Du, Q.; Li, Y.; Bai, L. The Energy Rebound Effect for the Construction Industry: Empirical Evidence from China. Sustainability2017, 9, 803.
Du, Q.; Li, Y.; Bai, L. The Energy Rebound Effect for the Construction Industry: Empirical Evidence from China. Sustainability 2017, 9, 803.
Du, Q.; Li, Y.; Bai, L. The Energy Rebound Effect for the Construction Industry: Empirical Evidence from China. Sustainability2017, 9, 803.
Du, Q.; Li, Y.; Bai, L. The Energy Rebound Effect for the Construction Industry: Empirical Evidence from China. Sustainability 2017, 9, 803.
Abstract
As the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter, China has made substantial efforts to improve energy efficiency for decrease energy consumption, while the energy rebound effect determines its effectiveness. The embodied energy consumption of construction projects accounted for nearly one-sixth of the total economy's energy consumption in China. This paper is based on the logical relationship among capital input, technological progress, economic growth, and energy consumption, adapting an alternative estimation model to estimate the energy rebound effect for the construction industry in China for the first time. Empirical results in our paper reveal that the energy rebound effect for the construction industry in China is about 59.5% for the period of 1990–2014. The results indicate that the energy rebound effect does exist in China’s construction industry and it presented a fluctuating declining trend. This implies that half of the energy savings by technological progress is achieved. In addition, China’s government should implement proper energy pricing reforms and energy taxes to promote the sustainable development of China’s construction industry.
Keywords
construction industry; energy rebound effect; sustainability; solow remainder; ridge regression
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
