The Siren Song of Energy Efficiency
(New York Times, March 19, 2012)

Whatever happened to “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”? Now many civic-minded Americans ask themselves not how to avoid buying stuff, but rather what to buy: that shiny new hybrid in the driveway, the energy-efficient appliances in the kitchen, the right light bulb. Does this pay off for the planet, or does the quest for efficiency distract from more effective approaches to cutting carbon output? What can consumers do that would be more effective...

Efficiency’s Promise: Too Good to Be True
David Owen, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of "Green Metropolis" and "The Conundrum."
Updated March 20, 2012, 2:40 PM


Amory Lovins once famously characterized energy efficiency as “the lunch you’re paid to eat”; Steven Chu, the secretary of energy, has called efficiency a tool for reducing energy consumption and carbon output with minimal personal sacrifice.

Lovins, Chu and other efficiency enthusiasts are undoubtedly correct when they argue that we Americans could live regally on little more than we currently waste. But turning efficiency improvements into environmental gains isn’t as easy as they make it sound. When I replaced the incandescent bulb in my desk lamp with a compact fluorescent, I expected the amount of electricity used by my desk lamp to decrease — and it did. But the broader, long-term impacts of that switch — both for my own life and for the world — are certain to be more complex.

Increasing the efficiency of energy-using machines has the practical effect of making energy cheaper, and when we make useful things cheaper we use more of them. This isn’t an abstract argument, because the history of civilization has played out in exactly this way. Nearly every energy-consuming device I use today is vastly more efficient, in multiple senses, than whatever its equivalent was back in the early 1970s. Yet my energy consumption has soared, and so has the world’s — not only over all, but also per capita and within every income stratum. Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation. But when the long-term correlations all run in one direction, we should take notice.

The challenge with efficiency gains is that we don’t compost our energy savings: we inevitably re-invest the money in additional consumption. A study published in 2010 showed that, over the past three centuries, steady improvements in the energy efficiency of lighting have been almost exactly offset by the growth of new lighting applications. And the actual impact of these new uses has been far greater, because growth in lighting has also had indirect energy consequences, such as lengthening the workday and making nighttime travel and recreation easier. Such changes have dramatically improved our quality of life, but they haven’t shrunk our energy consumption, our carbon output, or our environmental footprint. On the contrary.

One way to see the ...

As far as I know, David Owen and I have never met or spoken, although he has published two New Yorker articles, a book, and now this New York Times article directly attacking my work, with which he seems rather unfamiliar. This seems an odd way to do journalism, though it's not his style to let pesky facts get in the way of a good story. Even odder is that the Times now republishes his conclusions (plus an incomprehensible analogy about a village called Lovinsland) without seeming to realize they're thoroughly discredited and merit at least an opposing view.

Owen's counterfactual 2010 New Yorker article on energy "rebound" was demolished at the time by, among others, Dr. James Barrett of the Clean Economy Development Center, Dr. Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. David Goldstein of Natural Resources Defense Council, and myself . Cameron Burns and Michael Potts nicely summarized the key arguments here—the #1 Google hit for searches like "AmoryLovins+Jevons"—and RMI pursues the diverse "Jevons paradox" conversation at on our blog. A Times editor constructing a conversation on this theme could have easily found such references, leaving readers better-informed.

There is a very large professional literature on energy rebound, refreshed about every decade as someone rediscovers and popularizes this old canard. That literature supports neither Owen's view nor Prof. Matthew Kotchen's partial support that "rebound effects are potentially important." Real, yes; important, no. The price-elasticity and responding effects Owen cites, where measurable, are consistently minor—a theoretical nicety of little practical consequence.

James Watt's more-efficient steam engine did spark an industrial revolution that (as Stanley Jevons observed) created great wealth and burned more coal. But this is no proof that energy efficiency generally triggers economic growth that devours its savings (or more)—a "backfire" effect never yet observed. Rather, it shows that many disruptive technologies stimulate economic growth and wealth, sometimes sharply. Some disruptive technologies, like microchips and the Internet, incidentally save net energy even though they are not meant to be energy technologies; some disruptive energy technologies, like automobiles and jet airplanes, increase energy use, while others, like electric motors, probably decrease it, and still others, like electric lights, could do either depending on technology and metrics (which Owen's cited lighting analysis muddles); still other disruptive technologies that Owen doesn't criticize, like key advances in public health, mass education, and innovation, enormously increase wealth and have complex and indeterminate energy effects. Blaming wealth effects on energy efficiency has no basis in fact or logic.

To be sure...