Reconsidering the Role of Energy and Resource Productivity for Economic Growth, and Developing Policy Options for Capping Macro-Level Rebound Effects

The BMBF funded 3-year project focuses on the phenomenon that, despite the fact that significant progress in efficiency was achieved in the past 40 years, the overall consumption of energy and resources did not proportionately reduce. This might be due to macroeconomic rebound effects. But the consumption levels might have been also caused by other determinants of economic growth. Firstly, the project aims at an understanding of the relation between macroeconomic rebound effects and those other determinants of economic growth. It aims moreover to support the theoretical knowledge by statistical estimation of their significance for the energy and resource consumption (System knowledge). The second goal of the project is to develop political measures and instruments which effectively curtail macroeconomic rebound effects and which influence drivers of economic growth, and to examine their environmental and economic consequences (Orientation knowledge). Thirdly, the project aims at a development of politically feasible and rebound-proof instruments for the reduction of resource consumption in a close collaboration with non-scientific stakeholders within a
Policy Innovation Lab (Transformation knowledge).

Publications
Kern, F., Peuckert, J., Lange, S., Ahmann, L., Banning, M. & Lutz, C. (2022): Designing effective and acceptable policy mixes for energy transitions: Countering rebound effects in German industry. Energy Research & Social Science, 90, 102680, doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102680.
Ahmann, L., Banning, M. & Lutz, C. (2022): Modeling rebound effects and counteracting policies for German industries. Ecological Economics 197, 107432, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107432.
Lutz, C., Banning, M., Ahmann, L. & Flaute, M. (2021): Energy Efficiency and Rebound Effects in German Industry – Evidence from Macroeconometric Modeling. Economic Systems Research 34(3), pp. 253–272. DOI: 10.1080/09535314.2021.1937953.
Ahmann, L., Banning, M. & Lutz, C. (2021): Zusammenstellung der Modellierungsergebnisse der Politikmaßnahmensets zur Vermeidung makroökonomischer Rebounds. ReCap Arbeitsbericht 5, Osnabrück.
Berner, A., Lutz, C., Ahmann, L. & Banning, M. (2021): Rebound-Effekte in Unternehmen. Zum Zusammenspiel von Rebound-Effekten und Effizienzpolitik im industriellen Sektor. ReCap Policy Brief 3, Berlin.
Kern, F., Peuckert, J., Lange, S., Berner, A., Lutz, C., Banning, M. & Ahmann, L. (2021): Effizienzpolitik muss Reboundeffekte eindämmen, um Klimaziele zu erreichen. ReCap Policy Brief 2, Berlin.
Ahmann, L., Lutz, C. & Banning, M. (2020): Zusammenstellung vorläufiger Modellierungsergebnisse der Politikmaßnahmensets zur Vermeidung makroökonomischer Rebounds. ReCap Arbeitsbericht 3, Osnabrück.
Ahmann, L., Lutz, C., Kern, F., Lange, S. & Peuckert, J. (2020): Policy Maßnahmensets zur Eindämmung makroökonomischer Rebound-Effekte. ReCap Policy Brief 1, Berlin.
Banning, M. & Lutz, C. (2019): Rebound-Effekte in gesamtwirtschaftlichen Modellen – Ansätze zur Erfassung und Abbildung. ReCap Arbeitsbericht 2, Osnabrück.
Banning, M., Lange, S., Lutz, C., Berner, A., Kern, F., Peuckert, J., Santarius, T. & Silbersdorff, A. (2019): Economy-Wide Rebound Effects: State of the art, a new taxonomy, policy and research gaps. ReCap Discussion Paper 1, Berlin.
Banning, M. & Lutz, C. (2019): Rebound effects in macroeconomic models - Approaches to cover and reproduce. ReCap Discussion Paper 2, Osnabrück.
Lutz, C., Flaute, M., Ahmann, L. & Banning, M. (2019): How to catch the rebound effect in interindustry modelling. IIOA Conference Paper, Glasgow.