Estimating the rebound effect of carbon dioxide emissions in Iran's transportation sector based on alternative efficiency energy scenarios

Considering the importance of investigating this issue, this research, focusing on the transportation sector, has estimated the return effect of improving energy efficiency (gasoline and diesel) on carbon dioxide emissions using the country's energy balance sheet data from 1367 to 1398. An ideal demand function (AIDS) and the method of apparently unrelated regressions (SUR) have been used to estimate the elasticities of demand functions. In the scenario of a 20% increase in energy efficiency, the return effect of the country's gasoline and diesel has been calculated between 65% and 73% (with an average of 68%). The 20% improvement in energy efficiency (gasoline and diesel) is again offset by higher consumption of gasoline and diesel and increased carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, the application of the self-explanatory vector model with time-varying coefficients (TVC-VAR) to investigate how the explanatory variables affect the return effect shows that the coefficients of the variables of urbanization growth and the growth of the number of vehicles in the fleet are positive and fluctuating over time. Also, the influence of the coefficients of the real price of gasoline and the real price of diesel has been negative and fluctuating over time. This key finding shows that the decrease in the real price of energy carriers over time increases the return effect. In the continuation of the sensitivity analysis of the rebound effect of carbon dioxide emission in the transportation sector of the country under the alternative scenarios of energy efficiency of the transportation sector.