Hi All
Not sure if any of you managed to get a seat to hear Al Gore? Be interested in your feedback. Great to see so much media coverage and street talk on climate change.
Also, I’ve been doing a little research on the different offset programs available and might make that the subject of a future email – pros, cons and regulation in the industry. I’d be interested to hear of any you’ve subscribed to and your views.
Recently I’ve been indulging in a little background reading and thought I might share one of the snippets with you. So, as a result thoughts in this email relate to Rebounding on the Khazzoom! - Energy Efficiency vs Energy Reduction. Again, a little bit lengthy but worth the read.
Overall the message is – Reducing our energy use comes first and foremost. Energy efficiency in the absence of energy reduction policies is not only a waste of time – counter-intuitively it’s counter-productive! ie being more efficient actually increases the amount of energy we use. Crazy.
Rebounding on the Khazzoom! - Energy efficiency vs Energy Reduction
One of the great axioms of environmental wisdom is to do more with less. A book with a fire engine red cover challenges that.
The book, guaranteed to start conversations on the tram, is “HEAT – how to stop the planet burning” by George Monbiot a controversial environmental thinker. Whether you are deep green or murky brown, George has something to outrage and incense you but takes nothing for granted and might even change your views on a few things. In HEAT, George designs his blueprint for how to achieve a 90% cut in carbon dioxide by 2030 without bringing civilization to an end.
So, on to doing more with less, otherwise known as energy efficiency.
Here’s a section from the book…
“The commonest and most understandable mistake made by people engaging with the problem of greenhouse gas emissions is to assume that energy efficiency is the same as energy reduction. People imagine that if a piece of equipment uses 30% less energy than the one it replaced that 30% has been saved. This was what I believed before I had the misfortune to encounter the Khazoom-Brookes Postulate.
The postulate works like this. As efficiency improves, people or companies can use the same amount of energy to produce more services. This means that the cost of energy for any one service has fallen. This has two effects. The first is that the money you would otherwise have spent on energy is released to spend on something else. The second is tha as processes which use a lot of energy become more efficient, they look more financially attractive than they were before. So when you are deciding what to spend your extra money on, you will invest in more energy-intensive processes than you would otherwise have done. The extraordinary result is that, in a free market, energy efficiency could increase energy use.
It sounds ridiculous and my instinct, when I first came across it, was to try to argue my way out. But the facts were not kind to me.
…Between 1980 and 2002, energy use in the 30 richest countries rose by 23%, even while they exported their most energy-intensive industries to poorer nations. There is some evidence to suggest that this happened because the cost of energy per service fell. The Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate appears to explain why the corporations, by pursuing their own cost-cutting interests, have not saved the planet…
The postulate is similar to, but not quite the same as, the other great paradox of energy efficiency, which is known as ‘the rebound effect’. While the Khazzoom=Brookes works on the economy as a whole, the rebound effect operates within your own pocket. If you live in a well-insulated house, you need burn less gas to maintain a certain temperature. But as your gas bills are therefore lower, you will be tempted to turn the temperature up. Car engines are far more efficient than they used to be, but over the past 20 years their fuel consumption has scarcely declined. The driver’s lower overall furel costsw permitted manufactgurers to make cars bigger, beavier and faster and to make them do more: such as power steering, air conditioning and heating the windows…
None of this is to suggest that energy efficiency should not be pursued. But what the paradoxes appear to show is that in the absence of proper government policies, it is not just a waste of time: it is counter-productive.”
George does point out that the postulate is just that – a postulate and not a theory – and there are fierce critics of it. But it’s certainly food for thought.
So…the conclusion from HEAT is that it’s pointless doing more with less if we don’t also do with less overall. Focus on reduction first. Energy efficiency without reduction policies leads to an increase in energy use.
As an interesting twist, have a look at the Australian-sponsored “Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate” http://www.asiapacificpartnership.org/ – its main purpose is to “facilitate the development, diffusion, deployment, and transfer of existing, emerging and longer term cost- effective, cleaner, more efficient technologies and practices among the Partners”. It has no targets for energy reduction.
Cheers
Hilary
