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> Anyway, no matter how many efficiency initiatives people adopt, electricity usage is likely to increase rather than drop. That is because we not only find new

> Anyway, no matter how many efficiency initiatives people adopt, electricity usage is likely to increase rather than drop. That is because we not only find new uses for electricity, but the population keeps growing. It seems that energy use in the US peaked in 2007, though I do wonder how much of that is down to moving manufacturing abroad. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ In general energy use in the US, Canada, and Europe looks to be declining: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&country=OWID_AFR~OWID_EUR~OWID_OCE~OWID_SAM~USA~OWID_ASI&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=entityName&hideControls=false&Total+or+Breakdown=Total&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Annual+consumption https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&time=2...

ryao 2y ago
Energy use applies to far more than just electricity. It includes petroleum used in automobiles and heating. While the total energy pie is decreasing (for now), the marketshare of electricity should be increasing. When there is no more energy usage to move to electric cars and heat pumps (and no more production to move to China), I would expect energy usage to start increasing again. Jevons paradox cannot be avoided forever.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Jevon's paradox is not some universal law. It's not even clear if it applies very often. One has to separate out different reasons for increasing consumption of some resource as it gets cheaper, and not just observe a correlation and infer causation.
  - ryao 2y ago
    It is related to supply and demand curves. The more supply is available for the same cost, the more demand increases to use it. In any case, technology moves forward stimulating increased electricity usage and we are healthier because of it. My heat pump and electric car eliminate nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide emissions, as well as particulate emissions. Respiratory health is improved because of it.
    - Retric 2y ago
      That’s only true up to a point. PC prices fell dramatically in real terms over time as people didn’t need to spend 2000$ mid 90’s dollars to get vastly more performance at home. But more interesting is the trend to upgraded less frequently.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        > mid 90's dollars To be precise: inflation from then to now is just about 2x. So, that would be $4K in current dollars.
      - ryao 2y ago
        When prices fell, sales increased.
        Retric 2y ago
        Not in a way that makes those trends correlate. Worldwide PC sales peaked in 2011, but they continued to get cheaper in real terms. Sales trends for new technology should be broken down into new customers and replacement devices for existing customers if you want to understand what’s going on. Falling prices did little for either trend but replacements were providing an eco of earlier growth. Until that was offset by people taking ever longer to buy replacements.
        ryao 2y ago
        2011 is long after the major price drops of the 90s and early 00s, where demand kept increasing with price drops. Not only that, but every few years, you could buy a computer that was a few times better than the one that preceded it at a lower price. PC sales began to drop in 2012 due to the iPhone and iPad causing people to not need PCs as much. Improvements in PC technology had also started to slow and would reach a crawl a few years later. All of this meant market saturation. Supply and demand still apply, but increases in sales volume from lower pricing are much more limited than they used to be. For anyone who does not remember, on May 7, 1997, Intel introduced the Pentium II at 300MHz at a cost of $1981. On March 8, 2000, Intel introduced a the Pentium III at 1000MHz at a cost of $990. It was roughly 3 times faster on average, while being half the price of the older processor that launched less than 3 years prior. The performance had jumped so much that unfortunately no one seems to have included the two chips in a comparison. Anyway, no three year period in 2011 onward had performance jump so much with pricing halving. The closest was the Ryzen 7 1800X to the Ryzen 9 3950X, but the performance increase was more tame (~2.5x best case compared to ~3x average case) and the price went up by 50% instead of halving. However, you can see similar improvements if you go further back in time, such as 3 years before the Pentium II launch to the 100MHz Pentium (I cannot find how much that cost sadly).

ryao 2y ago

Energy use applies to far more than just electricity. It includes petroleum used in automobiles and heating. While the total energy pie is decreasing (for now), the marketshare of electricity should be increasing. When there is no more energy usage to move to electric cars and heat pumps (and no more production to move to China), I would expect energy usage to start increasing again. Jevons paradox cannot be avoided forever.

pfdietz 2y ago
Jevon's paradox is not some universal law. It's not even clear if it applies very often. One has to separate out different reasons for increasing consumption of some resource as it gets cheaper, and not just observe a correlation and infer causation.
- ryao 2y ago
  It is related to supply and demand curves. The more supply is available for the same cost, the more demand increases to use it. In any case, technology moves forward stimulating increased electricity usage and we are healthier because of it. My heat pump and electric car eliminate nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide emissions, as well as particulate emissions. Respiratory health is improved because of it.
  - Retric 2y ago
    That’s only true up to a point. PC prices fell dramatically in real terms over time as people didn’t need to spend 2000$ mid 90’s dollars to get vastly more performance at home. But more interesting is the trend to upgraded less frequently.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      > mid 90's dollars To be precise: inflation from then to now is just about 2x. So, that would be $4K in current dollars.
    - ryao 2y ago
      When prices fell, sales increased.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Not in a way that makes those trends correlate. Worldwide PC sales peaked in 2011, but they continued to get cheaper in real terms. Sales trends for new technology should be broken down into new customers and replacement devices for existing customers if you want to understand what’s going on. Falling prices did little for either trend but replacements were providing an eco of earlier growth. Until that was offset by people taking ever longer to buy replacements.
        ryao 2y ago
        2011 is long after the major price drops of the 90s and early 00s, where demand kept increasing with price drops. Not only that, but every few years, you could buy a computer that was a few times better than the one that preceded it at a lower price. PC sales began to drop in 2012 due to the iPhone and iPad causing people to not need PCs as much. Improvements in PC technology had also started to slow and would reach a crawl a few years later. All of this meant market saturation. Supply and demand still apply, but increases in sales volume from lower pricing are much more limited than they used to be. For anyone who does not remember, on May 7, 1997, Intel introduced the Pentium II at 300MHz at a cost of $1981. On March 8, 2000, Intel introduced a the Pentium III at 1000MHz at a cost of $990. It was roughly 3 times faster on average, while being half the price of the older processor that launched less than 3 years prior. The performance had jumped so much that unfortunately no one seems to have included the two chips in a comparison. Anyway, no three year period in 2011 onward had performance jump so much with pricing halving. The closest was the Ryzen 7 1800X to the Ryzen 9 3950X, but the performance increase was more tame (~2.5x best case compared to ~3x average case) and the price went up by 50% instead of halving. However, you can see similar improvements if you go further back in time, such as 3 years before the Pentium II launch to the 100MHz Pentium (I cannot find how much that cost sadly).