Copiello Sergio

The literature dealing with building energy efficiency has long since debated about the possible occurrence of the so-called Jevons’ paradox. In a nutshell, benefiting from energy savings due to transition to high-performance buildings, may the same savings cause a kind of rebound effect, by acting as an incentive to increase consumptions? A second paradox is that investments in energy-efficient solutions may contribute to energy price control, which in turn lends itself to make the same investments not profitable. A third paradox lies in the need to adopt energy-intensive materials in order to achieve substantial energy savings in operation; hence, sometimes, we just substitute a certain amount of operating energy with a more or less commensurate amount of embodied energy.

Available at : http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116305858

(Accessed on january 2017)