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> a fact Jevons Paradox is conjecture, not immutable law. Consumption based energy usage has been on the trend downwards in western countries for some time. Mu

> a fact Jevons Paradox is conjecture, not immutable law. Consumption based energy usage has been on the trend downwards in western countries for some time. Much of this is explained by efficiency gains (e.g., LED lighting, OLED screens, smaller chips, heat pumps, etc.) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-...

kragen 2y ago
it's just an observation that has held true for two centuries. pointing at consumption-based energy usage in a cherry-picked group of countries is special pleading; neither worldwide consumption-based energy usage, nor overall energy usage even in that cherry-picked group of countries, is falling. furthermore, the link doesn't show that even that cherry-picked measure is falling the jevons paradox certainly isn't an immutable law
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  > cherry-picked group of countries is special pleading It's hard to disentangle the rise of wealth in the world from increased consumption caused by cheaper energy. Certainly in the west capacity has become larger and... > the link doesn't show that even that cherry-picked measure is falling If you look again, they absolutely are. Peak vs now in Mwh: US: 105 (2005) vs 97 Norway: 93 (2008) vs 78 Sweden: 69 (2001) vs 57 Australia: 80 (2011) vs 55 Germany: 63 (2006) vs 59 France: 61 (2005) vs 54 I could manually do this for the rest, but I shouldn't need to. You can see it for yourself. Here's the chart as line graphs (this option isn't obvious in the UI) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-per-capita?tab=chart&time=earliest..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-... The only outlier I see here, in terms of developed countries, is South Korea, but that's perhaps as the country is still unevenly developed. In terms of developing countries, we of course see the uptake of HVAC, refrigeration, vehicles and other automation appliances to match the living standards of the developing world. But crucially, developed countries are showing that at the highest living standards, energy consumption is coming down.
  - kragen 2y ago
    > Peak vs now in Mwh: US: 105 (2005) vs 97 that's the chart i was looking at. you're cherry-picking years as well to get that answer. looking at all the years instead, the usa starts out at 94, peaks at 104, dips down to 87, and then rises back up to 97, with lots of wiggles in between. that isn't a picture of a secular decline in energy use, it's a picture of random fluctuation around an average. the others are largely similar. the main outlier among 'developed' countries is not south korea but the people's republic of china, though slovenia deserves a mention for falling 40% why? what holds the usa line so steady? probably partly the usa has lost the ability to build not only high-speed trains, subway tunnels, highways, and leading semiconductor fabs, but also electrical infrastructure, but two thirds of energy use is non-electric, and other countries are succeeding in building trains and whatnot the price of energy has not been holding steady during this time but rather going up, although in the last decade that is starting to reverse. perhaps the reason consumption-oriented energy use has gone slightly up rather than way down is the efficiency improvements you mention [the following paragraph is completely wrong, and i appreciate the correction from h0l0cube. therefore so is my claim that the measure itself is cherry-picked. i had just misunderstood it] this measure, incidentally, doesn't count energy used for exports at all. so if the us and japan are producing an energy-intensive good independently at the beginning of the chart, and then in the middle the us starts importing it from japan, the usa's line will go down while japan's remains steady, because japan's added energy use is for export rather than for consumption. that's what i mean about it being a cherry-picked measure even for those cherry-picked countries
    - h0l0cube 2y ago
      > this measure, incidentally, doesn't count energy used for exports at all Literally, it does. It's consumption-based energy usage. It's trade adjusted > the usa starts out at 94, peaks at 104, dips down to 87, and then rises back up to 97, with lots of wiggles in between. that isn't a picture of a secular decline in energy use, it's a picture of random fluctuation around an average The trend line is at best a flat line. Here's a picture of energy usage per capita over a longer timespan (inc. prior to the 80s when offshoring of manufacturing and cheap shipping came into play) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... > the main outlier among 'developed' countries is not south korea but the people's republic of china As I mentioned this is due to it's growing wealth, not the greater economy of power. Even though China has been growing phenomenally in GDP, it's GDP per capita vs consumption-based energy usage is going down (or yet to exceed 2011 levels): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-energy-gdp-per-capita?country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-energy-gdp-per-cap...
rasz 2y ago
Energy use goes down because Cost of energy keeps climbing.
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  Not so much cost of energy, but the price of energy charged to consumers. As ever, the cost + margin sets the minimum for the price, but the price maxes out at what the consumer is willing to bear. Though to be fair, in the last 5 or so years, the cost of energy has risen due to the need for a dynamic network, entailing more and bigger transmission lines, but that doesn't explain the reductions entirely. Anyone who remembers how pervasive CRTs (later rear projection, and plasma TVs) and incandescent bulbs were, can sense that things are far more efficient around the home. Better standards for HVAC (using heat pumps vs heating elements) are a big deal. A big driver of this has been large buildings where the cost reductions from efficiency can mean millions saved. Business errs towards efficiency. Another driver is that the more efficient stuff also seems to just be better too (like OLED screens) We also have chips that run on about the same energy (or even less) and provide far more compute than 2 decades ago. Looking further back the ENIAC used 174kw of power for 0.005 MIPS (5000 additions). By comparison an M1 has 2.6 TFLOPS (2.6 trilling floating point operations) for 40-100 watts. My cores are mostly idling. In fact most of my computer usage happens on my phone which runs on far less energy still. Then consider energy for transport. In the last 5 years, telecommuting has become so normal that fewer people are commuting to work, particularly cities.
  - kragen 2y ago
    note that most energy sold isn't electric. jevons made his observation when none was not all consumer energy prices are rising, and the situation you describe where the producer captures the whole consumer surplus only happens in the absence of competition jevons says people will compensate for more efficient tvs by buying more and bigger tvs, and for more efficient hvac by building bigger houses, living in hotter areas, and installing air conditioning in more spaces. this has been a major trend of the last 25 years you're talking about, in fact similarly, it's true that the amount of energy per flop is going down, though not nearly as much as you might think; on the cpu it was about 2000 picojoules 30 years ago, and closer to 500 picojoules today. (the numbers you give for the m1 would work out to 16 picojoules, but the real numbers are even better. 2.6 teraflops is the graphics card, which uses 11.5 watts, which is 4 picojoules per flop. most computers lag far, far behind that in efficiency.) but the amount of energy spent on computers keeps going up and up

kragen 2y ago

it's just an observation that has held true for two centuries. pointing at consumption-based energy usage in a cherry-picked group of countries is special pleading; neither worldwide consumption-based energy usage, nor overall energy usage even in that cherry-picked group of countries, is falling. furthermore, the link doesn't show that even that cherry-picked measure is falling the jevons paradox certainly isn't an immutable law

h0l0cube 2y ago
> cherry-picked group of countries is special pleading It's hard to disentangle the rise of wealth in the world from increased consumption caused by cheaper energy. Certainly in the west capacity has become larger and... > the link doesn't show that even that cherry-picked measure is falling If you look again, they absolutely are. Peak vs now in Mwh: US: 105 (2005) vs 97 Norway: 93 (2008) vs 78 Sweden: 69 (2001) vs 57 Australia: 80 (2011) vs 55 Germany: 63 (2006) vs 59 France: 61 (2005) vs 54 I could manually do this for the rest, but I shouldn't need to. You can see it for yourself. Here's the chart as line graphs (this option isn't obvious in the UI) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-per-capita?tab=chart&time=earliest..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-... The only outlier I see here, in terms of developed countries, is South Korea, but that's perhaps as the country is still unevenly developed. In terms of developing countries, we of course see the uptake of HVAC, refrigeration, vehicles and other automation appliances to match the living standards of the developing world. But crucially, developed countries are showing that at the highest living standards, energy consumption is coming down.
- kragen 2y ago
  > Peak vs now in Mwh: US: 105 (2005) vs 97 that's the chart i was looking at. you're cherry-picking years as well to get that answer. looking at all the years instead, the usa starts out at 94, peaks at 104, dips down to 87, and then rises back up to 97, with lots of wiggles in between. that isn't a picture of a secular decline in energy use, it's a picture of random fluctuation around an average. the others are largely similar. the main outlier among 'developed' countries is not south korea but the people's republic of china, though slovenia deserves a mention for falling 40% why? what holds the usa line so steady? probably partly the usa has lost the ability to build not only high-speed trains, subway tunnels, highways, and leading semiconductor fabs, but also electrical infrastructure, but two thirds of energy use is non-electric, and other countries are succeeding in building trains and whatnot the price of energy has not been holding steady during this time but rather going up, although in the last decade that is starting to reverse. perhaps the reason consumption-oriented energy use has gone slightly up rather than way down is the efficiency improvements you mention [the following paragraph is completely wrong, and i appreciate the correction from h0l0cube. therefore so is my claim that the measure itself is cherry-picked. i had just misunderstood it] this measure, incidentally, doesn't count energy used for exports at all. so if the us and japan are producing an energy-intensive good independently at the beginning of the chart, and then in the middle the us starts importing it from japan, the usa's line will go down while japan's remains steady, because japan's added energy use is for export rather than for consumption. that's what i mean about it being a cherry-picked measure even for those cherry-picked countries
  - h0l0cube 2y ago
    > this measure, incidentally, doesn't count energy used for exports at all Literally, it does. It's consumption-based energy usage. It's trade adjusted > the usa starts out at 94, peaks at 104, dips down to 87, and then rises back up to 97, with lots of wiggles in between. that isn't a picture of a secular decline in energy use, it's a picture of random fluctuation around an average The trend line is at best a flat line. Here's a picture of energy usage per capita over a longer timespan (inc. prior to the 80s when offshoring of manufacturing and cheap shipping came into play) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... > the main outlier among 'developed' countries is not south korea but the people's republic of china As I mentioned this is due to it's growing wealth, not the greater economy of power. Even though China has been growing phenomenally in GDP, it's GDP per capita vs consumption-based energy usage is going down (or yet to exceed 2011 levels): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-energy-gdp-per-capita?country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-energy-gdp-per-cap...

rasz 2y ago

Energy use goes down because Cost of energy keeps climbing.

h0l0cube 2y ago
Not so much cost of energy, but the price of energy charged to consumers. As ever, the cost + margin sets the minimum for the price, but the price maxes out at what the consumer is willing to bear. Though to be fair, in the last 5 or so years, the cost of energy has risen due to the need for a dynamic network, entailing more and bigger transmission lines, but that doesn't explain the reductions entirely. Anyone who remembers how pervasive CRTs (later rear projection, and plasma TVs) and incandescent bulbs were, can sense that things are far more efficient around the home. Better standards for HVAC (using heat pumps vs heating elements) are a big deal. A big driver of this has been large buildings where the cost reductions from efficiency can mean millions saved. Business errs towards efficiency. Another driver is that the more efficient stuff also seems to just be better too (like OLED screens) We also have chips that run on about the same energy (or even less) and provide far more compute than 2 decades ago. Looking further back the ENIAC used 174kw of power for 0.005 MIPS (5000 additions). By comparison an M1 has 2.6 TFLOPS (2.6 trilling floating point operations) for 40-100 watts. My cores are mostly idling. In fact most of my computer usage happens on my phone which runs on far less energy still. Then consider energy for transport. In the last 5 years, telecommuting has become so normal that fewer people are commuting to work, particularly cities.
- kragen 2y ago
  note that most energy sold isn't electric. jevons made his observation when none was not all consumer energy prices are rising, and the situation you describe where the producer captures the whole consumer surplus only happens in the absence of competition jevons says people will compensate for more efficient tvs by buying more and bigger tvs, and for more efficient hvac by building bigger houses, living in hotter areas, and installing air conditioning in more spaces. this has been a major trend of the last 25 years you're talking about, in fact similarly, it's true that the amount of energy per flop is going down, though not nearly as much as you might think; on the cpu it was about 2000 picojoules 30 years ago, and closer to 500 picojoules today. (the numbers you give for the m1 would work out to 16 picojoules, but the real numbers are even better. 2.6 teraflops is the graphics card, which uses 11.5 watts, which is 4 picojoules per flop. most computers lag far, far behind that in efficiency.) but the amount of energy spent on computers keeps going up and up