The Validity of Energy Efficiency
A reader notes: “Efficiency” is bogus. Amory Lovins has been pushing “negawatts” for 40 years or so, and energy consumption has only gone UP. Jevons’ paradox (that asserts that the increasing efficiencies with which a resource is used cause additional consumption of those resources) explains why.
There are two main points to be made here:The fact that energy usage and energy efficiency are both going up is not evidence that one causes the other. Medical science is getting better at treating cancer, but the rates of cancer are going up too. No one believes that our skill at treating a disease is causing it to occur more often.
Jevon’s paradox itself is a fallacy, as discussed here. In particular, the examples that are commonly invoked to prove the case overlook a great number of important considerations. In the case of energy consumption, efficiency is only one of a great number of factors affecting consumption, principally a skyrocketing population of energy-hungry people, flooding to our cities and participating in lifestyles that demand huge amounts of power: driving cars, air conditioning buildings, adding on new appliances and gadgets of all types.
If there is any chance for a soft landing vis-à-vis humankind and the environment in which we live, it resides within this subject of efficiency, i.e., consuming far less energy both per capita and in the aggregate.
The premise that the world should shrink its overall power consumption for the good of mankind is a false and misleading one.
In fact precisely the opposite is true. The world and all its peoples need to dramatically increase energy consumption. That might sound like a contradiction to popular beliefs but in fact it is beyond contradiction. Those that firmly believe it is a contradiction are those who firmly believe that the world has come to an end of technological development, and all decisions and thinking should be made solely on the current state of global technology in place alone, and without any future vision at all.
And that is a patent nonsense of course.
The new era energy intensive industries, technologies, and businesses are what I refer to as “global equalizing technologies” involving such important areas as medical science; technological agricultural sciences, human mobility science, and infrastructure development science.
Don’t be fooled by minimalist thinking at this important stage of global social development. We are entering the most prosperous and interesting period in human history, and low cost an abundant power for all people is driving this amazing evolution.
Lawrence,
I fully agree that, “The premise that the world should shrink its overall power consumption for the good of mankind is a false and misleading one.” In fact, it is so obviously false and misleading that it is difficult to understand how anyone could believe it. Do they really expect poor people in India, Africa, etc., to reduce their power consumption and live even more primitive and shorter lives?
HOWEVER, there are certain countries which use power so inefficiently and extravagantly that they could significantly reduce power consumption without negatively influencing quality of life; that includes the U.S. Doing so would contribute, although not to a major degree, to reducing global CO2 emissions. Moreover, in some situations, it can even be economically justified.
Clearly improving quality of life for people living in poor countries will require far more power. That is why, even if we in the U.S. and some other prosperous countries reduce power usage (presumably without reducing quality of life), global demand for power will probably increase by about four times anyway.
It seems a bit of a strange assumption to say that improved efficiency is equal to a shrinking economy.
If I decide to install 1000 led lights in my small factory then it is suggested that I might save 30% of my lighting bill. In addition if I purchase wisely I may not have to spend much more on the capital improvement. I will additionally save on the labor to change the light-bulbs.
At this point I am not going to suddenly go out and buy more equipment so that I can use more electricity. Nor am I going to suffer inferior lighting. In fact the lighting will be far better.
Encouraged I might take some of the savings and invest in insulation for the place. Once again there is both a savings and an improvement in the quality of life in a building with less drafts and more humid heated winter air.
Further encouraged and now with a building and business that is operating more efficiently I might look into gathering what resources are naturally available rather than importing energy. Geothermal heat/cooling or solar panels may be another step.
All of my actions will also further stir the economic pot and collectively with others improve the overall economy.
My investment helps to fund an industry that will export the more efficient technology overseas to a 3ed world nation that can now leapfrog the inefficient old technologies.
All because of what businesses try to do all the time, improve efficiency.
Craig I very much enjoyed the reference. Particularly this line: “while high gasoline prices might make you cancel the family road trip to the Grand Canyon this summer, nothing, not even free gasoline, could make you do it twice.”
But Frank may find this paragraph most appealing: “…[E]fficiency can’t grow fast enough to reduce overall energy use…is exactly as valid as saying that nuclear power can never reduce our use of fossil fuels, because even when we made large investments in nukes, fossil use still increased. …nuclear advocates would rightly respond that this is proof only of the fact that our investments in nuclear were not large enough to offset increases in electricity demand. The same is true for efficiency.”
Breath,
There is a limit to how much energy efficiency can increase. For lighting, replacing heavily used incandescent lights with LEDs or CFLs makes sense because it cuts power consumption to perhaps 20% for lighting. There are many other places where it makes sense. But beyond a certain point, it just is not possible to increase energy efficiency without reducing quality of life.
If global energy usage were increased sufficiently so that all of the world’s people had a good quality of life, the percent of energy used by the U.S. would be fairly small. Thus it should be clear that although increasing energy efficiency makes sense, we should be careful not to overstate how much increasing our energy efficiency here in the U.S. would affect the entire world. Clearly it is important for us to help poor countries use CO2 free sources of energy as they greatly increase energy usage else what we do here won’t much matter. That is often overlooked.
And, on a global basis, it is true that increasing energy efficiency cannot occur fast enough to reduce CO2 emission as global demand for energy increases. The whole world has to get that energy from non-CO2 emitting sources.
The source of energy is more important than efficiency but that does not mean that efficiency should be ignored.
It is not the amount of energy used that counts – it is the service delivered.
Some parts of Africa are perennially short of electricity and do not have the resources to built generation or pay for additional fuel. Improved efficiency can in effect increase the system capacity at far lower cost – far less expensive buy a million Led lights than to add and run 80 to 90 megawatts of generation capacity to run incandescent lights.
Gary,
That’s quite true. However, from living in Fiji from 1994 to 2004, I learned that that poor countries practically eliminated the use of incandescent lights decades ago. They did not wait for CFLs either. Rather, for decades, they have been using classical fluorescent tube lights, at least partly because of the cost of electricity.
From being in many homes in Fiji, I do not see how most people could further increase energy efficiency by very much. Most cannot afford air conditioning. Their refrigerators may be old and not very efficient, but most could not afford new refrigerators. Most do not have refrigerators anyway. In fact, many do not even have electricity.
In other countries, the most common type of air conditioner is the mini split type which, until very recently, was almost unknown here in the U.S. They are more efficient than the window or through the wall type.
On the other hand, in poor countries, buildings are often not adequately insulated. The result is that when heating or cooling is used, there is significant energy wasted. So, there is room for improvement there.
It is unlikely that improvements in energy efficiency in poor countries could make more than a marginal difference in reducing their need to increase greatly the amount of power generated. An again, they phased out incandescent lights decades before we in the U.S. did.