Beating the Energy Efficiency Paradox (Part I)
by Rocky Mountain Institute on 05. 1.08
Photograph:- The Daybreak Residential/Commercial Community in South Jordan, Utah features Energy Star homes.
Energy efficiency has been a consistent part of America's energy security policies and increasingly become an essential framework for abating carbon emissions. In fact, the federal government now offers several tax credits for everything from green home improvements to fuel cells.
But the effectiveness of energy efficiency does not go undisputed.
Skeptics such as the Energy Tribune's Robert Bryce point out that total energy use in the United States continues to rise, despite efficiency gains. Per capita, we're using more energy even as sales of hybrid cars increase and more green buildings get erected.
The argument hinges on an economic theory called Jevons' Paradox.
In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons wrote a book called The Coal Question. In it, he observed that the consumption of coal had gone up in England even after more efficient technologies, like an improved steam engine, had been introduced.
Later economic theory moderated Jevons' observation to say that a more efficient technology could create a rebound effect: Some of the efficiency gains are wiped out by greater demand for the resource.
Today's popularity of more efficient vehicles and green home retrofits means it is worth seriously considering if there is evidence for Jevons' Paradox -- or even a significant rebound effect -- that could dampen some of the enthusiasm for these technologies.
Luckily, we are observing only very small rebound effects (if any at all) in the United States. For example, we can look at household driving patterns: While total vehicle miles traveled have increased 16 percent between 1991 and 2001, there is no evidence that owners of hybrid vehicles drove twice as much just because their cars were twice as efficient.
For green buildings the evidence is very similar. From many case studies related to RMI's Built Environment work, we have not seen evidence that radically more efficient commercial buildings cause people to leave the lights on all night and set their office thermostats five degrees lower. In fact, energy savings in everything from office towers to schools have often been higher than projected. People do not seem to change their behaviors simply because they have a more efficient building.
Household appliances provide the best example that efficiency gains really do stick. Take refrigerators (which can use as much as 14 percent of a household's total energy). Until the late 1970s, the average size of our refrigerators increased steadily and then began leveling off. But, during the same period, the energy those refrigerators used started to decline rapidly. Today's Energy Star refrigerators are 40 percent more efficient than those sold even seven years ago. After all, there is a maximum size to the refrigerator you can easily put in a kitchen and a limit to the number of refrigerators you need in your house. In short, improvements in efficiency have greatly outpaced our need for more and larger storage spaces.
So far, the evidence from the field of more efficient technologies is good. In the United States, energy efficiency actually works when it's allowed to compete fairly in the market.
On a more macro-level, some states have posted impressive efficiency gains by paying attention to their use and investing to decrease consumption. According to RMI co-founder and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins, Vermont has reduced energy use per household in recent years. And California, he adds, "has held per-capita electricity use flat for 30 years -- saving 65 peak GW and more than $100 billion of power-system investment -- while per-capita real income rose 79 percent."
But Jevons' Paradox cannot be so easily put to rest. There are further implications for sustainable development on a global scale, and how efficient technologies play into it, that must also be considered.
Graph credit::California Energy Comission, David Goldstien.
The homes in that picture may be energy efficient, but they certainly don't appear to care about water conservation. It looks awfully green for a desert.
For autos, we have more people driving more cars longer distances each year. So keeping fuel use constant is an accomplishment. Obviously more efficiencies continue to be needed.
But as we've seen with rising gas prices, there is a large amount of elasticity in the system. Many people might drive just as much if the price of gas doubles again. So efficiency is not the ultimate determinator of energy use.
It's good to keep Jevon's Paradox in mind, but it's only one factor.
Spike,
Don't judge so quickly. According to there website, a portion of the community's ponds have high levels of metal in them, making the site a Brownfield according to the EPA, and they are working with a third party department to clean and purify the ponds, which will also clean the water supply of the whole area, not just their community. Plus the wetlands in the community catch all the storm water runoff from the entire site, whether or not they use that for irrigation is not said. Also, I'm not sure that Salt Lake City is considered a desert, it does snow there.
http://www.daybreakutah.com/sustainability.php
Jevon's Paradox is interesting, but I think it mislabels what we now call a paradigm shift. It wasn't that people felt okay burning more coal than ever because they were getting more efficient work out of it, it was that a completely new way of using energy appeared and made the lives of everyone easier. Who wouldn't want that? Even if it meant burning more coal?
But that's the problem with paradigm shifts, you can't tell until later that you're in one. While you're in it, you have to cope with the best explanation you can come up with on available data.
Jevon's Paradox is interesting, but I think it mislabels what we now call a paradigm shift. It wasn't that people felt okay burning more coal than ever because they were getting more efficient work out of it, it was that a completely new way of using energy appeared and made the lives of everyone easier. Who wouldn't want that? Even if it meant burning more coal?
But that's the problem with paradigm shifts, you can't tell until later that you're in one. While you're in it, you have to cope with the best explanation you can come up with on available data.
one word: overpopulation
Yes, it amazes me how rarely overpopulation is discussed. The person with the smallest carbon footprint is the person that's not there.
The modern world economy has an insatiable appetite for energy at a reasonable price. The growth of modern economies is almost perfectly correlated with energy usage. Rather than learning to conserve energy, we will inevitably find ways to utilize whatever energy we can generate. The trick is figuring out how to make those energy sources renewable/non-damaging.
www.ecounit.com
One would expect that for the rebound effect to occur there would have to have been some self control over usage of the resource before the additional efficiencies were introduced. (e.g. if people were driving LESS before they got their hybrid because of expensive gas, then one would expect their driving to go up with a more efficient car.) However, all indications are that Americans have been paying no attention to energy/resource consumption for the past two generations. Thus continuing to do so will not cause a rebound effect. Furthermore, just the awareness that efficiency is something to consider will tend to make people more responsible.