The Energy Rebound Effect Of China's Primary Energy-consuming Sectors:Modeling And Empirical Research

Improving energy efficiency has been regarded as one of the most effective way to reduce energy consumption and emissions,however,due to the energy rebound effect,the energy conservation brought about by improving energy efficiency may be not as much as expected.China's important energy-consuming sectors,such as Industry,transport and households are big consumers in terms of energy,and accounts for 68%,9%and 11%of the national total energy in 2015.The effectiveness of energy conservation and emission reduction in these important economic sectors has great impacts on whether a series of national targets can be achieved,so energy rebound effect measured in Chinese important industries takes on extra significance.To explore the energy rebound effect and its impacts in China's Industry,road passenger transport and residential electricity,this paper investigates the impact of output growth on industrial energy consumption in China's industrial sectors with Log-Mean Divisia Index Method(LMDI),and the energy rebound effect in aggregate Industry and Manufacturing combining with a panel data model during 1995-2012;and builds the dynamic panel model and dynamic panel quantile regression model to estimate the short-term and long-term direct energy rebound effect for road passenger transport in the whole country,eastern,central and western China,respectively,and the change of rebound effect with the transport demands based on the data of 30 provinces from 2003 to 2012;and uses the panel model and panel threshold model to investigate the average direct rebound effect of China's residential electricity consumption and the direct rebound effect under different kinds of regimes and its main influencing factors during 2000-2013.The results indicate that:First,energy rebound effect in China's aggregate Industry ranges from 20%to 76%during 1995-2012(or 39%on average).In particular,the energy rebound effect in Manufacturing is relatively smaller during the sample period(i.e.,28%on average).Second,the direct rebound effect does exist for road passenger transport and in the whole country,and the short-term and long-term direct rebound effect is 25.53%and 26.56%on average,respectively.Finally,the direct rebound effect of China's residential electricity consumption is about 72%on average.The increase in GDP per capita,the decrease in cooling degree days and rainfall may help to reduce the direct rebound effect.To sum up,energy efficiency improvement can save energy to some degree,whereas the energy rebound effect causing by it cannot be ignored because energy rebound effect is highly related to the effectiveness of energy conservation.This paper considers the size of energy rebound effect to avoid overestimating the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies when carrying out energy efficiency policies in China's typical industries,such as Industry,road passenger transport and residential electricity consumption.Also,the changing trend of energy rebound effect according to its characteristics in various industries and the approaches reducing energy rebound effect to promote the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies for energy conservation can be found in this paper.Besides,this paper improves the methods to estimate energy rebound effect,and discloses the law about variable energy rebound effect,and provides suggestions to reduce energy rebound effect.