To slow down climate change, societies tend to focus on two solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: improving energy efficiency and developing and using renewable energy sources. A new study compared every U.S. state’s CO2 emissions with their investment in the two solutions from 2009 to 2016. The authors found no statistically significant difference between energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy development — both resulted in some reductions in CO2 emissions when considering all societal sectors, although renewable energy investment was slightly more impactful.
A new study by University of Utah researchers compared every U.S. state’s CO2 emissions with their investment in the two solutions from 2009 to 2016.The authors found no statistically significant difference between energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy development — both resulted in some reductions in CO2 emissions when considering all societal sectors, although renewable energy investment was slightly more impactful.
The findings revealed two surprises. First, state governments’ policies aimed at helping consumers improve energy efficiency had no effect on CO2 emission. Rather, states with economy-wide lower energy input per each unit of economic output (per capita gross domestic product, GDP) emitted lower levels of the greenhouse gas. Second, investment in renewable energy sources led to increased levels of CO2 emissions in the residential sector. These outcomes are evidence of a well-known phenomenon called the rebound effect that describes when people respond to saving energy by consuming more, negating the benefit of CO2 reduction.
«Lots of energy analysts tend to look at emissions as a technical problem that requires a technical solution; build more efficient vehicles, build homes to use less energy. What they don’t consider is human behavior. If you’ve got a hybrid car, the money you save on gas might allow you to drive more,» said the study’s lead author Lazarus Adua, assistant professor of sociology at the U. «My goal here is to let policymakers know that this rebound effect is a problem, and they need to address it. If you’re only paying attention to improving efficiency and investing in renewables, you’re not going to solve the problem.»
The study was published on Aug. 25, 2021, in the journal Global Environmental Change. Karen Xuan Zhang and Brett Clark of the Department of Sociology at the U were co-authors.
Energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy production
To assess each state’s energy efficiency improvement investment, the authors used two measures. The first is the American Council on an Energy-Efficient Economy’s scoring of U.S. states on policy initiatives aimed at improving energy efficiency in households or other buildings. The second is the state’s economic output per each British Thermal Unit (BTU) of energy consumed. This reveals how efficiently the economy uses energy to produce every dollar of GDP. To assess renewable energy production, Adua and his team calculated the proportion of a state’s total energy consumption from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal or hydropower.
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