
The De-Electrification of the U.S. Economy - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-12/the-de-electrification-of-the-u-s-economy
======
sxates
LED and CFL lights, SEER ratings, LEED certifications, Energy Stars all are
having an impact.

Just in computers there have been huge advances. My MacBook Pro requires about
1/6 the electricity of my 2007 Desktop, and my LCD monitor is about 1/6 a CRT.

Transition to EVs may start to soak up all the gains we're making in
efficiency so the usage may start to tick back up. But we're building Solar
and Wind sources at an increasing rate that will effectively start trading oil
for renewable electricity.

These are all positive trends.

~~~
jacquesm
> My MacBook Pro requires about 1/6 the electricity of my 2007 Desktop

Apples to Oranges though (or Apples, but still). The comparison should be a
laptop from 2007. I ran a house on solar electricity and windpower back then,
my laptop was about 35 Watts according to the e-meter connected to it, my
present day laptop is roughly the same.

Laptops have always been substantially more efficient than desktops.

~~~
caseysoftware
> _Laptops have always been substantially more efficient than desktops._

Yes but a decade+ ago, they weren't a _replacement_ for a desktop, so you
ended up having both. Now even mid end laptops (or "low end" Macs) are totally
feasible as replacements.

I bought my last desktop in 2010 and I can't imagine buying another one.

~~~
noir_lord
> I bought my last desktop in 2010 and I can't imagine buying another one.

I still do 95% of my development on a desktop, I just can't see ever not doing
that, I'm older now and a good desk, good chair, 3 big screens takes up enough
space that a tower isn't taking up much more space.

That and I can put hardware into a PC for half the price of a Macbook Pro that
will absolute annihilate the laptop on performance.

Portability and power efficiency does impose a constraint.

For me the trade off of having two machines is worth it rather than having one
machine that is permanently hobbled by been designed for a use case I rarely
use makes no sense.

~~~
ProblemFactory
> I'm older now and a good desk, good chair, 3 big screens takes up enough
> space that a tower isn't taking up much more space.

I do the same, 95% of my development with a Macbook Pro with 2 big screens,
keyboard and mouse attached. Don't even touch or move it on most days.

A desktop would be much cheaper - but I would still need a decent laptop for
the 5% time when I'm not at my desk, so the savings aren't that much any more.
And keeping development environments, VMs, config files, keyboard layouts, etc
syncronized on two separate computers is too much extra work.

~~~
noir_lord
I have an oldish but fairly beefy Vostro that does in a pinch, keeping things
synchronised isn't that hard in practice since the vagrant files and project
files all live in git but yeah there is some overhead but I have that anyway
since I have a desktop at the office and at home.

~~~
tempay
> keeping things synchronised isn't that hard in practice

I disagree, I think how difficult it is to keep things synced varies
significantly between users. Sure, its easy if your work is consistent and
you're disciplined but if you find yourself switching between very different
projects frequently the overhead of syncing machines and setting up software
repeatedly can become significant.

~~~
noir_lord
> frequently the overhead of syncing machines and setting up software
> repeatedly can become significant.

It takes some discipline.

I run a small consultancy/agency, in any given week I'm switching between 3-5
projects (and odd bug fixes to others).

I've automated my entire workflow with vagrant and ansible.

I have

    
    
        /projects/<client>/<codename>/site (pr /app)
        /projects/<client>/<codename>/vagrant
        /projects/<client>/<codename>/<others>
    

Each client gets a "team" in bitbucket and orchestration becomes no harder
than

git pull && vagrant up.

It works great on projects that have a simple structure (webserver/db) and
projects that have complex configurations with ES/Redis as well.

The trick is to _always_ treat configuration as code and _never_ make manual
changes to a VM (or more correctly, always make a manual change _then_ a
change to configuration code).

As an entirely added side benefit I can pull a project from two years ago down
and be up in a fraction of the time without polluting my host OS.

Even when that project is currently on 14.04 with particular weird
dependencies (exactly _this_ version of wkhtmltopdf etc).

Longer term I'll probably look at docker or something but vagrant/ansible has
worked out great (some projects aren't even using ansible, just a bash
script).

------
OliverJones
What's weird -- not to say ignorant -- about this article is that it ignores
the base-load / peak-load issue that lies at the heart of actual utility
economics.

Electricity is sold to households at a flat rate by the joule (metered by the
kWh), typically with a fixed monthly fee tacked on.

But wholesale electricity price fluctuates based on demand. Everybody knows
this: in the height of summer when everybody's A/C is cranking away, the
utilities have to fire up their nasty diesel-powered generators. They beg
their commercial customers to reduce demand. Long distance transmission lines
warm up and sag a bit. If worst comes to worst, the utilities reduce the
voltage on their sendout.

The utilities have to invest capital in well, capacity. If you know you never
need more than 1 mW, and never less than 0.5 mW, you can build your
distribution system for the peak, install four 0.25mW generators, and run two
of them all the time and the other two when you need them. But if you might
need 10mW on a hot day, and 0.5mW all the time, you have to spend a bundle on
reserve capacity.

Load management is persuading energy users to avoid surges, and to shut off
nonessential stuff when not needed.

But the typical electric grid isn't smart enough to handle this automatically.
The load manager at the power company has to telephone Wal-Mart stores and ask
them to turn off some lights and raise their thermostats. My electric vehicle
charges at an appointed time of day, not when there's excess power capacity.

The smarter the grid gets, the better use of capital the power company can
make.

Restoring power from blackouts is the worst. Electric motors draw a surge of
power when they start. If a large city gets power restored all at once, the
surge is huge.

------
elchief
> the power consumption of our disk drives and screens is rising

Uh. SSDs use, what, 1/2 the power of a spinner? And LED screens use less than
fluorescent, which use way less than cathode rays

The switch to virtual machines, now docker on servers saves a bunch of
extraneous running computers too

~~~
ams6110
I'm not sure VMs really changed that much. Before VMs, people just ran more
services on the bare metal. You had your web server, database, email, etc.
daemons all going. Hosting services separated things by accounts and
filesystem permissions. VMs made a lot of things easier/more secure but the
raw number of physical machines has still exploded. VMs are bottom line less
efficient than bare metal due to virtualization overhead.

~~~
closeparen
Maybe in the internet-focused UNIX sysadmin world.

Your average small to medium business in meatspace has a closet running:

\- Windows Domain Controller

\- Exchange Server

\- File server

\- Accounting server

\- Several line of business apps from different vendors, each with an onsite
server component (often just a distribution of MS SQL Server).

\- Card access control server (if there are more than the ~4 doors that fit on
one beige-box-on-the-wall controller).

\- Security camera DVR.

\- Cisco, Avaya, or similar PBX.

\- HVAC system controller (if you're a large, modern building or complex).

The DC, file, and Exchange servers, as well as desktop management and support,
are probably handled by your primary IT contractor who sells you all your
servers, network gear, and desktops. They'll tell you it's not good practice
to colocate any of these services on the same Windows install, and resell you
(with heavy markup) a different Dell/HP box for each one.

Each line of business app has its own vendor, which created and manages your
site's installation of its package.

The door controls and security cameras are likely installed and managed by the
same company that does your fire alarms. The two software packages likely
state they should each have a Windows Server to themselves.

The HVAC system controller is likely installed and managed by a company that
knows barely enough IT to be dangerous, and also doesn't want to colocate.

The PBX for your VoIP desk phones is likely installed and managed by the same
company that ran the old DEC PBX for your analog desk phones in the 80s. They
might have also done your ethernet wiring.

None of these guys trust all of the others enough to share an OS instance.
According to the old-timers, you previously you needed a separate server in
the closet for each one. Now your Microsoft Partner is also a VMWare Partner
and gives each other vendor their own little slice of an ESXi box.

Oh, and there is probably no one on your payroll who understands this stuff or
even has the passwords. Just the operations manager type who manages the
relationship with each vendor and knows which one to call under what
circumstances.

~~~
zeckalpha
This sounds like an opportunity for someone to combine all of these into one
appliance and charge less.

~~~
closeparen
That's the opportunity VMWare capitalized on, and that Microsoft is trying to
worm its way into with Hyper-V.

A conservative nontechnical business is unlikely to invest in an unproven
desktop management system, office suite, email/messaging, security, and
building automation system just to beat virtualization overhead. They're even
freaked out by Red Hat.

If you're adventurous, you'll just use Macs/Chromebooks, the Google suite, and
cloud-based "IoT" building automation (or you won't have a building automation
problem because your office is small or nonexistent). You'll use
Skype/Hangouts/Slack/Hipchat/cell phones instead of a PBX.

If you're less adventurous, there's something to be said for widely used
components, backed by tech giants who are likely to stick around for a few
decades, which multiple interchangeable sales/support firms in your area know
how to work with.

------
tyingq
The decline in the industrial sector seems more likely correlated to the
general decline of US manufacturing capacity.

The rest is less clear to me. More efficient lighting and HVAC seems more
likely to move the needle than anything related to computers.

Nice breakdown of where the electricity goes from the EPA:
[https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/publ...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2015-08/electricity-
consumption-by-sector-commercial-industrial-residential.png)

~~~
obrienmd
This is a common misconception - manufacturing output, beyond drops during
major recessions, has steadily increased[1]. Recently, increases have slowed
but outside recessions, "the general decline of US manufacturing capacity" is
just not happening.

What is dropping are inputs for the same output - employment being the most
obvious / painful, but power, raw materials, etc. are all being used more
sparingly as manufacturers improve processes and adopt new technologies.

1\.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS)

~~~
Spooky23
Actually, it's not. Those manufacturing output numbers are both tricky and
misleading. They are dominated by computer/electronic production and
automotive. Because of how the statistics account for imports and technology
advancement, the electronic components in particular are frequently
overstated. For example, when Intel was shipping chips that were 2x more
powerful than the last generation, that effectively doubled the measured
output.

Simultaneously, the stats under account for services and non-market
production. So things like Medicare/Medicaid ($1T annually) are measured at
their cost, not based in the value delivered.

The reality is that industrial production in the US is 15-20% less than it was
20 years ago. Automation kills employment but most of the value creation has
been exported to Asia. Denying that is denying reality.

Some articles: [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21697845-gross-
domest...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21697845-gross-domestic-
product-gdp-increasingly-poor-measure-prosperity-it-not-even)

[http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/05/27/the_hidden_de...](http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/05/27/the_hidden_decline_of_manufacturing_output_1308.html)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-06-03/growth-
wh...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-06-03/growth-why-the-
stats-are-misleading)

~~~
snowwrestler
Can you please supply a direct quote from one of those articles to support
this assertion?

> The reality is that industrial production in the US is 15-20% less than it
> was 20 years ago.

I wonder how recently and carefully you have read these articles. For example,
the Economist and Real Clear Policy pieces are directly contradictory on the
subject of measuring value vs. price for electronics.

The Bloomberg piece is 8 years old. And even then, it says:

> After the adjustments, however, the new growth rate for manufacturing output
> might be as small as 0.8% a year,

Growth of 0.8% a year, while anemic, is not a decline.

------
sounds
Of course, his last point is probably the most telling:

"Dig more coal...the Teslas are coming."

One of his major sources is eia.gov, and their 2015 report has electric power
use at 38% of total use.

Transportation is another 28% of total energy use, so the sooner that can
switch over the electric, the sooner we can drop the 36% of energy being
sourced from petroleum.

~~~
Robotbeat
Better than that! I prefer to look at the actual, most recent up to date data
that EIA has collected. It goes all the way up to January 2017. In the 12
months rolling up through January, coal was just 30.5% of US electrical
generation:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_01)
Below gas (33.5%). And below carbonfree energy at 35.4%.

That 35.4% carbonfree electricity can be broken down into: 19.8% nuclear (this
part we really should fight to keep operating as long as possible, certainly
until we shut down every fossil fuel plant... going from 80% renewables to
100% renewables may actually be harder than going from the current 15.5% to
80%).

7.6% wind, geothermal, small hydro, and maybe some biomass (unfortunately, EIA
doesn't break these out separately)... though most of this is wind and
geothermal

6.7% conventional hydro.

1.4% solar. (and this includes distributed solar)

AS recently as 2003, over 50% of our electricity was generated from coal.
We're now at 30.5%.

As long as we keep nuclear operating, it should be fairly cheap to squeeze out
the rest of that 30% of coal by installing high capacity factor wind turbines
where it's windy (and perhaps anti-correlated with other sites), lots and LOTS
of cheap utility-scale solar, mounted on single-axis trackers to increase
capacity factor, and lots in Texas and the American South where it's not
already common.

Adding 15% additional grid penetration of solar and wind both, along with
probably some storage (lots of pumped hydro in Appalachia to replace coal,
batteries everywhere else) to smooth out demand and UHVDC powerlines and East-
West interconnects, we can squeeze out the rest of that 30% of coal without
huge costs.

If we try to do this without that ~20% nuclear, we'll either need a lot more
gas or a LOT more money.

~~~
cwal37
Just FYI, you can get a more fuel and technology specific breakdown of
generation and inputs from form 923, but it's timelagged and many plants don't
show up in the monthly reports, so you have to wait for the annual.

------
arkis22
We are living in the age of efficiency.

As population growth slows it's only natural for electricity to as well.

We aren't limited by our raw computing power, we're limited by our inability
to apply it.

~~~
caseysoftware
I remember my college desktop and how happy I was when I got a 400W power
supply! Now the Mac I travel with that has 100x the processing, storage, etc
uses a 85W supply if it's plugged it. If you do that at scale with more
efficient everything, it makes sense.

Remember when turning off the lights saved money? It was dubious then but with
bulbs that use 1/10 the power, it's almost humorous.

~~~
Scoundreller
Ya, that 8 watt LED bulb will cost you $8/year running 24/7 at 10cents/kwh. If
it takes 2 seconds to turn it on and off each day, that's 24 minutes a year
saved by leaving it on. If your time is worth >$20/hr, consider uninstalling
the switch.

~~~
caseysoftware
And in Austin, energy rates are 1/3 of that. If your light is on 1/3 of the
time, we're down to < $1/year.

Without any time/value aspects, saving $1/year isn't on anyone's radar..
especially since the AC turning on is going to be much more.

~~~
fnj
> And in Austin, energy rates are 1/3 of that.

Are you saying electricity delivered to the home costs 3 cents/kWh in Austin?
I flat out don't believe that. We're paying over 20 cents on Cape Cod. I can
believe 10 cents in some areas. 3 cents, sorry; no.

~~~
caseysoftware
As of December, the Austin Energy rates are 2.8c/kWh at the bottom tier,
ranging up to 10.8c/kWh at the top.

Once you add all the extra fees and "one time charges" that happen every
month, it's more but that's the base.

Ref:
[http://austinenergy.com/wps/portal/ae/residential/rates/resi...](http://austinenergy.com/wps/portal/ae/residential/rates/residential-
electric-rates-and-line-
items/!ut/p/a1/jZCxTsMwEEC_pUNGx66j0sAWDAqhLZlIgxdk0mtiybEj-0okvp5ULIBa6G0nvac7PSppTaVV77pVqJ1V5rjLq1fGU_4gGC_yJU9Zlovb1aJ6ms_XbAJevgPlfXnHiqqssnIlWC6SC_0zk7H__McLDnC_EZuWykFhR7TdO1p7CHoHFrUyBAw06HVDvEIIRNkdMdoC0Qh9OPqZfUvSyfewBw8-PvgpTIc4hJuIRWwcx7h1rjUQN66P2CmlcwFp_ZOkWyr_-p4ni9_AibxfwPl-
Q_9cf6xhm-J1obPZ7BPxDgh_/dl5/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/)

------
hackuser
A few years ago I measured the power consumption of various devices around my
home, using an inline meter of unknown accuracy (e.g., TV plugs into meter,
meter plugs into wall outlet).

There weren't many surprises, but my cable TV boxes were disappointing: Two
different models both used the same amount of power, 25-30 W, regardless of
whether they were 'on' or 'off', and no matter how long they were 'off'. No
other devices that drew any significant power behaved this way; in comparison,
my laptop used 1W when asleep.

The cable boxes are merely computers, and not even general-purpose ones -
i.e., only a small number of predictable features have to be implemented - and
the vendor is complete control of the hardware and software. There is no
reason an effective sleep mode couldn't be implemented. And think about the
mass deployments of these devices by the cable companies - how much power
could be saved by investing in some very standard, available tech, and add up
the impact on customers' electric bills and the environment.

However, I wonder if other models of cable boxes are the same.

~~~
OliverJones
Yeah, I measured the same thing on the cable box, an object which gets about
40 minutes use a day in my household.

So when my local utility (UK-owned National Grid) did a promo for power strips
that shut off all the plugs when one plug stops drawing power, I bought one.
Works great. Takes about two minutes for the cable box to boot up when I need
it.

National Grid lost a 35w base load (24x7 load) by selling me that strip. 35w
costs me about $45 a year, and the power strip cost me $15.

~~~
hackuser
If my cable box loses power then it loses all its channel guide data, and it
takes maybe 15 minutes to reload.

It really seems unbelievable. Why isn't the data stored on the local disk? How
much data could that be and why does it take more than 10 seconds to download?
On my box, it is all text.

~~~
OliverJones
Agreed. The monopoly regulators who tell the cable companies what to do should
give them a limit on the electric load their customer-premises equipment
(cable boxes) may draw when idle.

It should be no more than dozens of milliwatts. When the load exceeds that,
the cost of that electricity to their customers should be refunded via a
credit line item in each bill. That will give the cable operators a way to
transition to better equipment, and an incentive to get the transition
completed.

Accountability: there's no other way.

------
djrogers
The article doesn't make it clear if this is commercial production of power,
or if it include private owned solar etc. I could see centralized commercial
energy production dropping due to home solar alone, but TFA isn't clear.

Either way, I'd bet that the electrification of our cars and trucks over the
next few decades will absorb most of the excess capacity and drive the need
for more production.

~~~
kelnos
The article addresses private solar, though admits to incomplete data and some
uncertainty:

"The Energy Information Administration actually started estimating power
generation from small-scale solar installations at the end of 2015... and
found that it accounted for only about 1 percent of U.S. electricity. That
estimate could be off, and there's surely room for more study, but
mismeasurement of solar generation doesn't seem to be the main explanation
here."

------
rdiddly
Seems like it's mostly about traditional manufacturing, or the lack thereof.
Energy price spikes (2008) kill off energy-intensive businesses. But even when
prices come back down these businesses don't start back up in the US, because
a competitor in China has already expanded to fill the gap, and they do it
cheaper.

------
phaedrus
There's a much simpler, technical explanation: the transition from linear
power supplies to switch mode power supplies, in devices of all sorts
including but not limited to computers. The timing of the peak and beginning
decline in per capita power demand coincides with the point at which SMPS's
became a practical option for new designs beginning at the end of the 1970's.
The decline since then may just be the result of gradual replacement of linear
supplies by attrition.

------
ew6082
Efficiency of CPU's and tech do not drive electricity demand. If anything, we
use more power for tech now than ever before. This is the direct result of
cheaper natural gas being on the market, which removes demand for electric
heating/heat pumps, electric appliances, etc. There is also a shift in
industrial use. Just this year Washington lost a large aluminum arc furnace
smelter, for instance.

------
EGreg
_" Consider the shift to cloud computing. From 2000 to 2005, electricity use
by data centers in the U.S. increased 90 percent. From 2005 to 2010, the gain
was 24 percent. As of 2014, data centers accounted for 1.8 percent of U.S.
electricity use, according to a 2016 Lawrence Berkeley study, but their
electricity demand growth had slowed to a crawl (4 percent from 2010 to 2014).
What happened? The nation outsourced its computing needs to cloud providers,
for whom cutting the massive electricity costs of their data centers became a
competitive imperative. So they innovated, with more-efficient cooling systems
and new ways of scaling back electricity use when servers are less busy."_

I am torn because centralization leads to more R&D and cost savings and better
security. I just wish the innovations would propagate to everyone.
Decentralization is much better for everything except those things that come
with economies of scale.

~~~
vmarsy
The R&D being done here doesn't only apply if you run extremely large data
centers. Facebook, Google are contributing back to the Open Compute project
[1] , and anyone could use this knowledge if they want to build a small data
center with things like the Open Rack[2].

[1] [http://www.opencompute.org/](http://www.opencompute.org/) [2]
[https://code.facebook.com/posts/1687861518126048/facebook-
to...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1687861518126048/facebook-to-open-
source-ai-hardware-design/)

~~~
EGreg
But it seems to me that when it comes to security, efficiency etc. only large
centers can get it right, because they have more at stake. The majority of
small providers will mess up. Like compare AWS uptime and security to a
regular host.

And sadly this explains the rise of centralized everything including gmail and
facebook and iOS app store and - for thousands of years - centralized cities
and states and federations.

------
cat199
Alternate title: the Un-Reality of the GDP

Rather than this being a measure of energy efficiency or reduction - could it
not be a measure of GDP artificial inflation?

Though that would be a bit of a sensational title, the trend also suggests a
decoupling of GDP from physical processes (mfg, service jobs) directly
requiring power for their use..

~~~
pjc50
> decoupling of GDP from physical processes

Well, yes: much of the growth is in services. E.g. education or health can get
a lot more expensive without necessarily consuming more electricity.

------
sdadasrty
Short version:

Electricity generation (and use?) is below its 2007 levels. Is this a trend?
Let's skip to the last paragraph (as one always should when beginning to read
these clickbait articles):

"So is electricity use in the developed world fated to decline for years to
come? Well, not exactly fated. Check out that bottom line in the last chart.
Transportation now accounts for just 0.3 percent of retail electricity use in
the U.S. If the shift to electric vehicles ever picks up real momentum, that's
going to start growing, and fast. Dig more coal (or drill for more natural
gas, or build more nuclear reactors, or put up more windmills and solar
panels) -- the Teslas are coming."

So, no.

Get this trash out of my Hacker News.

~~~
JshWright
If you just skipped to the end of the article, you missed the fact that the
last sentence is a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference to this article from
1999:

[https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0531/6311070a.html](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0531/6311070a.html)

------
moojah
Interestingly he's stating that the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) will
make up for the flat energy usage / non-existent growth. However, his own
argument should negate a substantial amount of that: if large players such as
tesla/GM/lyft/uber/whoever own the majority of future transportation, they
will also have a strong incentive to be energy efficient.

Never thought of it that way, but large players don't just make efficient use
of hardware, but of the resources (energy etc) they consume too. That means
the traditional energy industry is in for a beating...

~~~
i386
Or a strong incentive to vertically integrate electricity production. I
believe Google have done this in some form to secure and reduce cost of
datacenter energy.

------
hownottowrite
Excellent breakdown of energy consumption by sector since 1950:
[https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2.pdf](https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2.pdf)

The source is the same as the original article (U.S. Energy Information
Administration), it just shows a much broader (and deeper) picture. As a
result, you may draw different conclusions.

------
lostmsu
Should we consume more? I would actually like to see electricity prices to go
down, but it seems like research in that area nearly stopped.

------
accountyaccount
I don't think it's related to this plateau, but it sparked the question:

If the global temperature were to increase by 1° would that cause a net gain
or loss in electricity use?

If you oversimplify you'd assume that since heating is more expensive than
cooling consumption would decrease, but I imagine it might also depend on
where the majority of humans are located in terms of climate?

~~~
D_Alex
A gain, I would guess, because pretty much all cooling is run on electricity,
whereas some of the heating is done by gas.

~~~
beejiu
Some of the electricity is also done by gas.

------
pure_ambition
The first thing I notice about this article is that it talks about
_generation_ , not consumption. Where is the data on US energy consumption?
It's especially odd given that he compares US generation growth to China's
consumption growth toward the end of the article.

~~~
cbr
Aren't generation and consumption very close to equal?

------
anovikov
That's great! Just wait for EVs though, you'll suddenly get all that
electricity use back, and a lot more. But, overall energy use per GDP will
fall through the floor due to their much higher energy efficiency vs gas
powered cars.

~~~
tiatia
"That's great!" It is likely a sing of a sinking standard of living. Had to
come sooner or later, so I would not call it "bad".

"But, overall energy use per GDP will fall through the floor due to their much
higher energy efficiency vs gas powered cars." Highly improbable.

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable
[http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-
energy-...](http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-
consumption-are-inseparable.html)

~~~
anovikov
It looks like you discard the whole notion of 'energy efficiency' at all?

~~~
tiatia
Hm. No. Just the outcome:

"1993 and 2005, air conditioners in the U.S. increased in efficiency by 28%,
but by 2005, homes with air conditioning increased their consumption of energy
for their air conditioners by 37%."

Jevons sends you his greetings I guess.

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rb808
Closing all the factories in the Midwest would have a lot more impact than
efficient light bulbs.

