European policymakers are increasingly concerned about the unsatisfactory outcomes of efforts to harmonise economic growth and welfare with environmental quality. These efforts have often fallen short of expectations due to so-called rebound effects. While the relevance of rebound effects is widely recognized, the best way to establish their actual size is the object of intense debate in the literature. Moreover, various types of rebound effects have been identified by various existing disciplinary understandings. As a result, it is difficult to assess to which extend environmental policy goals were not achieved due to rebound effects, and how future policies and policy mixes can be designed in ways that minimise the impact of rebound effects.
Therefore, the EFFECT project departs from the following research questions: how can existing approaches to calculate rebound effects be improved in the context of environmental policy assessment?; To which extend existing environmental policies underperformed due to rebound effects?; and what would be effective environmental policies and policy mixes in the context of rebound effects? To answer these questions, this project aims at developing an innovative analytical framework for rebound effects that combines an interdisciplinary perspective with micro and macro-level aspects of rebound effects. In the context of the pursuit of a sustainable economic growth in Europe, this project can aid European policymakers in the design of effective environmental policies.
The EFFECT project will be jointly supervised by Prof. Paul Ekins (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/prof-paul-ekins) and Will McDowall (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/mr-will-mcdowall).
Effective environmental policies in Europe in the context of rebound effects 