The Economist on the Rebound Effect
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.21.07
We do go on about efficiency being the best source of energy; that so much of the CO2 we are generating and the fossil fuels that we are burning is coming from waste and inefficiency, the leaky buildings, the overpowered and empty cars and the unnecessary lighting. But there are problems with this; the Economist notes that when you lower the operating cost of a car, either by lowering the price of fuel or making it more efficient, all other things being equal, people drive more. It is the "rebound effect": a reduction in cost leads to an increase in demand, first described in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons.
An example might be: insulate your house that you used to keep at 60 degrees in the winter, and you will probably turn up the thermostat. Or you might buy a hybrid Lexus where you get more power without buying more gas. The Economist suggests that "that rebound is a big enough problem to make energy efficiency programmes almost useless" and concludes that " Environmentalists may wish to re-do their sums."
Or should they? The key line above is "all other things being equal", which they are not. If fuel prices keep rising can there be a rebound effect? ::Economist
UPDATE: TriplePundit covered this issue earlier in The Efficiency Conundrum.
Hogwash. Once someone makes the mental shift and monetary investment to further insulate their house, they would have to be mentally deficient to then negate any of the savings which directly effect ROI. I say its the exact opposite. Once you make that investment, you want to find ways to accelerate that ROI.
Buy a hybrid, get kicks out of pulse&glide/hypermiling.
Insulate your house, see how far into the season you can get without turning on the heat at all. Same for AC in the summer.
First of all, it's not like most people drive just for the hell of it. Most people drive to get somewhere. They're not gonna take a few extra laps around the parking lot if they know their car is energy efficient.
Secondly, this is a reason why energy efficiency alone isn't a solution - because this is true in some instances, but not true enough to write off energy efficiency. This is why society must build itself into something where we have 0 waste, so no matter how excessively anyone lives, they have the same impact as a bare minimalist. This is the Cradle to Cradle idea, and this is why it's so great - the only limit to human growth is space and money.
at no point would I ever keep my house at 60 degrees..
I don't think the effect is totally spurious. I've noticed I keep compact fluorescents on when I walk out of a room for a few minutes. I do this because intermittent use of these bulbs is inefficient, but it is also true that the overall consumption does not decrease as much as the bulb saves.
I can't for the life of me see why I would drive more if I had a more efficient car. I drive to where I need to go, and gas is never an issue. I drive as little as possible as a general principle, but on a particular trip I don't factor in the cost of gas, which is way too cheap regardless.
I'd go with the notion that some efficiency gains are lost due to more consumption, but by no means all or even most of them. After several years of improvements, the building I live in uses half the electricity it did in 2002, even though there is actually more light than before.
effiency is only one small part of CONSERVATION, and our Big Power owned government does not actually want us to conserve, they want us to consume!! more goods, more power, more resources, etc. it is a scary pyramid scheme where a few at the top benefit disproportionately, the middle is opiated by the perception that they can have it all (cheaply) and the bottom is totally exploited (poor people and the environment).
replacing a car you wouldn't otherwise replace is incredibly wasteful, for example. there is more to being a SUSTAINABLE participant on the planet than buying every gadget and tossing your old ones. there is more to conservation than efficiency, and there is more to "renewable" power than greenhouse gases.
on that last point, for example, you cannot permanently destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness for solar arrays and wind farms, then call it "cheap" because you really aren't paying the true costs of your consumption. there is a very real cost to lost ecosystems but it's never charged to utilities or consumers - those costs are always socialized (like greenhouse gases were), which is what keeps people consuming too much, and keeps the pigs at the top in greenbacks.
until we break free of the brainwashing of increasing consumption, we will never have a sustainable planet.