Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe Paradox of Energy Efficiency
A new report, The Rebound Dilemma, for the Institute for Energy Research (IER) by California State University, Fullerton economist Robert Michaels analyzes the implications of depending on energy efficiency improvements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as a way to mitigate future climate change. Michaels looks at studies of direct, indirect, embedded energy, and economy-wide rebounds. The Melbourne heating case is largely an example of direct rebound effect in which better insulation and more efficient heaters apparently resulted in no reduction of energy use. An indirect rebound occurs when efficiency improvements raise the productivity of other goods and inputs that, in turn, boost the demand for relatively cheaper energy. Embedded energy is the energy used to produce, distribute, and maintain more energy-efficient capital goods. And economy-wide rebounds result from the ways in which people use their savings on energy to purchase other goods and services that also consume energy to produce. For example, cheap gasoline enabled suburban living.
Proponents of energy efficiency [PDF] point to studies of direct rebound effects that often find that they are rather small in comparison to the energy saved by increased efficiency. One classic 1992 study reported a 5 to 15 percent rebound effect for increased automobile fuel efficiency, i.e., people boosted their annual mileage only by that percentage in response to their lower fuel bills with the result that they burned a lot less gasoline. Maybe people aren’t driving all that much more, but the new MIT study finds that most of the rebound came from consumer preferences for bigger and more powerful cars.
So what did the IER report find? There are lots of studies of direct rebound effects that look at the effect of more energy efficient appliances on household energy use. The results of the studies vary considerably, but eyeballing the reported results the rebound appears to hover around 30 percent. Assuming an appliance that uses 100 kilowatt hours (kwh) per month to operate is replaced by one that uses just 50 kwh, a 30 percent rebound implies that the actual reduction in energy consumed would be 35 kwh per month. Still not bad at all since the consumer gets the extra services from the new appliance while saving cost of energy.
The upshot is that energy efficiency mandates advocated by environmental activists with the aim of mitigating future man-made global warming will likely fall far short of their goals. As Michaels concludes, “Instead of imposing energy efficiency mandates, energy policy should embrace market prices and disruptive innovations to guide energy to its most valuable uses.” After all, the point of improved energy efficiency is not to forgo its use but to boost its productivity as a way to provide people with more of the goods and services they want.
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hunter
(38,311 posts)The ONLY way to reduce fossil fuel use is to restrict supply -- by banning new fossil fuel plants and removing old ones, by banning development of new fossil fuel extraction schemes (mountain top removal, fracking, arctic oil...) or by taxing these industries out of existence.
The "magic hand" of economics and efficiency will always push us in the wrong direction.
Extreme carbon taxes on the extraction industry might be a good place to start, and I would not direct these tax dollars into renewable energy or big industry of any kind; instead I'd make sure the money was used to create low energy, low environmental impact, comfortable and attractive urban communities.
We won't solve this problem by making our use of fossil fuels more efficient, we can only solve this problem by actively dismantling our fossil fuel industry.
If we want this civilization and what's left of our natural environment to survive, then the fossil fuel industry must die.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)We won't ban new FF plants.
We won't restrict FF supply.
We won't ban the development of new extraction.
We won't put punitive carbon taxes in place.
We won't use any carbon tax money that we do collect for any good purpose.
The fossil fuel industry won't die.
This civilization won't survive.
But we will keep praying fervently (with folded invisible hands) to the Market God, and making up all kinds of excuses (like lack of faith?) when He doesn't come through as requested.
************************************
It's time to decide how we are going to feel about all this. Miserable? Or joyful? I'm leaning towards joy, myself. My latest FB status on the subject:
I can’t believe how lucky I am to be alive and awake right at this precise moment in history, standing on what feels like the pinnacle of a peak experience, with both the past and the future arrayed all around in full view. Yes, the slopes descend steeply in every direction, but imagine how boring it would be if we were still standing placidly on the savanna.
There is more juice to be sucked from this experience than we can begin to imagine. I’ve realized that I’m done with wallowing, I’m done with despair, I’m done with apologizing for feeling OK about how it’s all unfolding.
We have ended up here, right where we are. That means that all the forces of the universe – everything from the laws of physics to our own human nature – worked together to bring about this outcome. Given all that, we couldn’t have ended up anywhere else. It’s physically impossible.
So what are we to make of this, with all the resolute awareness we’ve brought to the table? Should we grieve? Should we dance? Should we throw a wake or a bon voyage party? How about all of the above? Well, I’ve done my grieving. I know Kubler-Ross by her first name, so you’ll have to excuse me if my garments stay un-rended.
I’m in the mood to celebrate. What a ride this is! What a ride it has been, and is yet to become! What a ride – I never would have dreamed such a thing was possible.
Nederland
(9,976 posts)That's a pretty big assumption.
If a source of energy that is significantly cheaper than fossil fuels is developed, the fossil fuel industry will die. It will die the same way that the buggy whip industry died when cars were developed and the way the typewriter industry died when computers came along. You can deride the "Market God" all you want, but the fact is that with billions of dollars to be made by anyone that comes up with a cheaper source of energy, assuming that it won't happen seems like a bad bet.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)It's the "billions of dollars to be made" - hell, make it trillions for shits and grins - that is going to guarantee that we'll fuck up the planet and burn all the carbon while we're doing it.
Nice prayer, though.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)After all, we didn't leave the stone age until we ran out of rocks.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Thanks, I'd forgotten that one.
Nederland
(9,976 posts)Dozens of Malthusian predictions of global disaster have failed to come true for over 200 years, and yet he still believes.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Laugh away.
Oh, and do yourself a favour. Read Korowicz.
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)...market dynamics are going to magically render it too costly.
Market dynamics will render fossil fuels too costly long before they "run out". Just look at the impact of oil prices. Ten years ago oil was under $25 a barrel, today it bounces above and below $100 a barrel. Despite the fact that we are decades away from "running out" of oil, that price change resulted in virtually every car maker on the planet making or planning to make electric cars. To think that the market doesn't spur innovation until after its too late is to be ignorant of history.
The market is filled with investors who are trying to guess what changes the future holds and how they can profit from them. Right now the alternatives to fossil fuels include wind, solar, bio-fuels, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and a bunch of others I forgot or haven't heard of. That only begins to describe the possible alternatives because within each of those are numerous flavors and approaches. Solar has crystalline, nano and CSP. Fission has LFTR, GFR, pebble bed, etc. Fusion has Polywell, LENR, and Magnetic confinement methods. To think that every single one of these is going to fail despite the enormous amounts of money being poured into them is to be pessimistic to the extreme.
And that describes GliderGuider to a T.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Here's a link to a dispassionate, well-reasoned analysis that was just published by David Korowicz:
Trade Off: Financial system supply-chain cross contagion (PDF)
The point Korowicz makes, in 77 pages of "simple ideas drawn from ecology, systems dynamics, and the study of complex networks" is that our global enterprise is teetering on the brink, vulnerable to shocks starting in the financial system and amplified through the disruption of global supply chains. He makes a damn good case, and his analysis fleshes out what I think is the most probable near-term scenario.
If things begin to come apart in this way (which is my core assumption these days) then funding for all the shiny toys you talk about will simply evaporate as the world tries to keep the lights on and the food moving. In a situation like that, the world is going to stick with sunk-cost infrastructure until the rubble stops bouncing. No solar farms, no wind farms, just coal, oil and gas - not only because the infrastructure is there, but because all those jobs in the coal, oil and gas fields depend on it. And ain't nobody going to shut down those jobs so somebody somewhere else can try their hand at building a few wind turbines.
I encourage you to read the paper - it's a barn-burner. If nothing else it would give you a good idea of just how pessimistic I really am.
hunter
(38,311 posts)Even if solar panels or wind turbines were free, there's a high cost dealing with their intermittent nature.
Currently nimble natural gas fired power plants are the preferred way of generating electricity when the sun's not shining or the wind's not blowing. The manufacturers of these gas fired plants and the natural gas extraction industries are very much aware of this synergy. They'd be happy to build us more of these:
The coal industry, which currently uses the promise of wind and solar as a means of expanding the power network to increase their own share in the market, also supports research into nimble coal-fired generation capacity.
But fossil fuels are like smoking. Positive or negative economic incentives aside, the only way to quit smoking is to quit smoking.
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)It's pointing out that as long as carbon has no externalized cost it will continue to be emitted. This is a no-brainer, though.
bananas
(27,509 posts)bananas (1000+ posts) Tue Oct-20-09 09:12 AM
Response to Original message
3. Rush Limbaugh: Institute for Energy Research is "the energy equivalent of the Heritage Foundation"
Edited on Tue Oct-20-09 09:33 AM by bananas
The IER has been described by Rush Limbaugh as "the energy equivalent of the Heritage Foundation".
Not a very good source.
Institute for Energy Research
From SourceWatch
The Institute for Energy Research (IER), founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organisation, advocates positions on environmental issues which happen to suit the energy industry: climate change denial, claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, and the deregulation of utilities.
It is a member of the Sustainable Development Network. The IER's President was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron.
IER has been established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit group. It is a "partner" organization of the American Energy Alliance<1>, a 501c4 organization which states that it is the "grassroots arm" of IER.<2> AEA states that, by "communicating IER’s decades of scholarly research to the grassroots, AEA will empower citizens with facts so that people who believe in freedom can reclaim the moral high ground in the national public policy debates in the energy and environmental arena."<2> AEA states that its aim is to "create a climate that encourages the advancement of free market energy policies" and in particular ensure drilling for oil is allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife refuse and in US coastal waters.<2>
<snip>
Institute for Energy Research
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Institute for Energy Research (IER), a Houston, Texas-based public foundation, was founded in 1989 from a predecessor organization.<1> The IER conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. The group promotes free-market energy and environmental policy.<2>
IER is a tax-exempt public foundation and is funded entirely by tax deductible contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations. No financial support is sought for or accepted from the government.<1> Some of its funding comes from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation.<3>
The IER has been described by Rush Limbaugh as "the energy equivalent of the Heritage Foundation"<4>. It positions include opposition to energy efficiency and other demand side management programs, opposition to renewable energy, and denial of climate change science.
<snip>
Their affilitate The American Energy Alliance:
Mysterious industry front-group affiliated with Ken Lay’s former speechwriter launches anti-Waxman-Markey ads with phony MIT cost figures
April 30, 2009
Memo to Media: Who the heck are these guys and what are they hiding by apparently misstating their origin?
E&E News (subs. req’d) reports on a new advertising campaign from a “conservative organization”:
The American Energy Alliance (AEA) campaign targets 11 key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — all of them moderates whose votes could be critical to the climate bill’s success or failure.
Who is the AEA? Good question. The AEA says on its website:
AEA is an independent affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research (IER)….
Aside from the cryptic nature of the oxymoronic phrase “independent affiliate,” it is worth noting that the Institute for Energy Research “has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.” The President of IER is one Robert Bradley “who previously served as Director of Public Policy Analysis at Enron, where he was a speechwriter for CEO Kenneth Lay,” who was “convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges on May 25, 2006.
Elsewhere on the site, AEA says it is “the independent grassroots affiliate” of IER. The only people who think AEA is a “grassroots” organization are people who are actively smoking grass.
Now here is where it gets really confusing, apparently by design.
The AEA also says on its website it was “founded in May, 2008.”
But Sourcewatch (here) points to a 1993 Time magazine article (here)
<snip>
bananas
(27,509 posts)Know your wingnuts: Institute for Energy Research
by: heath_harrison
Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 00:58:25 AM EDT
( - promoted by Carnacki)
As the GOP tries to blame high gas prices on the Democrats ("Liberals caused your energy problems," Sean Hannity said today.) and unveils their massive effort to give away the American coast to Big Oil, it's worth keeping an eye on the sources they cite.
The most frequently used is a supposed rebuttal to Harry Reid's point that the oil companies aren't using the federal land they already have leased. The list of talking points was put together by a little outfit called The Institute for Energy Research.
Rush Limbaugh praised the group on Wednesday's broadcast while reading their press release. "They're the Heritage Foundation of energy," he said. "They're good guys."
The same list turned up on the other two rightwing shows I checked out today.
What the hosts don't tell you about Institute for Energy Research
is that it's headed by a Mr. Robert L. Bradley.
Bradley's previous job?
Director of Public Policy Analysis at Enron and speechwriter for Ken Lay.
That should tell you the kind of folks you're dealing with.
more at: http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
bananas
(27,509 posts)Who are these guys? Yet more polluter-funded front groups hit the climate scene
Posted April 30, 2009
There's a new front-group running around DC, backed by some old gunslingers who've been packing heat for polluters for years.
<snip>
So who is the American Energy Alliance? Another offshoot of the ExxonMobil and Koch Industries families of polluter-funded advocacy, it turns out. Described by NPR as "a new advocacy organization with strong ties to the oil industry," AEA was formed in 2008 and is led by long-time polluter-pal Thomas Pyle, who serves as President.
<snip>
Pyle is also President of the AEA's counterpart the Institute for Energy Research (IER). What's that? Well, the tobacco industry had the Tobacco Institute to peddle its smoke screens, deceptions and other propaganda. The energy industry has the Institute for Energy Research, which Sourcewatch describes this way: " ... founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organization, [IER] advocates positions on environmental issues which happen to suit the energy industry: climate change denial, claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, and the deregulation of utilities."
Just how far out there does the IER get in touting the energy industry line on climate change denial? In recent weeks, the energy-financed IER has helped tell the, well, dirty lie that "clean energy is a 'dirty lie."
IER also did its part to spread around the lies contained in a widely debunked Spanish "study" that falsely suggests green jobs are somehow a bad thing.
Speaking of being out there on denial issues, one of IER's directors is Steven Hayward with the American Enterprise Institute. Hayward was exposed two years ago for offering to pay scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $10,000 for written critiques of the IPCC's newest findings.
These industry groups are the same ones that got us into this mess and are trying to keep us tied to old, dirty 19th century technology instead of leading us forward with new safe, clean energy that will create jobs and make America a global leader for 21st century.
And so it goes...
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)They were all ad hominem against the organization, based on its lack of political purity. It shouldn't need saying that much valid science has been done by scientists who had odious sponsors and/or personal beliefs.
I know your personal beliefs present a barrier to the discovery of potential truth told by people with suspicious motives. However, motivation should be the beginning point for your skepticism, not the end point. That informed skepticism should become part of the process by which you investigate the findings, not stand in the way of considering them at all.
So what about the findings themselves? Have you even downloaded the paper?
bananas
(27,509 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)"A paper on global warming? But it's from a left-wing liberal front group! They have an agenda! We can't think about stuff from those people, it's all lies!"
kristopher
(29,798 posts)...if it disproves one of his "truthiness" based screeds.
There is a huge amount of evidence disproving the premise being pushed by the right wing outfit (at the time you said that evidence was too much to read).
Expanding energy use is a fundamental premise of the right - to them it means bigger utilities and more profits, more reactors, more coal plants etc.
The OP is bullshit but you like it because it helps justify nuclear power.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Walls of text in OPs are off-putting. That's one advantage of the 4-paragraph rule on DU - it makes it more likely that people will actually read the post. As I told you, I downloaded and read the papers linked in the post you're referring to. I expect others to do the same if their comments are to be taken seriously.
Your attempt to create a meme that "expanding energy use is a right wing premise" is woefully off base. As far as I can tell, the expansion of energy use has been a fundamental premise of all societies going back to the stone age. The only thing the left has going for it is that more of us insist that the costs of expanded energy use be accounted for and mitigated.
The reason most people on both the left and right want efficiency isn't so that we will use less energy but so that we can do more with it. The massive improvement in energy intensity (aka energy efficiency) over the last 50 years hasn't resulted in less energy consumption, but rather in continuously expanding economies.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Virtually every claim you make here is, to put it politely, an 'outlier' in the world of science. You glom onto discredited junk science and treat it as if you were discovering something for the very first time when in fact all you are doing is National Inquirer 'Bat Boy' level science. You have more confused concepts than Sarah Palin.
Besides your reinvention of what Jevons is about, another example of confused concepts can be seen above in your claim that expanding energy use isn't a right wing premise. There is a huge body of extremely valid research showing that the economic structure behind centralized thermal generation (a system of centralized control favored by the right wing) is one of the primary culprits driving increased consumption of energy in the modern era. It's a fact that isn't in disputeexcept by self styled, totally uninformed people that have no actual grasp of the topic. It's the kind of talk that is commonly heard in barrooms when the 'immoderate preacher' type has had about two too many.
The evidence presented by OK in this thread overwhelms your position.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112714178
You give no evidence of even having read the material he provided and you obviously have no interest in changing your position. And no wonder either, since it is a stance that dovetails perfectly with your past efforts to surreptitiously promote nuclear power.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)You're losing your grip, kris.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)... losing my patience with purveyors of junk science.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)as opportunities for personal growth. If I see them in that light they become both fun and useful.
Cheers,
Paul
?w=800GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
Starboard Tack
(11,181 posts)More efficient energy use is not an excuse to maintain present levels of consumption, let alone increase them. When I was growing up in the late forties and early fifties, we had rationing. Everyone was fine with that. We will return to rationing in order to survive. Hopefully, it will not be too late.
Some say it is already too late. I like to think we still have a chance, but there will be much pain and gnashing of teeth. The resourceful will survive. Some may be human.
I was in New Orleans as Katrina was charging in. There were hurricane parties everywhere. I felt like we were on the Titanic and the band played on. The night before she hit, nobody I met was even considering leaving town. Most of them left. Some friends stayed. The city is back, not the same, but back.
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)The author of the paper is a natural gas shill and in deep with the pollution industry. What is their solution?
Like the health care mandate, mention it as the only solution, it gets dismissed, and no solution is accepted by those who don't want to make the tough decisions. The author of the paper even goes to lengths to cite Climate Progresses Joe Romm's works in order to make the case.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I haven't yet found anything that I think would work, which is probably why I resonated with the paper - and yes, there is some confirmation bias at work in my reaction.
I think the rebound effect we should be concerned about is at the level of the economic growth as a whole. That's what improvements in energy intensity are intended to do, after all. The goal isn't to increase the consumption of energy directly, but to increase the amount of consumables we can produce with that energy.
What did they leave off the table? What do you think they might have suggested if they hadn't been ordered by their political masters to conceal the truth by almost telling it?
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)You also need a technological transformation so that the rebound itself doesn't have an effect, ie, if you're going to make all cars more efficient you might as well get rid of cars and have large scale public transportation that is itself more efficient. Then those people who want to go on vacations after saving money in fuel costs will be able to take the large scale environmentally friendly public transportation.
You would have to make CO2 have an externalized cost so that people wouldn't just go "oh I am saving money by using this new technology so I can spend that money elsewhere on dirty technology." They would be forced to consider buying dirty vs clean and would, because dirty is more expensive, avoid it.
15 years from now when progressives are talking about implementing such a tax some capitalists will come along and bitch and say that right wingers were thinking of it (making spurious connections, but connections that none the less exist). They have us eating our own and we're fucked for it.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Without it you tend to get things like the pollution in Eastern Europe under Soviet rule.
In my view so long as material growth is a goal though, we're screwed no matter what the political/economic system is and how much regulation it imposes. While it might be easier to impose a no-growth culture under socialism than under capitalism (which expressly forbids such a goal), I'd bet the risks of counter-revolution could be pretty high.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)jevons paradox is not exactly a new discovery, but it is being routinely sourced by denialists and obstructionists as some sort of insurmountable obstacle.
What the deniers are not pointing out is that the problem is readily solved by intervention in the market: i.e. regulation.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I'd be in favour of a consumption tax on the order of of $100 per tonne of CO2 (~$35/tC) charged to the combustor of any fossil fuel. That would include drivers and power plants, as well as home owners and businesses that use natural gas for heat.
The first problem is to get such a scheme approved, the second would be what to do with the proceeds.
The 600 billion dollars raised every year in the USA from such tax could be used for renewable energy development or to fund permaculture courses for everyone. Or it could be used to subsidize the FF industry that would lobby for relief from the economic pain caused by the tax....
