Are cars going to be an example of this? New electric cars are more fuel efficient but they will have so much processing and laser power (for autonomous driving) that they will actually consume more energy.
Jevons Paradox
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Jevons Paradox
#32People view technology as a deus ex machina that will enable them to keep doing what they're doing but magically it won't pollute any more. For example, many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. The "logic" doesn't work, but they just want a story to help them sleep at night while they read that the arctic is 45 degrees above normal, knowi…
> many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people? >applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems. While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electrici…
> That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people?
How do you avoid them?
Re: Jevons Paradox
#33People sometimes confuse the Jevons Paradox with rebound effects in general. Reminder: "The Jevons paradox occurs when the rebound effect is greater than 100%, exceeding the original efficiency gains."
"People save on electricity by replacing incandescent lights with LED lights, and also make their living rooms 25% brighter at the same time" is an example of a rebound effect. Some of the efficiency gain on the input side is offset by increased output consumption. But it's not an example of the Jevons Paradox. If you replace light sources with ones that are 5x as efficient, you'd have to also use more than 5x as much lighting as before to qualify as a Jevons Paradox.
The Jevons Paradox is a specific, fairly narrow, empirically observable phenomenon. Fatalistic notions that technological efficiency improvements can't reduce per-capita energy consumption, "because of Jevons Paradox," are not empirically supported. Energy rebound effects are common, but when the rebound is less than 100% (as it usually is) then there are real net energy savings and it's not a Jevons Paradox.
Re: Jevons Paradox
#34I suppose a nice example would be city lights. There was an article lately about how electrical consumption for city lights increased despite the switch to LEDs. Can't quite find the article though, but here is one about light pollution increasing (which does not necessarily correlate with electrical consumption, but still): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/light-pollution-increasing-arou...
Maybe this one from 2015? I remember hearing it on the radio. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082015/lighting-paradox... I have to say that the amount of new light installed is truly huge and interfering with astronomical viewing. Don't bother telling someone to remember to turn off the lights anymore either... they'll look at you like you're a martian.
How would they know what a martian looks like, if light pollution ruins telescopy?
Re: Jevons Paradox
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not hard to find examples where this "rule" doesn't seem to hold. If you give me water heated for free, I may shower twice on some days, but I will not take infinite hot showers. If you gave me shoes that cause less ablation of the pavement I walk on, I wouldn't find other ways to remove the same amount of material, I would simply use up less resources wherever I go, being none the wiser.
Actually, Jeveron's paradox would hold in the case you mentioned. Someone who gave you heated water would give it to you with an implicit quota otherwise a rational actor use an infinite amount of it. If I actually had free no-holds-barred heated water, I'd run a pipe down to the local laundry and sell it at a profit. That is the rational response - the reason you don't see people doing that is because nobody offers…
If hot water were free, you couldn't sell it. There is a point at which people don't need more water; they aren't Singularity-minded water maximizers.
Re: Jevons Paradox
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people? >applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems. While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electrici…
> That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people? How do you avoid them?
I talk to strangers on planes, in restaurants and bars, while surfing or skiing, or on a shared lyft line, at conferences, etc. Its not rare for me to eventually be talking about energy and renewable energy because it's one of my favorite topics. Never has anyone brought up a solar plane!
Re: Jevons Paradox
#37So, if, for instance, the price of energy dropped to zero, people's consumption of it would become infinite. And ditto for anything else that people use. For some reason I find that rather improbable.
Re: Jevons Paradox
#38People view technology as a deus ex machina that will enable them to keep doing what they're doing but magically it won't pollute any more. For example, many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. The "logic" doesn't work, but they just want a story to help them sleep at night while they read that the arctic is 45 degrees above normal, knowi…
> many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people? >applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems. While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electrici…
> Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electricity.
My quick research suggests otherwise.
The first result when I searched on "people with led lights use more electricity" was The Lighting Paradox: Cheaper, Efficient LEDs Save Energy, and People Use More https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082015/lighting-paradox....
It linked to research results including:
"A 2010 study looked at lighting use around the world for the past 300 years as lighting technology improved from whale oil lamps to gas and kerosene lamps to electric incandescent bulbs. The study http://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/tsao_jy_2010_04_app_for_light_..., conducted by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico found a direct relationship between decreased cost and increased consumption."
and
"A study published earlier this year in the Journal of Industrial Ecology http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.12281/abstra... concluded we will likely see a drop in energy use for residential lighting in the short term, but energy savings will likely be reduced or perhaps eliminated entirely as the amount of lit space increases.
"It's not just a question of turning on a light to read a book or to see something on your kitchen counter, you can do lots of stuff with LEDs that you really couldn't do very well with other kinds of artificial light sources," said Theis, a co-author of the study. "They are being incorporated into wearable lighting now, there is just no end to it.""
I didn't look up electric cars, but I expect to find similar research there. I'm pretty sure I read in HN that ride sharing is leading to more traffic.
I agree Jevon's paradox doesn't happen everywhere, but it looks like it does in your first proposed counterexample. It happens a lot.
Re: Jevons Paradox
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people? >applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems. While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electrici…
> Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electricity. My quick research suggests otherwise. The first result when I searched on "people with led lights use more electricity" was The Lighting Paradox: Cheaper, Efficient LEDs Save Energy, and People Use More https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082015/lighting-paradox... . It linked to research results including: "A 2010 study looked at lighting use ar…
The authors of that paper are estimating that energy use for lighting will eventually reach past levels because of the rebound effect and population growth, not Jevon's paradox.
Jevon's paradox occurs when an increase in efficiency results in so much additional use that per capita energy consumption increases. If the average car is made twice as efficient and that leads to it being driven three times it's annual mileage, that's Jevon's. If it's driven one and a half times it's annual mileage, that's the rebound effect.
Re: Jevons Paradox
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electricity. My quick research suggests otherwise. The first result when I searched on "people with led lights use more electricity" was The Lighting Paradox: Cheaper, Efficient LEDs Save Energy, and People Use More https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082015/lighting-paradox... . It linked to research results including: "A 2010 study looked at lighting use ar…
The authors of that paper are estimating that energy use for lighting will eventually reach past levels because of the rebound effect and population growth, not Jevon's paradox. Jevon's paradox occurs when an increase in efficiency results in so much additional use that per capita energy consumption increases. If the average car is made twice as efficient and that leads to it being driven three times it's annual mile…
> Jevon's paradox occurs when an increase in efficiency results in so much additional use that per capita energy consumption increases.
They also describe that we are lighting things we didn't use to light, keeping the lights on longer ( not just households but decorative building lights, decorative bridge lights, etc), and other per capita increases.
The quote above states per capita increases clearly:
> "It's not just a question of turning on a light to read a book or to see something on your kitchen counter, you can do lots of stuff with LEDs that you really couldn't do very well with other kinds of artificial light sources," said Theis, a co-author of the study. "They are being incorporated into wearable lighting now, there is just no end to it."
The Sandia article also states clearly about per-capita increases, "No empirical evidence is found for a saturation in per-capita consumption of light"
> We have collected and self-consistently analyzed data for per-capita consumption of artificial light, per-capita gross domestic product, and ownership cost of light. The data span a wide range (three centuries, six continents, five lighting technologies, and five orders of magnitude), and are consistent with a linear variation of per-capita consumption of light with the ratio between per-capita gross domestic product and ownership cost of light. No empirical evidence is found for a saturation in per-capita consumption of light, even in contemporary developed nations.