This book does not give a prediction of what the efficiency will be of the energy use of industrial processes in the future. However, it does give an exploration of limits to the efficiency of current processes and an indication of what might be achieved if new technologies can be developed. At the Department of Science, Technology and Society of Utrecht University research had been done to the opportunities for improvement of the energy efficiency in the short term since the 1980's. This had resulted in a comprehensive database on energy efficient measures. This database and a possible application are described in Chapter 3 of this book. The use of the database induced new research themes around efficiency improvement, e.g. concerning barriers for implementation of measures. It was around 1993 that I did a preliminary study to the potential for efficiency improvement in the long term. Historical analysis had shown us that the short term potential stayed constant over the years. It seemed to be replenished by the introduction of new technologies. This lead to the question whether there are limits to the efficiency, taking into account both thermodynamic considerations and ideas on the development and dissemination of new technologies.

For multi-user PDF licensing, please contact customer service. Energy touches our lives in countless ways and its costs are felt when we fill up at the gas pump, pay our home heating bills, and keep businesses both large and small running. There are long-term costs as well: to the environment, as natural resources are depleted and pollution contributes to global climate change, and to national security and independence, as many of the world's current energy sources are increasingly concentrated in geopolitically unstable regions. The country's challenge is to develop an energy portfolio that addresses these concerns while still providing sufficient, affordable energy reserves for the nation. The United States has enormous resources to put behind solutions to this energy challenge; the dilemma is to identify which solutions are the right ones. Before deciding which energy technologies to develop, and on what timeline, we need to understand them better. America's Energy Future analyzes the potential of a wide range of technologies for generation, distribution, and conservation of energy. This book considers technologies to increase energy efficiency, coal-fired power generation, nuclear power, renewable energy, oil and natural gas, and alternative transportation fuels. It offers a detailed assessment of the associated impacts and projected costs of implementing each technology and categorizes them into three time frames for implementation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate bi-directional spillovers into residential and industrial sectors induced by energy efficiency improvement (EEI) in both the short- and long-term, and the impact of nesting structure as well as the size of elasticities of substitution of production and utility functions on the magnitude and the transitional dynamic of rebound effect. Developing a dynamic general equilibrium model, we demonstrate that residential EEIs spillovers into the industrial sector through the labor supply channel and industrial EEIs spill-overs into the residential sector through the conventional income channel. Numerical simulations calibrated on the U.S. suggest that not taking into account these spillover effects could lead to mis-estimate the rebound effect especially of residential sector EEIs. We also demonstrate how the size and the duration of the rebound effect depend on the value of elasticities of substitution. Especially, the elasticity of substitution between energy and non-energy consumption in household utility and the elasticity of substitution between physical capital and labor in production play a major role. Numerical simulations suggest that alternative sets of value for the elasticities of substitution may give sizable different patterns of rebound effects in both the short- and long-term. In policy terms, our results suggest that energy efficiency policies should be implemented simultaneously with rebound effect offsetting policies by considering short- and long-term wide-economy feedbacks. As a consequence, they recall for considering debates about what type of policy pathways is more effective in mitigating the rebound effect.

How can governments stimulate energy-efficiency improvement? This book analyzes environmental policy in the Netherlands to present a wealth of empirical results on the successes and failures of governmental initiatives in environmental policy. Discussion extends to such topics as free-rider effects of subsidies, the credibility of voluntary agreements, the art of regulation and the fate of research & development money.