This thesis is submitted as a PhD by Publication. Part A provides an overview of the thesis and summarises its context, research questions, methodological approach and key findings. Part B is a collection of nine, first-named academic papers. The thesis addresses two highly complex and controversial questions within energy policy, namely the nature and magnitude of ‘rebound effects’ from energy efficiency improvements and the extent and rate of depletion of global oil resources. Both of these questions are critically important to the development of a sustainable energy system and both are the subject of long-standing and highly polarised disputes. The thesis adapts, develops and applies a common methodology for reviewing the evidence on these questions, supplements this with original primary research and syntheses the results in a way that improves understanding and provides new insights. The thesis includes four papers examining different aspects of rebound effects and four examining different aspects of global oil depletion. Given the complexity of the chosen topics, the papers cover a wide range of questions, issues and approaches. Collectively the papers: clarify relevant definitional and conceptual issues; evaluate competing methodological and analytical techniques; appraise the methodological quality of empirical studies; identify levels of uncertainty and potential sources of bias; develop simple mathematical models; conduct statistical analyses of primary data; compare and evaluate the results of modelling studies; and synthesise results from multiple research areas to provide novel insights into poorly understood phenomena. A ninth paper evaluates the strengths and limitations of systematic review techniques when applied to complex, policy-relevant questions such as these. The thesis draws two main conclusions. First, rebound effects are frequently large and can substantially reduce the energy and carbon savings achieved from improved energy efficiency. Second, there is a significant risk that the global production of conventional oil will enter sustained decline before 2020. These conclusions run counter to conventional wisdom and have significant implications for public policy. The thesis also shows how the methodology of systematic reviews can be adapted and modified to make a valuable contribution to energy and climate policy research.

Anthropogenic climate change is a global problem that affects every country and each individual. The UK introduced its own carbon budgets, aiming to reduce its GHGs by 80% by 2050 compared with 1990 levels. The United Nations Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015 came to an agreement on limiting the global average temperature rise to "well below 2oC". It has been argued that the Paris Agreement requires deeper and more rapid emission reductions than current UK targets. The CO2 emissions from energy use by households account for almost a third of total CO2 emissions in the UK in recent years. The research aims to explore drivers of high energy consumption in order to identify where there may be intervention points that can achieve a greater level of emission reductions than conventional policy tools in the short to medium term. Previous studies have focused on either socioeconomic factors or practices to explore household energy consumption and CO2 emissions, but have not integrated both aspects to identify drivers behind high energy consumption. To address this gap in the literature, the research applies an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the interconnected factors impacting on household energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Socioeconomic characteristics and practice theory are combined in order to understand how and why energy is consumed at home, and specifically to explore high energy consumption and related CO2 emissions at the household level. Both quantitative cluster analyses based on household socioeconomic factors and qualitative data collection and thematic analyses on energy-related practices at home have been conducted in the research. Results indicate that various combinations of socioeconomic factors and dwelling-related characteristics can collectively lead to high CO2 emissions from energy use at home. Nonetheless, these characteristics cannot fully explain why some households are high emitters, as they still share a variety of similar characteristics with average households in the UK. Besides household socioeconomic factors and dwelling-related characteristics, the materials, procedure and meanings of practices; people's discursive and practical consciousness; and dominant meanings of the home, also collectively influence energy use at home. Policymakers should consider not only improving the energy efficiency of the dwelling and appliances, but also how people's hidden knowledge and routines allow or constrain the performance of energy-related practices, as well as how the existing meanings of practices and dominant meanings of the home can be supported with less energy input and associated CO2 emissions. Energy efficiency related policies could focus more on how to reduce the interruption to people's everyday lives and the level of space loss. Policymakers could also work with different stakeholders, such as local authorities and community groups to tackle the challenges of installation of double gazing, cavity wall and roof insulation in the private rented sector. Policies for promoting renewable electricity micro-generation in the UK can target more effectively the high emitters who are at home most weekdays, as they can be more flexible in rearranging their use of appliances in daily routines and potentially reduce energy consumption during the peak time. In addition to combining a novel range of approaches and perspectives to understanding energy use at home, the research makes a contribution to achieving deeper and more rapid emission reductions in the short to medium term in the UK by focusing on the drivers behind high energy consumption at home than average energy consumption in general.

Suppressing unwanted stereotypes ironically leads suppressors to think and behave in a more stereotypical manner than controls. Suppression studies typically test for rebound with target groups that perceivers may feel entitled to stereotype (e.g., skinheads) or that are associated with negative stereotypes (e.g., African Americans). In contrast, stereotypes of the aid-related poor are expected to contain ambivalent content: a mix of both positive and negative stereotypic information. Since this content may affect perceivers’ cognitive processes of stereotype activation, application, suppression and rebound, it was expected that stereotype rebound effects (e.g., judgments and behaviours) for the aid-related poor would differ from those reported for previously tested target groups. Stereotype rebound effects for this target group might occur as: a) positive responses, such as approach behaviour or positive judgments, b) occur as negative responses, such as avoidance behaviour or negative judgments, or c) not be evidenced in suppressors’ responses. Four experiments were designed to explore the effects of stereotype suppression, and to examine stereotype rebound effects in perceivers who suppressed (i.e., were asked not to think stereotypically) their stereotypes of the aid-related poor. In the first experiment (N = 29), there was no evidence of stereotype suppression in suppressors’ essays about a poor African youth. In the second experiment (N = 24) however, suppressors sat significantly closer than controls to the alleged seat of an African student (a reverse rebound effect). In the third experiment (N = 35), suppressors again showed evidence of approach behaviour when interacting with African poor individuals, and demonstrated avoidance behaviour when interacting with African wealthy individuals. Experiment 4 (N = 70) used implicit measures of stereotyping; participants were asked to name the ink colour of stereotypic and nonstereotypic trait words presented immediately following two category primes. Suppressors tended to be faster than controls to name the colour of positive trait words and slower than controls to name the colour of negative trait words that were stereotypic of the African poor target group. This difference in response times implies that, for suppressors only, the salient stereotype features being primed were positive rather than negative; thus eliciting a positive rebound effect. Stereotype rebound effects may therefore not always be evidenced by higher levels of negative or prejudiced responding in suppressors, but can also appear as positive evaluations and approach behaviours. Findings from this research (i.e., stereotype rebound effects can be either positive or negative) have important implications for those viewers of aid advertisements who suppress unwanted stereotypes, especially as rebound effects for the aid-related poor are associated with unconscious behavioural and cognitive responses.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the quantitative potential to reduce energy requirements and CO2 emissions through changed patterns of consumption, given unchanged levels of consumption expenditure. The thesis question is analysed using a systems analysis approach which in this case means that life cycle assessment data on energy requirements and CO2 emissions related to household consumption are combined with a financial and behavioural analysis to make sure that the budget constraint is kept and that both the first and second order effects of adopting a green consumption pattern are analysed. The budget constraints are kept using a general linear model. By using marginal propensities to spend to direct the reallocation of saved or deficit money calculated utility is maintained as far as possible. Further, investigations explore the impact of individual household demographic characteristics and geographic context on household consumption patterns, energy requirements and CO2 emissions. The key result of this thesis is that changed household behaviour, choosing “green“ products and energy efficient technology will not make a big difference. What can be achieved in the short time perspective by adopting an almost completely green consumption pattern and energy efficient technology is a reduction of energy requirements by around 8% and CO2 emissions by around 13%. With a longer time perspective and further technological change that provides additional possibilities to move consumption patterns in a greener direction, the effect on energy requirements and CO2 emissions is still fairly small. By 2020, the potential to reduce energy requirements is around 13% and CO2 emissions around 25%. In the most extreme scenario (2050), the scope for reducing energy requirements is 17% and for CO2 emissions 30%. All these reductions will be outpaced by growth in income almost as soon as they are implemented. Of policy relevance the results reveal that very limited impact can be expected by a policy relying on greener consumption patterns, whether adopted voluntarily or as a result of incentives such as tax changes. Such a policy cannot achieve more than a small and temporary reduction to growth in energy requirements and CO2 emissions. It is also shown that, prescribing specific consumption patterns as a means of reducing energy requirements and CO2 emissions has to be done with care. This is illustrated by one of the experiments in which adopting a partly green consumption pattern, a green diet, in fact increased total energy requirements and CO2 emissions. This, and the results of all the other experiments show the importance of applying a systems approach. It demonstrates that life cycle data alone are irrelevant for assessing the total effects of adopting green consumption patterns. Further research on the potential to reduce energy requirements and CO2 emissions thus primarily needs to better capture system wide effects rather than to improve on, and fine tune the measurement of the energy requirements and CO2 emissions related to individual products.

ICT has become so deeply embedded into the fabric of European society – in economic, political, and socio-cultural narratives, practices, and structures – that it has been constructed as holding tremendous untapped and inestimable potential for instigating and unleashing far-reaching societal transformation, addressing key societal challenges, and solving all societal problems. It has recently been seen, given its ubiquity, as a critical driver and powerful catalyst for sustainable urban development due to its potential to enable substantial energy savings and GHG emissions reductions in most urban sectors, especially buildings. However, related to this ubiquity, there are also a lot of visions (of limited modern applicability), hopes, myths, fallacies, and oxymora, which applies for the environmental subsystem of information society where debates focus on whether ICT can advance environmental urban sustainability. There are intricate relationships and tradeoffs among the multidimensional effects of ICT for the environment that flow mostly from the use and application of ICT – e.g. energy efficiency technology - throughout the urban sphere. Regardless, the technological orientation and framing of the sustainable city and the green economy has gained dominance in European society and become prevalent in what has come to be identified or known as the discourse of ICT for sustainable urban development (ICT4SUD). The aim of this study is to carry out a critical reading of the social construction of ICT4SUD, the underlying ideology about the ICT potential in advancing environmental urban sustainability. To achieve this aim, a Foucauldian-Faircloughian discursive approach is employed to examine the selected empirical material. This approach consists of nine stages: (1) surface descriptors and contextual elements; (2) historical-diachronic dimension; (3) epistemic and cultural frames; (4) discursive constructions and discourses; (5) social actors and framing power; (6) discursive strategies; (7) discursive mechanisms; (8) political practice, knowledge, and power; and (9) ideological standpoints.As a scholarly discourse, ICT4SUD is inherently part of and influenced by economic, societal, and political structures, and produced in social interaction. ICT4SUD is thus neither paradigmatic nor value-free, but rather socio-politically situated. It is shaped by cultural frames that are conventionalized by European society and attuned to its values, and it is a matter of a pre-intellectual space where ICT and sustainability constitute salient defining factors of the dominant configuration of knowledge, institutions, and material forces of European society. Indeed, ICT4SUD is impacted by earlier representations of reality and how they were reproduced in relation to the significance of discursive constructions of ICT and sustainability issues in the broader context of European culture. Moreover, the ICT4SUD discourse plays a major role in (re)constructing the image of the ICT industry as a social actor and in defining its identity and relation with other constituents of society, in that it is relocated new roles and attributed new societal missions. The dominant framing of the reports is clearly the one advanced by the ICT industry: it is constituted into the main definer of the represented reality. Further, positioning the ICT industry as the driver of the low-carbon city/economy aids the construction of an image of leadership in creating a low carbon society. The reports’ construction of energy efficiency technology is a powerful legitimation of the ICT industry’s views and actions. In addition, the ICT4SUD discourse is exclusionary, namely a number of facts and issues pertaining to structural, indirect, and systemic effects of ICT and the associated rebound effects are left out, concealed, or neglected. Also, the discourse is inclined to be deterministic, i.e. it postulates that ICT, supported by policy, will achieve SUD while it falls short in considering social behaviour and socio-economic relationships. It moreover tends to be rhetorical – that is, it promises environmentally SUD without really having a holistic strategy to achieve that goal. Furthermore, given the scientific discourse and the legitimation capacity of computing, climatology, and sustainability indicators, one can subsume a range of social and political effects under the category of discourse mechanisms through which ICT4SUD operates, which both show the power of discourse and potentially empower the ICT industry and its cohorts. There are different justifications for the development of energy efficiency technology in relation to decision-making processes. Plus, politics, as a consequence of its interaction with ICT4SUD, forces, though different mechanisms, the emergence and development of the ICT4SUD discourse, which is, simultaneously, influenced by the power/knowledge relations established in European society that bounds or expands its success. Finally, as to ideological reproduction, the ICT4SUD discourse reconstructs cultural claims, conveys ideological messages, and reproduces and legitimizes power structures.