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When an organization is improving processes, they usually look to the most costly inputs first. This is often people or physical equipment but is energy in many
by caseysoftware 11y ago
When an organization is improving processes, they usually look to the most costly inputs first. This is often people or physical equipment but is energy in many industrial processes.
If energy becomes "free" there is no economic reason to improve or optimize that input. In fact, there's a good motivation to use more of it - even inefficiently - because it's all multiplied by zero.
Therefore, we might end up with systems with great inefficiencies and negative external consequences that are not included in the "free" part.. which leads us exactly back to where we are.
- hodgesrm 11y agoThat's a great point. Harry Saunders et al. showed this effect clearly a few years ago with their work on economics of lighting. The thing that screws up green economics is the indirect energy that goes into products like efficient LEDs. [1] (Which I installed in abundance in my house, incidentally. It decreased our electric bills as theory predicted but we also bought more lights and replaced a number of switches and transformers.) [1] http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/why_energy_efficiency_does_not http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/why_energy_efficiency_doe...