficiency on the rate and level at which individual power plants emit carbon dioxide. Consistent with the arguments of skeptics, we find that while efficiency lowers CO2 emission rates, it actually increases CO2 emission levels. In suggesting to states that improving efficiency is one of the best systems of emission reductions, therefore, the EPA needs to consider whether more efficient plants are subject to such “rebound effects.”
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