energy consumption
The Ryan Consumption Tax and the Environment
One of the interesting elements of Paul Ryan’s budget plan is the proposal for an 8.5% consumption tax to replace the corporate income tax. Consumption taxes, like the European VAT, have well-known pluses and minuses, described in a Brookings discussion. They are appealing to economists because they encourage saving. As the European example shows, they …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Very Hungry City
No — not a children’s book for an urban environmentalist. A grown-up book published just yesterday for anyone interested in urban environmentalism, by the University of Vermont’s Austin Troy. Here’s the blurb from the publisher (Yale): As global demand for energy grows and prices rise, a city’s energy consumption becomes increasingly tied to its economic …
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CONTINUE READINGAppeals to Conserve Energy May Backfire with Conservatives
UCLA economists Dora Costa and Matt Kahn just released this paper about whether “nudges” from a utility to conserve energy — in this case information about energy consumption relative to neighbors and relative to earlier time periods — succeed in lowering usage. Though the authors find that many factors contribute to lowered consumption, including whether a …
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