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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The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
October 12, 2010 at 4:29 am
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!
The predominance of technology from a time when frugality was considered unnecessary. Having said that, my wife and I bought a new washer and dryer last year – the washer uses a ridiculously small amount of water (far less than the quoted 140 litres per person per week). So it really is a case of market penetration for major purchases such as these.
With regard to CFLs and LEDs: CFLs are horrible – they are flickery, green, slow-to-start, contain elements that are really rather nasty, and are unreliable. LEDs do not flicker, can be properly tuned so as to give the right lighting colour for the application, and are a great deal more reliable and efficient than the cursed CFLs. Why would anybody in their right mind choose CFL over LED?
We travel in an RV for 7 months of the year (a very low carbon footprint lifestyle but not the reason we do it) and have replaced all our incnadescents with LEDs. The light is different, not yellow like incandescents, but seems to be better for reading.
Incandescent RV bulbs under high usage burn out in about a month and have outputs that vary with time and voltage, neither seem to be observable with LEDs. Best they use about 10% of the power allowing more off grid camping as well in new trailer designs smaller gauge wiring is possible, four bedroom light fixtures with two bulbs each draw 16 amps today vs. 1.6 amps.
Today LEDs are a great solution. True the overall savings in terms of total world electrical usage is small. However it’s like government spending a million saved here a million saved there does add up. It’s too easy to neglect the small things but it’s the summation of small things that add up to major differences, one easily sees this in personal relationships.
Here in America we use 323 million btus per person per year. In Denmark they use 161 million btus per year.
So….you need to shrink your Country a lot to equal Denmark, not only you currency.
Congratulations!, keep on this endeavor and you´ll have also a King, King Canute Gore the First, the naked King. 🙂
What this article misses is the impact on CO2 emissions.
We need the highest possible level to boost the CO2 atmospheric content.
We need that to boost food production to the grastest extent.
If we’re lucky, global population may peak by the end of the century at a much higher level than today.
We need to be able to feed those extra people.
Otherwise a destructive series of food wars is unescapable.
There is no evidence that extra CO2 increases temperature BUT it sure boosts plant production.
Trying to be energy efficient is a goal in itself as the production of energy has cost and some items may be limited.
Pursuing energy efficiency to prevent manmade global warming is to give credence to a false claim, which unfortunately has a lot of attached baggage, such as the claimed need to drastically control emissions worldwide, raise the cost of energy, and take over the world.
So, keep things simple and seek energy efficiency for its own sake and skip the false premise of manmade global warming.
And avoid the tipping points f global warming. They are completely speculative and opinion.
I’m afraid that most of the energy savings from more efficient lights (CFLs or LEDs) are illusory, outside the tropics at least.
This is because most lighting occurs at night and in winter, the times at which most people heat their homes, offices, etc. The energy saved is merely a reduction in the amount of heat released by the lights, which has to be made up from other sources, if the same temperature is to be maintained.
BTW, this is true of all energy saving appliances to the extent they are used at the same time spaces are heated.
richard telford says…
Richard, can you please provide his analysis in brief.
Here ins DK we have CHP. CHP is not the solution to everything and has it’s own host of problems. However it works quite well and it is utilized in towns from 20.000 and upwards and can be based on almost any power source: biomass, waste incineration, coal, natural gas or oil. The most efficient power plats reach maybe 50-60% electrical efficiency (e.g. convert 50-60% of the energy in the input to electricity) but many are much lower. The rest of the energy cannot be converted to electricity due to thermodynamics, but as heat are used for heating buildings it can be put to good use.
However there is no free lunch. To use the heat, the electrical efficiency are often a few point lower than for a pure electrical power station. The district heating system cost money to build and in O&M costs. There is also a loss in the system.
What determines if this is a viable solution in a given area is basically economics. In energy there is no end-all solution for everyone, cause it always depends on the local situation. The question is if the CHP-heat can compete on price with alternative solutions available to consumers in the area.
One thing to note is that here in DK and many other places the district heat systems provide warm water with a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius due to history and this means a higher loss in the district heating system. Modern buildings with modern heating systems (as watertubes in the floor) need only 25 degress Celcius and hence the system can be run a much lower temperature and hence reduce loss, if build from scratch.
A special interest for the US and other places might be that it is possible to convert heat into cooling, and hence be used instead of air condition. However we don’t have much use for it here, and only recently have the begund trials in Copenhagen to test it, as many of the modern office buildings uses air conditioning units.
So obviously it is not a question of being green or not, socialist or not, it’s a technology – not an ideology and what determines if it makes sense in a given place is economics.
Kind regards
Troels
A thoughtful essay Tom.
But I suggest you are a bit too optimistic about combined electrical generation and (space) heating. It requires 1) heat users being physically close to electrical production facilities, and 2) vast capital investment in heat distribution pipelines, which is almost certainly not possible to justify economically. What works in small, long-winter Denmark is not so likely to work in St. Louis, and doesn’t make a bit of sense in Jacksonville, Dallas, or Phoenix.
Distribution of heat from nuclear reactors? Please explain why you think a population that is irrationally terrified of radiation from nuclear power is ever going to accept this?
“Fiat Lux”….In the beginning there was no light; the universe, then, was only a dimensionless point; there was no manifestation. Then, it became manifestation: Two opposite forces were emitted, they clashed between them a little after, and the first electric spark illuminated the vacuum:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598073/Unified-Field
Everything was going right, according to the supreme laws, but, as freedom was one of these laws, allowing only the possibility of disorder and chaos, there appeared a group of fools, who believed they could control the Universe, at least part of it: The third planet of a distant Sun, called Earth by their inhabitants. Thus, like Cancer cells taking over a body, they began by preaching the peoples of that planet that there were no laws whatsoever governing the Universe, and they could manage to control Climate and other physical manifestations on that planet, so they instructed (and generously paid them) a group of self-indulging beings, called by the inhabitants of that planet “scientists”, which inmediately began inventing a description of that world of theirs, as chaotic as possible, only understood by them and their masters, which they explained to the people, using a branch of that “science”-which in the past was only used in those places intended to lose money called “Casinos”-called “Statistics”.
So they urged people to discard, to throw away, EVERYTHING their hard working parents and grandparents and their clever ancestors had developed to attain a better way of living. In order to achieve this goal, the Devil himself selected one of his most faithful followers, one who while being only a child sold his soul to Him, and known by a name which meant “To pierce or wound, as with a horn; to penetrate with a pointed instrument, as a spear; to stab.”, to accomplish this task, beginning with the most powerful country of that planet, so as to when this big country would fall under His power, the rest would soon follow it.
My favorite example of technology supposedly bringing conservation: computers and the paperless office. Once computers became ubiquitous, so did printers. Computers can print a lot more than someone on a typewriter and printing from them was so easy. Instead of less paper or no paper, we use more paper. Change to paperless is still slow in most places.
Has anybody calculated the amount of energy that it takes to transport the materials, manufacture parts, transport the parts, assemble the new energy efficient refrigerator, transport that new refrigerator….compared to the amount of energy that it will be saving after throwing away the working but less efficient fridge?
I’ve always wondered if people are too focused on the power cord and can’t see the forest for the trees.
…of course, the newspaper and magazine industry may disagree…
From context, I assume that when the article says “…energy efficiency gains of between 1% and 1.5% for a very long time..” and “To make a real difference on global warming, our energy efficiency would need to increase by between 4% and 6%,…” that you actually mean xx%/PER YEAR.
It’s a minor editorial change that would clarify and improve readability. Several other spots beside the two examples.
“Here in America we use 323 million btus per person per year. In Denmark they use 161 million btus per year. We could change that almost painlessly in fairly short order.”
Consider that only a short time ago, as history measures time, that humans burned whale oil for home lighting. Nobody worried about “peak whale”, they only worried about how much it cost to light their homes. The transition from whale oil to coal oil was entirely market driven. No government coercion or compulsion was required. No unnecessary destruction of assets or resources either. In some areas coal was gassified and distributed for street lamps and home use. The market also adopted lamp oil made from petroleum. After Edison, it took decades for electricity to be widely available. Transition and adoption of each took decades and was done without government intrusion.
What goes unsaid by advocates of government intrusion is the aspect of force. Citizens are not free to decline to participate, and innovation grinds to a snail’s pace when it challenges the bureaucratic momentum. It is considered almost impolite to mention that the 19 pages of Federal regulations that cover the labels for light bulb packages are, in the end, enforced by a SWAT team if necessary. Those regulations are peacefully followed only because rational people know what can happen should they decline to do so. In the end, such government “help” to give us better lives only destroys liberty and reduces prosperity. And sadly over the years it is become easier and easier to call for government to intrude at a more and more detailed level until even flush toilets, shower heads and the font used on a light bulb package is backed by the implied used of deadly force.
Tom, Look at computers. We all know Moore’s Law. But if you were to run a computer that had as much computing power as one from 10 years ago, you would use probably a tenth of the energy! But you do not, no one does. Instead, the latest and greatest use as much energy as the one 10 years ago, but is just 10 times faster.
You are not correct when you use the word “might”, as until the cost of energy starts becoming a lot more expensive, there is no compulsion to economize it. Energy today, due to the advances you indicate., is relatively dirt cheap. And so people use it as it is no longer a major budget consideration (it is a minor one).
30 years ago, I was hearing about horror stories of people getting socked with $300 electric bills. Today, the only time my electric bill approaches that is during the Christmas season when I am running 15,000 lights (yea, I am a bad person). And while $300 30 years ago was a week’s salary for me, today it is a day’s.
Physical resources have gone up a lot in price, but anything technology based has not, indeed, as a cost per unit, it has come way down. That is why energy has not been saved – it does not penalize the people for not saving it.
“And how come nobody has thought of using the heat generated by nuclear power plants?”
Well the answer to that is obvious: No-one wants to live next to a power plant. Even non-nuclear ones.
richard telford @ur momisugly October 12, 2010 at 3:53 am
The analysis is simplistic and potentially misleading.
The analysis would be OK if the choice were between a new CHP system and a ground source heat pump supplied exclusively by a CCT power plant.
The analysis is inadequate when the choice is between an air source heat pump, which operates at its rated COP only at the rating point temperature and at lower COP at lower outdoor ambient temperatures, connected to a grid with an overall efficiency of ~30%.
Simplified analyses are fine as an approach to achieving some understanding, but are inadequate to support policy development.
Very interesting post!
I have no objections to anyone saving money, being more efficient, getting better value out of everything one can energywise, it’s every engineers’ dream to possess a Flux Convertor for time travel that no longers requires uranium for energy, but simply consumes the nearest available waste/trash, it’s makes sense! However, it is another thing when one side wants to impoverish another side, all because of ideology, & more than a sense of hard-cheese & a mighty chip on the shoulder! Better to be like me & have a balanced opinion, with a chip on both shoulders!;-) I recall listening & watching a scientist talking about energy, & that when we strike a wooden match, it uses barely 1% of the energy it possesses, yet if we could utilise 99% of its potential energy, we could literally move mountains! Now that’s real improvement!
Well said Carniphage. You took the words out of my mouth.
Jevons was not wrong.
“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.”
I don’t imagine Denmark manufactures a lot of stuff – apart from Lurpak butter, that is.
The EU has outlawed domestic incandescent light bulbs. When these have all been replaced in the EU, the total energy savings will be less than 0.33%. This figure is on the high side as it takes no account of winter energy saving from the heat released from filament bulbs or the additional energy used in the manufacture of low energy bulbs. Because of the slow warm up time it is likely that these bulbs will be left on for a longer time than conventional bulbs. The use of mercury will lead to additional environmental costs of disposal and the pollution caused by uncontrolled tipping. The net benefit is likely to be neutral or even negative.
Beware of politicans attempting to save the world.
Thanks Tom for an interesting post.
As you and other posters write, increased efficiency breeds alternate uses for the excess (energy, money) created. It’s a good thing — our standard of living increases — but it has not yet brought down the total energy usage, and given the fundamental nature of energy, seems unlikely to in the future.
One question — you wrote “Innovation has led to energy efficiency gains of between 1% and 1.5% for a very long time–perhaps as long as three centuries. ” That’s 1 to 1.5% per year, correct?
ford about to bring out a car that does 40 mpg.
Woopeedoo, I already get 50mpg with out of town driving in my 5-seater Citroen C5, and that car is 8 years old.
Come USA, can you not do better than that? Actually, you still have not invented independent rear suspension yet, so I suppose you cannot. Still using 4mm steel plate for the bodywork?
😉
Just when I think westerners must be using all the new gadgets there will ever be, I’m proved wrong. I’m not sure we can even imagine all the energy guzzlers there will be even 10 years from now, let alone 50. Robots? 3D holograms? Hover boards? Better Than Life computer games? Space trips? Laser saws? Health nanobots? Sci Fi is a good place to start for tomorrow’s goodies but reality is often stranger than fiction. I’d consider myself a reasonably contented person but I can easily imagine myself with MORE. Some of the things I’ve listed I’d doubt any of us would not consider essential.
If travel isn’t priced out of the question, who doesn’t want to visit more far off destinations? How many holidays will be politically correct? Will travel be the new way to discriminate?
Many people will have to settle for a smaller home than that of their predecessors but they’ll never stop dreaming of more space. Tardis style wardrobes anybody? Think how much energy it would take to warp space and time so that you can squeeze a 10 bedroom mansion into your 1 bedroom flat space.
Where will consumerism end? To ditch consumerism, you first have to change human nature. Tough one. And if we manage to eradicate it, what work will people do?
Makes solving climate change sound easy by comparison.
.
>>>Paperless offices.
used to work in a paperless office, where any printers and copiers were banned. Everything was on screens or projectors.
It was absolute chaos, and more time was spent down at the local Copycenter than in the office.