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Horace Herring
Horace Herring is a visiting research fellow in the Energy & Environment Research Unit. He has worked in the area of energy efficiency for the last 25 years, and his main research area is on the 'rebound' or 'take back' effect: the macroeconomic impacts and policy implications of promoting energy efficiency. He also investigates the feasibility of sustainable consumption, especially by consuming less through lifestyle changes. He has an interest in environmental history and turned his PhD thesis into the book From Energy Dreams to Nuclear Nightmares.
Contact Information
Email: h.herring@open.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1908 654633
Fax: +44 (0)1908 654052
Room: S0035d, Venables building
Selected Publication:
Horace Herring, Editor. Living in a Low-Carbon Society. Palgrave Macmillan , 2012
Horace Herring, Energy Efficiency, the Rebound, and the Steady State Society. Paper to Green Economics Conference, Oxford, 20 July 2012 [pdf]
Horace Herring and Steve Sorrell, editors. Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Consumption: The Rebound Effect. Palgrave Macmillan 2008.
Horace Herring, The Rebound Effect: Efficiency, Sufficiency And The Meaning Of Life, Talk to Sustainable Technology Group, the Open University, January 2008. [pdf]
Horace Herring & Robin Roy. Technological innovation, energy efficient design and the rebound effect. Technovation 27 (2007): 194-203.
Horace Herring, From Energy Dreams to Nuclear Nightmares. Charlbury, Oxon: Jon Carpenter 2005.
Current Projects
Energy Policy. Examining the 'rebound' or 'take back' effect: that is whether improved energy efficiency (at the micro level) leads to reduced energy consumption (at the macro level). Member of the Advisory Group for the Rebound Project--a Technology and Policy Assessment being undertaken by the UKERC.
Currently a member of the People Centred Eco-Design (PCED) research project by the Design Innovation Group which looks at why consumers adopt--and do not adopt--energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Environmental history. Investigating the rise of environmentalism in the 1960s and its development into the anti-nuclear power campaign in the 1970s. In particular I am looking at the role and influence of pre-FoE groups, such as the Conservation Society and the Young Liberals, the alternative press, and the impact of post-war science fiction on anti-nuclear attitudes.
Book Reviews: I review books for the UK journals Environmental Politics and Environment & History, and US journal Organization & Environment.
CV
PhD from the Open University for thesis "Energy utopianism and the rise of the anti-nuclear power in the UK", 2004.
BSc (Hons) from Sussex University in Engineering with Social Studies, an interdisciplinary degree of engineering and economics, 1974.
Referee for Energy - the International Journal and Ecological Economics.
Links
EERU home page: http://eeru.open.ac.uk
People Centred Eco-Design: [pdf]
My B&B website: http://www.northamptonshire.co.uk/hotels/parkholm.htm
Page Last Updated: 6 May, 2009