3 ms·
That's a good source, although that historical analysis extends to the year 2000 when even CFLs only had reached ~30% market share, and well before LED lighting
by mitthrowaway2 2y ago
That's a good source, although that historical analysis extends to the year 2000 when even CFLs only had reached ~30% market share, and well before LED lighting hit mass adoption. It is only speculating about LEDs. There's no question that lighting demand has continued to grow but the efficiency increase has also been remarkable, so unless you know of another source that does the math, it's unclear to me to what extent it's ended up balancing out in this case.
Another confounder to Jevons' paradox is that the price of the input (electricity) can also change, independent of changes in efficiency. If electricity prices were to go up ten-fold during the switch to LED lighting, then we wouldn't expect much change in illumination (probably a net decrease, as people would be hurting so much from other electricity expenditures that they'd be hunting for any savings on their energy bill). That's of course a fictional scenario, but in the case of GPUs, well, they have been getting quite expensive.