The influence of energy efficiency on other natural resources use: An input-output perspective

Energy efficiency improvements reduce the costs of energy services, and under some circumstances, increase the available income. This generates an additional increase of consumption of goods and services that need additional energy to be produced, distributed and consumed. This effect is known as the indirect rebound effect in the literature. However, beyond this additional increase of global energy consumption, there is also a variation of the use of other natural resources due to the same mechanism. This effect, which we label as direct and indirect cross rebound effect, is generally not considered by academia nor policy-making when designing and implementing energy policies. This research conceptualizes this effect, develops a methodology for its estimation and provides estimates for the Spanish economy. Results show that an energy efficiency in households could increase the use of minerals and water, while reducing the use of energy, fossil fuels and metal ores in Spain. These reductions, however, are lower than the expected ones from an input-output perspective, leading to positive direct and indirect cross rebound effects: between 64.6% and 74.7% for energy (equivalent to direct and indirect rebound effect); 48%–63% for fossil fuels. 84%–89% for metal ores; backfire for non-metallic minerals (147%–134%) and extreme backfire for water (1191%–1628%)

Economic structure and energy savings from energy efficiency in households

When an energy efficiency improvement occurs at the household level, several mechanisms, grouped under the name of the rebound effect, increase the available income and consumption, increasing the total energy consumption of the economic structure. The present research analyses the links between energy efficiency improvements in households, consumption, and the economic structure in an input-output framework. We examine, from an empirical perspective, the relationship between energy efficiency improvements and the economic structure, and between the direct and the indirect rebound effect. The limits of the input-output methodology in assessing the direct and indirect rebound effect have been empirically tested with respect to efficiency improvements of electricity uses in households in Catalonia

Economy-wide rebound makes UK's electric car subsidy fall short of expectations

Environmental policies often underperform due to so-called rebound effects, namely behavioural and systemic responses to technical change leading to additional consumption and environmental damage. While evidence of rebound is abundant, studies generally focus on technical changes that are neither associated with specific technologies nor their production costs, making it difficult to connect these changes with the policies governing them. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes to combine a technology-rich model based on life cycle assessment and a behaviour-optimising model for the global economy based on computable general equilibrium modelling. This approach allows to quantify policy-induced economy-wide rebound effects for four relevant environmental impacts: climate change, acidification, photochemical ozone formation, and particulate matter. We apply this approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the United Kingdom's subsidy on electric cars. The results show notable economy-wide rebound effects associated with this subsidy: over or close to 100% (no environmental benefits) for acidification and particulate matter impacts, and a lower, yet notable, magnitude for climate change (~20–50%) and photochemical ozone formation (~30–80%) impacts. The results also show the important role of macro-economic effects from price changes, particularly how the shift from petrol to electricity triggered additional demand for cheaper petrol

Effects of Sex, Strain, and Energy Intake on Hallmarks of Aging in Mice.

Calorie restriction (CR) is the most robust non-genetic intervention to delay aging. However, there are a number of emerging experimental variables that alter CR responses. We investigated the role of sex, strain, and level of CR on health and survival in mice. CR did not always correlate with lifespan extension, although it consistently improved health across strains and sexes. Transcriptional and metabolomics changes driven by CR in liver indicated anaplerotic filling of the Krebs cycle together with fatty acid fueling of mitochondria. CR prevented age-associated decline in the liver proteostasis network while increasing mitochondrial number, preserving mitochondrial ultrastructure and function with age. Abrogation of mitochondrial function negated life-prolonging effects of CR in yeast and worms. Our data illustrate the complexity of CR in the context of aging, with a clear separation of outcomes related to health and survival, highlighting complexities of translation of CR into human interventions.pre-print5,92 M

Is there an association between ACTN3 R577X polymorphism and muscle power phenotypes in young, non-athletic adults?

We investigated the association between ACTN3 R577X polymorphism and jumping (vertical squat and counter-movement jump tests) and sprint ability (30 m dash) in non-athletic, healthy young adults [N=284 (217 male), mean (SD) age: 21 (2) years]. We analyzed the differences in the study phenotypes among ACTN3 R577X genotypes by one-way analysis of covariance before and after adjusting for sex, age, weight and height (confounders). We also compared the genotype and allele frequencies between those with the best and worst results in the aforementioned tests (≥90th vs 0.05). In summary, α-actinin-3 deficiency does not negatively influence the ability to generate explosive leg muscle power in a young non-athletic population

Reading ads, reading the world

This paper challenges the reductive notion of children as ‘efferent' readers who learn to decode written language in order to ‘take away’ knowledge. This anachronistic idea has become entrenched in current UK curriculum and education policy. However, it is well established that decoding letters and sounds is only one aspect of reading, that reading is cultural and that learning to read, not only words but also images and sounds, develops children's comprehension and criticality. With this in mind, I seek to share a process through which children and young people were able to develop as readers with a particular focus on the reading of media texts. I present an account of media education activity which focused on the way children read media texts, in the classroom. I suggest that with appropriate pedagogic and conceptual tools children develop as critical, cultural and collaborative readers of words, images, sounds and texts and thereby of the world

BiosecurID: a multimodal biometric database

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10044-009-0151-4A new multimodal biometric database, acquired in the framework of the BiosecurID project, is presented together with the description of the acquisition setup and protocol. The database includes 8 unimodal biomet- ric traits, namely: speech, iris, face (still images and videos of talking faces), handwritten signature and handwritten text (on-line dynamic signals and off- line scanned images), fingerprints (acquired with two different sensors), hand (palmprint and contour-geometry) and keystroking. The database comprises 400 subjects and presents features such as: realistic acquisition scenario, bal- anced gender and population distributions, availability of information about particular demographic groups (age, gender, handedness), acquisition of replay attacks for speech and keystroking, skilled forgeries for signatures, and com- patibility with other existing databases. All these characteristics make it very useful in research and development of unimodal and multimodal biometric systems.This work has been supported by the Spanish MEC under project TIC2003-08382-C05-01. The authors J. G. and R. R. are supported by FPU Fellowships from Spanish MEC, the authors M. R. F. and F. A.-F. are supported by FPI Fellowships from CAM, and J. F. is supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission

Beyond energy efficiency in evaluating sustainable development in planning and the built environment

The EU has set the policy target of reducing energy use by 20% by the year 2020. Therefore, a substantial consumption decrease is needed in the built environment sector. Despite the great energy efficiency improvements in households, recent energy consumption data analyses show that these targets will unlikely be reached. The general aim of this study is to point out the need to define new indicators and evaluation approaches in urban planning and the built environment which are based on the concept of ‘energy subsidiarity', focusing on local renewable resources rather than on current approaches based on energy efficiency. This concept correlates energy consumption with the energy supply from local renewable resources and is here proposed as the new urban planning evaluation approach toward a sustainable built environment. In the paper, the ‘Jevons Paradox' concept and the ‘energy rebound effect' phenomenon are used to demonstrate how current approaches based on energy efficiency, alone, cannot lead to a remarkable reduction of energy consumption. This is also supported by data on European energy consumption and European energy efficiency in the built environment. Finally, a number of well-known European ecological districts (‘eco-districts') are analysed in terms of sustainable energy strategy as well as energy efficiency and energy balance. This study shows that there is a contradiction between the purpose of some of the eco-districts to be low consumption (or low impacts), and the district renewable energy balance. Only a few of the analysed eco-districts are able to cover energy needs by using renewable energy obtained in the surrounding area. In most of the cases, the focus of the districts' activities is on energy efficiency. According to the ‘Jevons Paradox' and ‘energy rebound effect' paradigm, energy efficiency alone will unlikely lead to an effective reduction in resources' consumption. These results point out the need for a radical shift toward the development of new approaches in the assessment and management of the built environment for sustainabilit