Abstract
In response to President Obama’s announcement on tougher fuel-efficiency standards and the subsequent prediction of the potential reduction in oil demand, the Numbers Guy from Wall Street Journal wrote on May 27, 2009 : “…..But what if drivers who find that they can go longer on a tank of gas drive more? Would all that additional driving cancel out the environmental benefits the Obama administration is seeking?”
The Wall Street Journal is not the only mainstream medium to touch on the rebound topic in the recent history. There is talk of rebound in the popular media that is hard to miss, and the question they all ask is simple and valid: are the measures taken to promote energy efficiency and reduce the CO2 emission as effective as they are believed to be?
This question is at the heart of the discussion on the “Rebound Effect”. This talk will present the basics of rebound phenomenon and the current state of the debate through the discussion of some recent research findings.
Biography
Sheetal Gavankar graduated with a B.S. in Physics from St. Xavier’s College under the University of Bombay (now University of Mumbai), India in 1990, and a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from University of Pune, India in 1991. After working in the print media for the next few years, she came to the U.S. where she completed an M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX in 1997 and worked for Texas Instruments (Dallas) and Xilinx, Inc (San Jose) as an engineer and product manager.
In 2008 Ms Gavankar left the semiconductor industry to pursue to her long standing interest in industrial set-ups and environment. She joined the Bren School in the fall of 2009 as a Ph.D. student in the field of Industrial Ecology with Dr. Roland Geyer as her advisor. More specifically, she is interested in applying a systems-based multidisciplinary approach (environment, economy and technology) to understand the “behavior” of industrial systems in order to reduce the environmental impact from production and consumption, and enhance the sustainability of processes.
Roland Geyer
Roland Geyer is Assistant Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara. Prior to this appointment he held positions as research fellow at the Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, UK, research associate at the Centre for the Management ofEnvironmental Resources, INSEAD, France, and consultant in financial risk management for AMS (now part of CGI) in Germany. Since 2000 he has worked with a wide range of governmental organizations, trade associations, and companies on environmental sustainability issues. In his research he uses the approaches and methods of industrial ecology, such as life cycle assessment and material flow analysis, to assess pollution prevention strategies based on recycling, reuse, and material and technology substitution.
Roland also combines these approaches with research methods from operations management and other fields in order to study the relationship between environmental performance, economic viability, and technical and operational feasibility of pollution prevention strategies. His overarching goal is to help develop the science and knowledge necessary to reduce the environmental impact from industrial production and consumption. Roland has a graduate degree in physics from the Technical University Berlin and a PhD in engineering from the University of Surrey.