Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
There are a lot of people concerned about the pace of innovation as it relates to climate change and energy efficiency, because of fears about global warming.
Innovation has led to energy efficiency gains of between 1% and 1.5% for a very long time–perhaps as long as three centuries. For short periods within those three centuries, innovation has been even more robust.
However, every time somebody comes up with a way of saving energy, we end up finding ways to use even more energy with the money we’ve saved. This has become known as Jevon’s Paradox, and it has been discussed by economists since 1865, probably because economists weren’t interested in the invention of barbed wire.
In constructing strategies for defeating the dread global warming, the 1% – 1.5% rate of innovation is ‘baked in’ to adaptation and mitigation strategies. In some scenarios, they assume more. As Roger Pielke Jr. and his friends at the estimable Breakthrough Institute have repeatedly pointed out, it ain’t enough. To make a real difference on global warming, our energy efficiency would need to increase by between 4% and 6%, something that seems close to absurd.
But is it? Let’s talk about a subject dear to the hearts of global warming activists–tipping points. They use it to talk about points of no return for our atmosphere, something more sober scientists think is highly unlikely. But it gets them headlines.
But there are tipping points in technology, as well–witness the striking lack of horse manure on the city streets of New York and London. And the paucity of buggy whips, for that matter.
There are about 16 billion artificial lights in the world today, and about 13 billion of them get replaced every year. CFLs were supposed to change that, but everybody hates them–I think 15 billion of the world’s lightbulbs may well be CFLs stored unused in everybody’s closet.
CFLs could save 75% of the energy used for lighting. But they won’t, because they suck. (That’s a technical phrase meant to cover poor light quality, premature failure, inability to work in many settings and environments–they just suck.)
But LEDs are coming that can save 90% of the energy used for lighting, and they may work better than CFLs. (Anthony, you said you filled your house with them. How do they work?)
Stanley Jevons thought that if we saved 90% of the energy used on lighting, we would find some other use for that energy. And he might well be right. But as with other laws that have passed into obscurity, Jevons did not plan for a future that is almost within our sight, but was 150 years away from him. He couldn’t see a level of saturation that would cause energy use to plateau.
Energy use in the developed world is projected to increase by 0.3% per year through 2050. All of the growth will come in the developing world. But they will develop. They will reach the point where we are today by 2075. And regardless of whether innovation comes in strong or weak, their energy use will plateau, and then decline gently with innovation, stable population and social changes–do you know how much less energy a retired person consumes than someone in the work force? It’s a lot, and the number of retired people is going to skyrocket.
You can leave the lights on. You can buy more lights. But eventually you have enough. You can own three cars. But you can only drive one at a time. And houses will start getting smaller, not bigger, as demographic changes work through the population. And that means that eventually, innovations that improve energy efficiency will reduce energy usage. But, what are we talking about–another century? Another millenium?
How about before mid-century?
Can we achieve step change innovation in all types of energy use? That’s immediately followed by another key question–even if we can, will we?
Those who study energy use break it into several large sectors, with the largest being industrial, which consumes about half of all energy. Transportation accounts for 22%, and residential and commercial fall in between at about 30%. (Technically, the second largest use of energy worldwide is waste during generation and delivery of electricity, something that could be improved on…)
We know step change is possible for transportation. Audi had a car that got 80 miles per gallon on the market a few years ago. The U.S. fleet had an average of 22 mpg a couple years back. Ford is coming out with a model that gets 40 mpg right now. New commercial jet aircraft are at least 20% more fuel efficient than older models.
Half of all new windows sold are energy efficient, and energy efficient windows, doors and insulation could reduce waste by at least 35%. The same is true for new appliances. If we had a cash for clinkers instead of a cash for clunkers… well, you get the idea.
Industry could get a lot more mileage out of the energy it uses. In Denmark, 40% of their primary energy is delivered through combined heat and power at 85% efficiency, compared to the 35% efficiency of old fashioned power plants. In America, we get 9% of our power from CHP. (And how come nobody has thought of using the heat generated by nuclear power plants?)
There is not one thing I’ve talked about above that is not commercially available for sale today. There is not one thing above that would not save money over the long haul for the people who buy it. The average time for technology improvements to spread through a fleet of equipment is between 13 and 25 years. Certainly, if we moved on these available, off the shelf improvements now, they would be in place and reaping benefits before 2050.
People are reluctant to give up perfectly good refrigerators and cars before they are used up. Companies are reluctant to retire coal plants early, and to make capital investments in things like CHP or Waste to Energy without prodding. But we could redirect some of the subsidies we’re giving wind power companies…
Here in America we use 323 million btus per person per year. In Denmark they use 161 million btus per year. (We drive about twice as much as they do, on average, but that’s only a small part of the equation.) We could change that almost painlessly in fairly short order.
We don’t need any new toys to show Stanley Jevons is wrong. We just need to use the tools we have.
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Jolly well said. Spot on.
With all this, there is only a difference between compelling people to change, and making it natural. Compulsion (ban the bulb!) tends to bring with it revulsion. And a tendency to kick back.
LED lighting, for example, works very well. With the right LEDs, and the right fixture and the right controller. There is a lot of crap out there.
LED lighting, done right, not only saves a lot of power (=more $ in your pocket), it also dramatically cuts the maintenance costs.
Somebody once figured out that there is a huge, huge hidden cost in older people changing light bulbs and falling off chairs and ladders. Reduce that need, and the cost of hospital admissions and broken hip repairs goes down. In commercial buildings, the change of the light bulb costs $1 for the bulb, and $150 for the man-with-the-ladder. Reducing the rate of change of light bulbs saves a fortune – lower power bills and dramatically lower maintenance costs.
All these things are good changes to have, and are driven not by a green eco-nazi mantra but by a market need, that is, it puts some $ back in your pocket.
(Disclaimer: I live in ban-the-bulb land, and have a house full of contraband lamps, a result of stocking up before the ban. I also use a lot of CFLs and don’t like em much – don’t get anywhere near the life out of them as they claim. It looks like my stock of incandescent lamps might have been a waste of effort. There are some very nice, very reasonably priced LED pure retrofit lamps coming very soon that will be really good indeed. I’m quite excited to hear these are on the way. They will probably become common knowledge in the next 6 months or so.)
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for this very interesting post. Just a little remark. You say :
” … (And how come nobody has thought of using the heat generated by nuclear power plants?… )
Apparently you are not aware that, at least here in France, the heat from Nuclear Plants cooling is used to provide heating for greenhouses. At least for the later, the energy is provided for free … This may be part of a strategy to ease local acceptance.
If you read French, here is a little example that shows, in particular, the greenhouses of Dampierre en Burly (a few kilometers from my home).
http://www.innovagro.net/pdf/agro-industries.pdf
Regards
CHP sound great, there is no free lunch.
David MacKay has written about the problems with claims of high efficiency for CHP here http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c21/page_145.shtml
If you are going to argue for CHP, you need to show his analysis is wrong.
There is another aspect to Jeavon’s paradox that this article does not consider.
All energy sources cost the user money. And increasing efficiency alone will mean they spend less on all those energy costs.
So someone who heavily insulates their house to Scandinavian standards, lights it with LEDs and runs their car on a teaspoon of cooking oil per year will certainly use less energy. But the problem is they will spend less on it.
Why is that a problem?
It is because they have liberated cash. Money that would have been spent on fuel is now free to be spent on something else. That overseas trip? How about that chunk of consumer electronics? Or a nice steak? Almost any re-purposing of cash will result in some energy release, and in some cases, more than the original saving.
Anything you spend money on results in more energy expenditure. If you chose to save the released cash in the bank, the bank will re-invest it in housebuilding for you. Or some new factory or business.
Destroying the cash will effectively return its value to the government, who will, no doubt, invest the cash in funding an adventurous war in the Middle East.
In conclusion, efficiency is a good thing. Waste is bad. But efficiency measures, by themselves do not cause a measurable reduction in consumption. They can give the illusion of energy conserved, but in reality it is only a deferral of energy usage.
C.
So, instead of wasting our money in windmills, we are going to waste it in discarding perfectly good lightbulbs. Somebody needs to look up “opportunity cost”.
Sure, we could do all that stuff. But first you have to convince the target audience that there is something in it for them. People don’t like confined spaces (housing), low flow shower heads, external control of HVAC/appliances ( smart grid stuff ), or generally anything that puts control of their lives in someone else’s hands. Everything you mentioned would require Regulation with a capital “R”, and all that implies in terms of Nanny State Government. And that, my friend, is a 4 letter word.
Home illumination consumes approximately 4 percent of total electrical demand.
So, changing from CFLs at 1/4 of ordinary bulbs to LEDs at 1/10 saves
about 0.6 percent of total demand.
Um. We’re saved?
Could someone tell me though, why do Americans use SO much energy? And while we (in England) use 140 litres of water in washing clothes (per person, per week), Americans use a whopping 400 litres!
Speaking of cleverness….this guy in Germany invented the “Heatball”. ´cause of EU regulations classic lightbulbs are slowly vanishing in stores and to be replaced by CFLs.
Well, whta did this guy do? He sells the classic light bulbs under a new name: Heatball
Using the bulb for producing heat instead for light. 🙂 no joke!
http://translate.google.de/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fheatball.de%2F&sl=de&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
Reference LCDs: They work very, very well. They are a bit pricey up front, however. A bulb that is the equivalent of a 60-75W incandescent will set you back $20. While there are theoretically dimmable LEDs on the market, the ones I have do not work with the the dimmer I have. It’s still an all or nothing show. Cool white ones are cooler than the cool florescents. Most folks will feel more comfortable with the warm ones. Use SMD LEDs, the ones that are made an array of small pigtail LDs mounted on wafers and put in a capsule will thermally fail over time. What fails is the connection of the wafer to the “power bus” that powers all the wafers. While they do not create a lot of heat, it is trapped in the capsule and the solder joint will fatigue. I have no affiliation with these folks other than that of a customer, but for those who want to look at what is around and what it costs, http://www.ledwholesalers.com/store/ will give you an idea.
Many great points in the article. Issues with the idea of capturing waste heat, though. Especially in the form of CHP.
Two problems with CHP. 1) the so-called waste heat is low grade (meaning relatively low temperature). Not useful for very many things since it requires temperature differential to do work. 2) electricity can be transported rather long distances. Heat cannot. So CHP is only useful in large cities or industrial complexes where its use is nearby. All of those sites have been exploited for more than a century.
In the early 1970s I shut down a 50 year old CHP system in a brewery because it was no longer cost effective. Natural gas and electricity had become so cheap that the increased efficiency of the CHP turbines didn’t cover the operating and maintenance cost.
Tungsten light bulbs are only inefficient in the summer. In the winter, they are 100% efficient, because all the wattage that doesn’t go into light, goes into heating the house. Same for computers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and everything else electrical.
CHP isn’t viable in the US because we’re too spread out. It might work in Europe because you can’t build where you want. Anyone attempting to build a home in the UK will find his new castle shoehorned into somebody’s garden (back yard). But even that doesn’t help because you can’t build a power plant anywhere near enough to all the little village scattered about. (If you’re allowed to build one at all.)
The Cordova nuke plant in Illinois has an interesting waste heat history. It’s on the Mississippi river, and it initially vented cooling water through a diffuser pipe running out into the river. Then the greens invented “thermal pollution.” I guess the extra warmth was harmful to the trout population, so they built an expensive, miles long cooling canal and recycled the water. That turned out to be a waste, and someone pointed out that the diffuser kept miles of the river from freezing over in the winter, which greatly increased the oxygen level for the fish, and made good fishing for the eagles that migrated in from the country every winter. Up until they opened Cordova, the only open water for the eagles to fish was at the various sewage lift stations along the river.
CHP works well if you live close to the generator. This was done soon after the last war when Battersea Power Station was built in London. Apartments built on the opposite bank of the Thames were heated by the power station. Steam from nuclear generators runs in a closed circuit due to radiation fears. That is why this is not used for CHP.
But who cares about global warming when all forecasts are for a colder climate. A bit of free warmth would be nice.
All very nice, but why would energy consumption at some point level off? I doubt it will. Energy use is at the heart of economic development and economic growth, and thus at our prosperity. Yes, we are using less energy by more efficient cars, insulation, heating and lighting. But we also consume more energy by traveling further and having more electrical gadgets – both large an small – in our ever houses. The energy saved will not continue to be saved: we simply spend it on other less obvious things that cost a lot of energy to use or produce.
To the extent that history can teach us anything I also don’t see any evidence of a saturation in global energy consumption in the official numbers. Developed countries continue very gradually but surely to consume more and more energy, even on a “per capita” basis. We will continue to develop new technology which increases our well-being but which depends on energy. So unless there are limits to the energy supply (“peak oil”) and energy becomes significantly more expensive I don’t see how energy consumption will saturate. It appears to be difficult to continue to have economic growth without growth in energy consumption.
And as I somewhere noted, we are living the lives that centuries ago would only be possible for the happy few. Given the typical energy that a human produces, in western countries we consume the equivalent of hundreds of human beings (“slaves”) per day. That is prosperity, and we are not going to give that up for no real dramatic reason.
Further, and maybe worse, assume that at some point a new “sustainable” energy sources becomes competitive, let’s say solar, which half of the world appears to be looking for. Opposite to fossil fuels where extraction becomes more expensive as first the easily available resources are used and where resources are rather limited, extracting solar energy will not become that much more difficult as time progresses. Resources may for quite some time be close to limitless (compared to fossil fuels that is, thus until we run out of space; and then we might even go into space to get it). That would stimulate energy consumption even more, with all problems of heat pollution and changes in climate (albeit that having very cheap energy available means that adaptation to any climate may become much easier to the extent that a change in climate is no longer an issue).
See for some more inconvenient ideas relating to energy, see here:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-on-rebound.html
Jenne
Don’t forget aesthetics. In the northern temperate zone, most of it, the most energy efficient home would be something like a bunker. No doubt EPA is writing rules about this matter now.
Well said, Tom.
I think you’re right in saying that here in the West we are by and large, sated. Poor means not having a second car for most of us. Any new piece of technology means not using whatever it was we used before. I rarely watch television now, for instance, or use the home phone.
The CRIB countries (China, Russia, India, Brazil) want our lifestyle and are willing to work very hard for it. And when they get there, their energy use will tail off just like ours, and at that point 80% of the world will have a first world life style (barring another world war, of course). They won’t want to be doing “dirty” industrial jobs either, so those will migrate on to the least developed countries. That will raise their standard of living, and they won’t need or have the time to grow so many children, so less need for “things”.
I think one of the major problems we are going to have to solve, is how do we gainfully use our spare time.
For instance, most government jobs nowadays are make-work schemes. And to the extent that we can afford it, okay, but alongside that is an increasing intrusiveness into our day to day life. Two foot outside a parking bay, clamped. Can’t drive there, can’t do this, oh no, you’ll need to wait a year before we decide whether you can do that. What should be an easier life as a result of the hard work that we and our forebears have done, has turned into a minefield of complexity.
At the same time, we ourselves are having to run to stand still. The idea of going to school and then going into a job that we’ll work at until retirement is gone, forever (unless it’s a government job).
Something has gone wrong in the lands of milk and honey. Personally, I think part of the solution is a three or four day working week, i.e. spreading genuine jobs around more equitably, but that’s just me.
P.S. I always enjoy your posts. I don’t always agree with them, but it’s good to have fresh thinking. I do hope you’ll keep posting here.
Has anyone ever done an analysis of *all* of the additional energy used to create energy saving products like compact florescent bulbs (they have plastic bases, starter capacitors, and complex coiled glass shapes that have to be made while the glass is hot — all that conventional incandescent bulbs don’t have) or hybrid cars (the batteries and rare earth elements used in the batteries and motors and the energy used to mine them)?
As Carniphage says, you have not understood Jervons paradox. Economic output always requires energy input. Improving energy efficiency just makes economic output cheaper, so our economy grows. To reach energy usage saturation, we need to reach economic output saturation, and it ain’t gonna happen (this is Pielke’s Iron Law of Climate Policy).
If decarbonisation is something we want to pursue, it must come through low- or zero-carbon energy sources. It is that simple. Improved energy efficiency will never contribute to decarbonisation.
(Apologies if this is a doulble post)
LEDs
It is interesting to note that “white” leds are not really white emmitters.
They are ususally blue leds behind a flourescent layer. This combination in general emits at 2 peaks 440 nm 580 nm giving the apearance of white. This colour rendition is similar to CFLs
see:
http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/607766.pdf
Also they are run off standard mains supply using a capacitive+resistance dropper from 240/110Volts to the LED voltage. This is then rectified and smoothed to reduce flicker.
The quality of this simple system can limit the life of LEDs and capacitors during mains transients (over currents destroy LEDs and can burn away metalisation in the capacitor reducing its value and hence reducing the light output) and if insufficiently smoothed will flicker at 50Hz/60Hz.
paulhan says:
I think you’re right in saying that here in the West we are by and large, sated. Poor means not having a second car for most of us. Any new piece of technology means not using whatever it was we used before. I rarely watch television now, for instance, or use the home phone.
No, instead you use a computer… which takes five to six times as much energy to make and consumes two to three times as much energy to run. And you use a mobile telephone… which takes five to six times as much energy to make and consumes orders of magnitude more energy to run. How is this energy use saturation?
1. The Jevons Paradox has not been proven wrong and every new year just confirms it.
2. If CHP was economically viable we would be using it.
3. Subsidies merely distort prices at the expense of economic efficiency they do not make something economically viable. So I take it Tom you are pro economic inefficiency?
4. History has repeatedly demonstrated that government intervention in the economy to be colossal failures. Especially with energy policy.
5. Denmark uses less energy because their energy is more expensive.
Denmark is “Energy Smart”? Think Again (U.S. News & World Report)
The only way to reduce energy usage is to make it more expensive which will punish the poor and reduce freedom. The liberals even know this, which is why they want price controls on energy.
Tom why do you keep pushing silly ideas like subsidies? Could it be a case of the “Intellectuals” believing they know best?
Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society
Here is something we can look forward to thanks to the great Danish experiment in Silly Wind Power,
Danish Wind Turbine Explosion
Where I live 100% of our electricity is generated by hydropower. The electricity is generated whether we use it or not. NOT using it is wasteful. Of course that doesn’t stop the econuts from trying to punish us into submission via our power bill and even more stupidly, require that we pay for very expensive wind turbines, which are cleverly erected just over the hill from the dam that is the actual source of our power.
RE: Bring it in from Canada amd Mexico
Banning alcohol didn’t work during Prohibition and banning incan. bulbs also won’t work. The mob and drug dealers are going to rake in megatons of cash smuggling in light bulbs.
Can you ever imagine using CFL’s for a cozy dinner party?
The quango running Europe, commonly known as The European Union, is slowly banning your common incandescent light bulb, 100Watt went last year (But if you ask for “Rough Service Bulbs” at DIY shops etc, they’re still available, because the wording didn’t cover that usage!), 60Watt are next in line.
They also banned industry making Mercury filled barometers, due to fears of pollution if they break or are disposed of.
So, what do the marvelous CFLs use to produce their hideous light? Yep, Mercury!
Dr Spencer’s showing SSTs going downhill in a big way, so another hard winter coming our way and another nail in the AGW coffin?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/meanwhile-sea-surface-temperatures-continue-to-fall/