The life cycle environmental rebound effect of battery electric vehicles in China: a provincial level analysis

In China, the promotion of electric vehicles is now in full swing, which is useful for carbon emission reduction. However, the rebound effect has a negative impact on the emissions reduction. In this regarding, through employing the three-stage linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system (LA-AIDS) model, well-to-wheel (WTW) method and input-output analysis (IOA) method, this article investigates the life cycle environment rebound effect (REC) of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) for 30 China’s provinces in three years, namely 2010, 2012 and 2015. The change of the REC to the variation of the cost of BEVs and the consumption expenditure is discussed as well. The estimation results indicate that the direct REC of BEVs in China ranges from 3% to 107%, while the indirect REC mainly fluctuates between −227% and 155%. Also, there are tremendous interprovincial differences in the REC of BEVs. The significant backfire effect can be found in these provinces, including Xinjiang, Qinghai, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, while some provinces show super conservation effects. As for sensitivity analysis, this article indicates that the direct REC is negatively correlated with the total cost and positively related with the consumption expenditure, while the indirect REC shows the converse result.