{"id":356,"date":"2010-12-21T01:50:48","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T06:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/?p=356"},"modified":"2010-12-21T01:50:42","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T06:50:42","slug":"energy-efficiency-jevons-paradox-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2010\/12\/21\/energy-efficiency-jevons-paradox-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"The long and the short of energy efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Owen asks a provocative question in the current\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>:\u00a0If our machines use less energy, will we just use them more?<\/a> He more or less says yes. The real answer comes in two parts.<\/p>\n

<\/a>For now\u2014over days, weeks, months, and even years\u2014energy efficiency will decrease energy use and emissions. Screw a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb into a socket that used to hold an incandescent and your energy use will go down. Chances are you won’t leave the lights on four times as long just because light now costs a quarter.<\/p>\n

Over time\u2014years, decades, centuries, and millennia\u2014more energy efficient lights and appliances will indeed mean that more people use more of them. CFLs make light more affordable. That doesn’t matter to the typical U.S. household, where few light sockets remain unused because of energy costs. But globally\u2014and over time\u2014it does make a difference.<\/p>\n

The Jevons Paradox<\/h3>\n

\"WilliamOwen goes back to 1865 and William Stanley Jevons who at 28 came up with what has later been called the “Jevons Paradox”:<\/p>\n

It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jevons is right, of course. We have seen dramatic increases in energy efficiency over centuries while energy use has gone up by orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n

Does that mean we shouldn’t increase energy efficiency? Of course not. We just need to be clear about what we are getting in exchange.<\/p>\n

Energy over the millennia<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"SpermBy the mid-1800s, the latest and greatest in lighting technology was spermaceti, a fat from the head of sperm whales. It cost around $1,500 a\u00a0barrel in today’s dollars and its price was only going to go up as whales became ever scarcer. Since then, we have seen gas lights come and go and by now electric lights cost less than a thousandth as much as the equivalent in lighting power back then.<\/p>\n

That’s not a recent phenomenon. Bill Nordhaus went back to 500,000 BC. Lighting cost\u00a0a million times<\/a> [PDF] as much then as it does today. Needless to say, we are using much more of it now.<\/p>\n

Another word for this phenomenon is \u201ctechnological progress.\u201d That\u2019s really what\u2019s behind the whale oil story, and we want more of it. There is still plenty of\u00a0energy poverty<\/a> [PDF] in the world. We clearly want affordable, clean energy for as many people as possible.<\/p>\n

Of course, misguided \u201cprogress\u201d has also led us to a planet on the brink of breakage. We need to limit greenhouse gas emissions\u2014and do so sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

Will energy efficiency save the climate?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Should we look to energy efficiency as a way to do some of that? Absolutely. Energy efficiency is cheap, quick, clean, and often underutilized.<\/p>\n

McKinsey has looked for\u00a0zero-cost energy efficiency opportunities<\/a> in the United States and has found possible savings of above 20 percent of total demand in 2020. \u00a0Those savings, could go a long way toward meeting commonly discussed climate policy goals.<\/p>\n

But won\u2019t those energy savings just mean that we are using more energy eventually? History has shown it to be true after all.<\/p>\n

In the short run<\/em><\/strong>\u2014over days, weeks, months, and even years\u2014the Jevons Paradox manifests itself in a well-documented \u201crebound effect\u201d of around 10 percent. On average, you would indeed leave your CFL on for a bit longer than you would an incandescent. We lose a tenth of energy savings to increased use.\u00a0(Owen cites the 10 percent figure but then goes on to overstate some of the implications<\/a> dramatically.)<\/p>\n

That leaves 90 percent in true savings and points to the clear win-win potential of energy efficiency measures<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Not by energy efficiency alone<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In the long run<\/em><\/strong>\u2014over years, decades, centuries, and millennia\u2014cleaner and cheaper energy also means more people will be using more of it.<\/p>\n

Does that mean energy efficiency is bad? Of course not. Energy in<\/em>efficiency is another term for waste. And we clearly want less of that. But the problems our planet faces are too large to address through waste reduction (\u201creduce, reuse, recycle\u201d) alone.<\/p>\n

To get emissions down in the long run, there\u2019s no escaping the (gasp) inconvenient truth that we must limit pollution directly\u2014ideally though a declining cap on total emissions<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A cap on emissions\u2014and the ensuing price on carbon pollution and race to invent cleaner energy sources\u2014is the only mechanism we know that can break the link between emissions and energy use. \u00a0It limits the former and makes clean energy cheaper relative to fossil fuels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Energy efficiency has clear win-win potential in the short run. In the long run, nothing but a declining cap on total emissions will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9306,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-101","category-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe long and the short of energy efficiency - Market Forces<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2010\/12\/21\/energy-efficiency-jevons-paradox-progress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The long and the short of energy efficiency - Market Forces\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Energy efficiency has clear win-win potential in the short run. 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