Environmental Issues

Why Energy Conservation Doesn't Happen

Programs to conserve energy or increase efficiency won't lead to lower energy in the long run, say natural resource economists. Such efforts ignore the truth observed by the father of quantitative economics, Stanley Jevons, more than a century ago: greater efficiency produces more energy use, not less.

  • Jevons noted that after James Watt's steam engine replaced the hugely inefficient Newcomen engine in late-18th century Scotland, coal consumption initially fell by one-third -- but then increased tenfold between 1830 and 1863.

  • Later the Bessemer steel process, "one of the greatest fuel-saving innovations in the history of metallurgy" according to Nathan Rosenberg of Stanford University, dramatically reduced the fuel requirements for steel production -- but the amount of coal used in steelmaking rose rapidly.

  • More recently, when Denmark mandated energy-efficient appliances in the late 1970s, energy use by the new appliances dropped -- by 25 percent for new washing machines and 31 percent for new freezers -- but total domestic consumption of electricity rose by about 20 percent between 1978 and 1986.

Greater efficiency leads to increased energy consumption, say experts, because increased efficiency lowers costs, which makes goods more affordable -- increasing demand.

Source: Herbert Inhaber, "Energy Conservation Doesn't Happen," Consumers' Research, October 1997.

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