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When US per capita emissions are less than China's, then it's fair to criticize. However, I'm skeptical renewable energy transition will actually be a transiti

When US per capita emissions are less than China's, then it's fair to criticize. However, I'm skeptical renewable energy transition will actually be a transition, rather than just piling more on top of what we already use. For the same reasons adding more lanes to a freeway doesn't alleviate traffic congestion, adding renewable energy to the mix assumes a static demand for energy: but the reality is we'll take all we can get, and if more is available, we'll find ways to use it. Induced demand.

cinntaile 3y ago
The research on that is pretty clear that it does alleviate congestion, the question is for how long. It can definitely take a while before that extra capacity is used up.
- KoolKat23 3y ago
  Each additional lane alleviates 50% less reduction traffic the last lane achieved. Diminishing returns.
- braingravy 3y ago
  The research is very clear that increasing road capacity results in more drivers on those roads, increasing congestion. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    More utility provided by the road too, though. Can't forgot that side of the equation.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    Your article says that the intensity of traffic stays the same if you increase or decrease the number of roads, so it doesn't increase or decrease congestion. This just doesn't happen instantaneously. What I said was that it will temporarily decrease congestion, but that the effect will disappear over time.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  More people end up using the wider road. In some cases it can clog up again if the increase in traffic is big enough. Many factors involved. It's certainly not a rule that "adding lanes never helps traffic", that's insane.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    This is a good thing (where it happens) - it means more people are getting things done in your city. The purpose of a city is all the things people can do in them, so more traffic means people doing more things which is good. Now it would be much better if your city built great transit so people didn't have to drive their car.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Well, adding lanes to the traffic bottlenecks decreases congestion. Adding lanes to random places where cars stop due to congestion achieves nothing, and adding lanes to non-congested places that feed the bottlenecks increases congestion. You can find real examples of those tree kinds.
BurningFrog 3y ago
Freeway lanes fill up because drivers don't pay to use them. Free resources are always over consumed. As long as Electricity is metered and billed, it will not have the same problem.
- theultdev 3y ago
  You've never been stuck in traffic on a toll road? And you do pay to use Freeway lanes, through vehicle registration fees and gas taxes.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    Vehicle and gas taxes cost the same when driving on an empty road at 2am and a rush hour LA freeway. They're completely irrelevant for this discussion.
    - theultdev 3y ago
      well no, you burn more gas sitting in rush hour than driving on an empty road, thus you pay more taxes. it was mainly a side point though that it's not free, every legal driver has prepaid via vehicle registration AND pays on usage basis via a gas tax. my main refute was toll roads get just as congested.
      - BurningFrog 3y ago
        OK, we have to take a step further into microeconomic theory. For demand to match supply, it's not enough to charge any non zero price. If cell phones cost nothing, they will always be sold out. If they cost $1, they will also always be sold out. This does not disprove microeconomic theory! With some experimentation you can find the "equilibrium price", where supply meets demand, and you can always find a phone to buy. For road pricing, it's true that the driver pays a bit extra for gas in rush hour traffic. But if it's just going from 1% to 2% of the equilibrium price, there will still be gridlock. Toll roads are a better cause for you, but even if thery try to set equilibrium prices, that is pretty hard, since conditions vary every 10 minutes. If prices are set politically, it's bad for reelection to set the prices high enough. If you do succeed in setting equilibrium road prices - and to be fair, I'm not aware of anywhere that has been done, which weakens my point - we would see freeways that today crawl at 15 mph go at full speed 65 mph traffic 24/7, which - and this is the huge payoff - means vastly more cars could travel on them, and they'd be much more useful than today.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Oh, don't mind. Fossil fuels will only get more expensive, as they have been doing for all of this century. China builds more coal than the rest of the world combined exactly because the rest of the world combined is building almost none of it, because coal is not competitive anymore unless you have some crazy levels of unmet demand that will absorb all the renewables you can build. Oil is next on the line. And while it looks like it will take a while for natural gas to follow, is oils stops being competitive and cars get electrified, the cross subside it does to natural gas stops, and gas starts to get really expensive.
throwaway5959 3y ago
Never miss an opportunity to what about with the US.
- Fricken 3y ago
  Headline: Clean energy is driving economic growth in China Top comment: But what about coal?
fnordpiglet 3y ago
Tu quoque is a fairly weak fallacy. You can criticize anything worthy of criticism whether it’s hypocritical or not. The key tho is moving to clean renewable energy as the primary source of energy production growth makes the increased demand a shrug worthy event. The issue isn’t consumption of energy is morally wrong for some reason, it’s that production of energy is destructive. Making marginal increases in energy production not destructive is the goal. Efficiency is its own goal, and is definitely necessary if marginal increases in energy production are destructive. Finally I think attributing it to per capita or GDP is the wrong way to attribute energy consumption and side effects to causes. Much energy use of China is in service of production consumed elsewhere. Final point of end good consumption is where the energy production and its adverse externalities should be attributed (which makes the US look even worse frankly).
thaumaturgy 3y ago
Re: induced demand, US electricity consumption has been approximately flat since 2007: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#how-much-electricity-does-the-country-consume-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#how-... Since the population has grown over that same period, per capita energy consumption has been falling from its peak in 2000: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042928/primary-energy-use-per-capita-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042928/primary-energy-u...
- Fricken 3y ago
  The US is setting new records for domestic oil production: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-reserves-crude/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-re...
  - throwaway5959 3y ago
    What does that have to do with renewables and electricity? Oil accounts for round off error amounts of electricity production.
    - Fricken 3y ago
      If you don't know, then I can't tell you.
      - throwaway5959 3y ago
        Gah. Awful.

cinntaile 3y ago

The research on that is pretty clear that it does alleviate congestion, the question is for how long. It can definitely take a while before that extra capacity is used up.

KoolKat23 3y ago
Each additional lane alleviates 50% less reduction traffic the last lane achieved. Diminishing returns.
braingravy 3y ago
The research is very clear that increasing road capacity results in more drivers on those roads, increasing congestion. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
- HPsquared 3y ago
  More utility provided by the road too, though. Can't forgot that side of the equation.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  Your article says that the intensity of traffic stays the same if you increase or decrease the number of roads, so it doesn't increase or decrease congestion. This just doesn't happen instantaneously. What I said was that it will temporarily decrease congestion, but that the effect will disappear over time.
HPsquared 3y ago
More people end up using the wider road. In some cases it can clog up again if the increase in traffic is big enough. Many factors involved. It's certainly not a rule that "adding lanes never helps traffic", that's insane.
- bluGill 3y ago
  This is a good thing (where it happens) - it means more people are getting things done in your city. The purpose of a city is all the things people can do in them, so more traffic means people doing more things which is good. Now it would be much better if your city built great transit so people didn't have to drive their car.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Well, adding lanes to the traffic bottlenecks decreases congestion. Adding lanes to random places where cars stop due to congestion achieves nothing, and adding lanes to non-congested places that feed the bottlenecks increases congestion. You can find real examples of those tree kinds.

BurningFrog 3y ago

Freeway lanes fill up because drivers don't pay to use them. Free resources are always over consumed. As long as Electricity is metered and billed, it will not have the same problem.

theultdev 3y ago
You've never been stuck in traffic on a toll road? And you do pay to use Freeway lanes, through vehicle registration fees and gas taxes.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Vehicle and gas taxes cost the same when driving on an empty road at 2am and a rush hour LA freeway. They're completely irrelevant for this discussion.
  - theultdev 3y ago
    well no, you burn more gas sitting in rush hour than driving on an empty road, thus you pay more taxes. it was mainly a side point though that it's not free, every legal driver has prepaid via vehicle registration AND pays on usage basis via a gas tax. my main refute was toll roads get just as congested.
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      OK, we have to take a step further into microeconomic theory. For demand to match supply, it's not enough to charge any non zero price. If cell phones cost nothing, they will always be sold out. If they cost $1, they will also always be sold out. This does not disprove microeconomic theory! With some experimentation you can find the "equilibrium price", where supply meets demand, and you can always find a phone to buy. For road pricing, it's true that the driver pays a bit extra for gas in rush hour traffic. But if it's just going from 1% to 2% of the equilibrium price, there will still be gridlock. Toll roads are a better cause for you, but even if thery try to set equilibrium prices, that is pretty hard, since conditions vary every 10 minutes. If prices are set politically, it's bad for reelection to set the prices high enough. If you do succeed in setting equilibrium road prices - and to be fair, I'm not aware of anywhere that has been done, which weakens my point - we would see freeways that today crawl at 15 mph go at full speed 65 mph traffic 24/7, which - and this is the huge payoff - means vastly more cars could travel on them, and they'd be much more useful than today.

marcosdumay 3y ago

Oh, don't mind. Fossil fuels will only get more expensive, as they have been doing for all of this century. China builds more coal than the rest of the world combined exactly because the rest of the world combined is building almost none of it, because coal is not competitive anymore unless you have some crazy levels of unmet demand that will absorb all the renewables you can build. Oil is next on the line. And while it looks like it will take a while for natural gas to follow, is oils stops being competitive and cars get electrified, the cross subside it does to natural gas stops, and gas starts to get really expensive.

throwaway5959 3y ago

Never miss an opportunity to what about with the US.

Fricken 3y ago
Headline: Clean energy is driving economic growth in China Top comment: But what about coal?

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Tu quoque is a fairly weak fallacy. You can criticize anything worthy of criticism whether it’s hypocritical or not. The key tho is moving to clean renewable energy as the primary source of energy production growth makes the increased demand a shrug worthy event. The issue isn’t consumption of energy is morally wrong for some reason, it’s that production of energy is destructive. Making marginal increases in energy production not destructive is the goal. Efficiency is its own goal, and is definitely necessary if marginal increases in energy production are destructive. Finally I think attributing it to per capita or GDP is the wrong way to attribute energy consumption and side effects to causes. Much energy use of China is in service of production consumed elsewhere. Final point of end good consumption is where the energy production and its adverse externalities should be attributed (which makes the US look even worse frankly).

thaumaturgy 3y ago

Re: induced demand, US electricity consumption has been approximately flat since 2007: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#how-much-electricity-does-the-country-consume-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#how-... Since the population has grown over that same period, per capita energy consumption has been falling from its peak in 2000: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042928/primary-energy-use-per-capita-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042928/primary-energy-u...

Fricken 3y ago
The US is setting new records for domestic oil production: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-reserves-crude/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-re...
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  What does that have to do with renewables and electricity? Oil accounts for round off error amounts of electricity production.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    If you don't know, then I can't tell you.
    - throwaway5959 3y ago
      Gah. Awful.