The false promise of energy efficiency and a real alternative

By Don Fitz
August 22, 2009 -- An action can have opposite effects, depending on it s social contexts. An isolated individual who protests company policy by refusing to go to work could well get fired and become an example used to intimidate others. When an entire workforce stays off the job, it’s called a “strike” and has a very good chance of forcing the company to change its policy.
As positive as they may be for friends and family, individual lifestyles of non-violence do not stop wars from being fought. But a society that eliminates corporate control of the economy gets rid of the need for expansion and takes an enormous step towards non-violence. In this context, non-violent lifestyles solidify non-violent global politics.
It is even more so with “energy efficiency”. It is impossible for individual choices to purchase energy-efficient products to have any positive effect on climate change. But, in a democratically run economy, energy efficiency would be a cornerstone of resolving the catastrophic legacy of production for profit.
Energy efficiency is not reducing the consumption of energy. This is true despite claims from green businesses, Al Gore and Amory Lovins that it is the best way to cut the use of coal, oil, gas and nukes. Put these claims out of your mind for a couple of minutes and common sense will make it clear why efficiency doesn’t deliver.
If prices go down, use goes up
If you want to reduce the use of
anything (energy included), what’s the first idea that hops into your mind? Most
people say “raise prices”. If something costs more, people use less. If the
price of gasoline jumps to $5 per gallon, people drive less.
The flip side is: If you want people to buy more of
something, reduce the price. Stores advertise sales because they get customers
buying.
Energy efficiency is like putting energy on sale. If you
insulate your home, get a fuel efficient car, or buy an appliance that runs on
less electricity, then your energy costs go down. This makes it cheaper to use
energy. Just as making energy more expensive means people will use less, making
energy cheaper (or more efficient) leads to the expectation that people will
use more.
It is only because we are told over and over again that
energy efficiency results in less energy use that we would believe something
that violates economic common sense. If a home is more energy efficient, it is
tempting to turn the heat up to 72–75 degrees F (rather than down to 60–65
degrees F). If cars have more stringent fuel-efficiency standards, expect more
motorists to buy SUV equivalents and drive them more miles. Fuel efficiency
could be the death knell for mass transit — expect CO2 to pour from
cement companies trying to supply widened roads for an influx of fuel-efficient
cars.
Products designed to be energy efficient are low cost energy
on steroids. First, people use the product more because it is cheaper. Second,
once people have spent money on a product, the best way to get a return on an investment
is to use it as much as possible. No one buys something in order to not use it. Efficiency tends to result
in energy use going up rather than down.
This “rebound effect” was observed as long ago as 1865 when
Stanley Jevons wrote The Coal Question.
New industrial techniques meant that only one third as much coal was needed to
produce a ton of iron. Far from reducing the amount of coal used, the new
methods were followed by a 10-fold increase during 1860–1863 in Wales. [1]
In 1980, Danile Khazoom and Len Brookes surveyed a range of
technological improvements and confirmed that during the previous century
increases in efficiency were followed by increased energy use. [2] Variously
known as the “Jevons Paradox” and the “Khazoom-Brookes Postulate”, these
concepts are well known by writers on energy but kept in the closet by
efficiency proponents.
Ted Trainer emphasises that if people carefully avoid using
their energy-efficiency devices, they will use whatever money they save to buy
something else, which then leads to energy use during the production and consumption
of the other product. [3] Jeff Dardozzi extends that reasoning, pointing out
that if, instead of buying more stuff, people put their energy-saved money in
the bank, that simply results in saved funds being loaned to others who start
businesses or make purchases, thus feeding into the energy increase cycle via
an indirect route. [4]
Pat Murphy has a particularly clear analysis of how the
process works with US homes, which have steadily become more energy efficient
over decades. Newer homes use fewer BTUs per square foot, but the number of
square feet per person in a 2007 home was about three times what it had been in
1950. “Thus improvements in building efficiency have not provided significant
energy savings because as we add efficiency features, we make houses larger,
fewer people reside in them and they use more energy-consuming appliances than
ever before”. [5]
A larger goal
Even though energy efficiency, by itself, does not result in
lowered energy use, it does not have to be that way. If efficiency were not
treated as a goal but only as a means to a larger goal, it could become a
powerful tool for lowering energy use.
During World War II, people in many countries accepted a limitation on their consumption via rationing cards. Everyone
received the same amount of essential commodities as part of the larger
struggle to protect the world from fascism. A similar system of rationing
energy use would change energy efficiency from being a cause of increased
energy use to a way for everyone to stay within their quota.
Every purchase, including homes, heating, cars, gasoline,
appliances and electricity for using appliances, embodies a certain amount of
greenhouse gases (GHG) that could be calculated as “CO2 equivalent
values”. It would be no more difficult to record these for each person than it
is to record credit card purchases. In a rationing system, people would receive
feedback if they were using too much energy and needed to cut back to avoid
their energy use being halted.
George Monbiot describes a quota system that would begin by
dividing the total amount of CO2 equivalency available to everyone
by the number of people to determine the quantity everyone would be allowed. Everyone
would receive a carbon debit card which would record purchases of fuel and electricity.
[6] Once people were used to such a system, the quota could be reduced by 2–4%
per year until a sustainable level was reached.
A quota system would not be a series of restrictions and
prohibitions. It would be highly flexible: People would decide for themselves
how to keep within their limits. No one would be forced to go without a car or
buy any particular type of car.
At the beginning of rationing, most people would probably
live their lives about the same. As the quota dropped to 90% of original carbon
levels, people would have to start making choices. Should we get rid of the
spare refrigerator in the garage? Or maybe not cook with the oven all summer
when the air conditioner is on? Or endure the pain of using a towel instead of
a hair dryer? Or suffer the agony of not having all the lights on when not at
home? The only option not available would be doing everything as before.
At this stage, most low-income people would not have to make
any choices because they would already be using less carbon than the quota
level. But the richer someone was, the more changes that person would have to
make at the very beginning.
As the quota dropped from 90% to 70%, then to 50% and even 10%
of the original carbon equivalent levels, more and more options would be lopped
off; but considerable life style alternatives would remain. With lower levels
of energy use, it is very likely that people could still choose either a personal
hybrid car (instead of relying on mass transportation, car sharing and biking)
or a home with a spare room for an office, or a clothes dryer or a vacation
twice a year. If a person wanted more than one of these, it would probably be
essential to have highly energy efficient devices in all other aspects of the
person’s life. Again, the only unavailable choice would be “I want all of that
and more”.
Equality as a prerequisite for
climate stabilisation
To make this work, it would be critical to address needs of
low-income people. Just as those with little money are stuck with the oldest
and most polluting cars, they have homes with the worst insulation and greatest
need for heating. A serious approach to combating climate change requires a
massive social commitment to providing energy-efficient homes and
transportation to those in greatest need.
The most unsettling limitation would be on air travel. Since
jets cause exorbitant quantities of GHGs, George Monbiot concludes that foregoing
air travel would be the one true sacrifice needed for a climate-sane world. [7]
But even this luxury may only need to be tamed rather than
eliminated. Ted Trainer calculates that using his “Simpler Way” could lower
electricity usage to “under 2% of the typical rich-world household consumption”.
[8] Since Monbiot estimates that carbon consumption must be reduced by 90% and
Trainer figures that a 98% reduction is possible, a little arithmetic indicates
that a person adopting the Simpler Way should be able to fly round trip New
York-London once every nine years and still reduce carbon emissions to 10% of
current levels.
Of course, there are big barriers to rationing carbon
emissions. The first is that corporate environmentalists are saying things like,
“The world is in serious crisis but relatively frivolous actions are all we
need”. This is epitomised in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which is on
target for describing the problem but then trivialises its magnitude by
suggesting that different light bulbs and such will do the trick. Rational
people conclude that if no serious response is needed then the problem can’t be
serious. Those who truly understand that climate change is comparable to the
Nazi onslaught are ready to discuss the extent to which our society must mobilise
to halt its collapse.
Inequality is perhaps the reason for trivialisation. As long
as those with wealth and power live in mansions and fly personal jets, their
calls for others to sacrifice so that they can squander will fall on burnt
ears. In a carbon rationing system, those who have the most will have to give
up the most and right now it looks like they are using their control of industry,
government and media to divert attention from the types of deep green changes
that need to be made.
The popular concept of energy efficiency, as an
uncoordinated amalgam of individualistic lifestyle choices, will only worsen
the crises of energy exhaustion and global warming. With rationing, energy
efficiency would have the opposite effect by becoming a universally valued
technique of staying within quota restrictions. What stands in the way is not
the unwillingness of the many to confront the crisis but the insistence of the
few on holding onto their privileges.
[Don Fitz is editor of Synthesis/Regeneration:
A Magazine of Green Social Thought, which is published for members of The
Greens/Green Party USA. He can be reached by email at fitzdon [at] aol.com.]
Notes
1. Monbiot, G. (2007). Heat: How to
stop the planet from burning. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, p. 61.
2. Dardozzi, J. The specter of
Jevons’ Paradox, Synthesis/Regeneration 47,
Fall, 2008, p. 15.
3. Trainer, T. (2007). Renewable energy
cannot sustain a consumer society. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, p.
116.
4. Dardozzi, p. 16
5. Murphy, P. (2008). Plan C:
Community survival strategies for peak oil and climate change. Gabriola Island,
BC: New Society Publishers, p. 14.
6. Monbiot mentions several proposed quota systems. He believes that
carbon quotas of everything besides fuel and electricity would be reflected in
higher prices for higher carbon usage. He also advocates a huge decrease at the
outset of the system rather than a gradual 2–4% decrease. pp. 43–58.
7. Monbiot, pp. 170–188.
8. Trainer figures that heating could be lowered even more than the 2%
level for electricity, though both might be a little higher in urban than rural
settings. Monbiot reports that a one-way London to New York trip is responsible
for an entire year of carbon emissions quota for each passenger “once a 90% cut
in emissions has been made”. [p. 173] But the overall climate impact of flight
is 2.7 times that of CO2 alone. This means that a London-New York
round trip would be 5.4 times a person’s yearly carbon quota. So, if that
individual could reduce other carbon allotments to 2% of current levels, in
nine years the person could save enough “carbon credits” for the round trip flight.