Abstract
The rebound effect refers to the phenomenon that individuals tend to consume more energy in the face of energy efficiency improvement, which reduces the expected energy-saving effect. Previous empirical studies on the rebound effect of regions and sectors do not provide microscopic evidence. To fill this gap, we use China’s firm-level data to estimate the rebound effect in China’s manufacturing subsectors, providing a detailed picture of China’s rebound effect across different sectors and different regions in 2001–2008. Results show that a partial rebound effect robustly appears in all industries, and the disparity between sectors is quite broad, ranging from 43.2% to 96.8%. As for the dynamic rebound effect of subsectors, most subsectors present an upward trend, whereas few subsectors show a clear downward trend. As a whole, the declined trend of the rebound effect is driven by the descent of minority sectors with high energy consumption and high energy-saving potential. In addition, we find that the disparity of the rebound effect across sectors is more significant than that across regions.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 72074184, 71922015, and 71773075), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21ZDA084), Shanghai Soft Science Research Program (Grant No. 22692103400), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 20720201016).
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Zhou, Z., Wang, L., Du, K. et al. Energy rebound effect in China’s manufacturing sector: Fresh evidence from firm-level data. Front. Eng. Manag. 9, 439–451 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-022-0210-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-022-0210-8