Some demand may be levelling off. We've had energy efficiency pressures for a while, and we knew there are all sorts of low hanging fruits. This is a good thing.
That said, I don't like the efficiency/austerity focused approaches to carbon reduction. Subsequently, I don't like a lot of price-based approaches to reductions like cap & trade or carbon taxes, particularly in the EU where I live.
I don't like them for a few reasons: protectionism & other hijackings, price flexibility of demand, the regressive burden on poor people... But for here, I'll stick to the implications of reduced power consumption.
The link between GDP & energy use is very long term. Efficiency can be an effective equivalent of volume but that can only take us so far. With lots of caveats, political perspectives and such.... I am still in favour of economic growth, technological progress... I think without exponentially increasing energy consumption we are contrained. I want a future with more transport, more computing, floating buildings, exotic new materials, space travel. These will require energy.
To take an analogy from cars... The EU has put a lot of effort into energy efficient cars. Light cars with small efficient motors. Hybrids, less driving.... This can get you some reduction, lets call it 50% for the sake of argument. Once you reach that point, there are no more gains to be made. Most "experience points" we've accumulated on the way are not very useful past this point and you need to pretty much start fresh.
Electric cars OTOH...These bottom out at 0. IE, when we get to the point where ICEs can be banned, we're at 0-emissions directly from car motors. Still need to deal with grid and manufacturing (probably the same ways), but vehicle emmisions is solved.
Said another way, electric cars are en route to the finish line. 700cc hatchbacks are a detour. I think it's smarter to invest in the path that leads where we want to go, at least now that it has become obvious.
I think most of us, particulalry those of a radical bent, are naturally dicotomous thinkers. My greeney college friends 15 years ago took the problem to be "too many people, too rich." That wasn't crazy, but I think it was essimistic.
TLDR. The old equation was
People X Wealth = energy consumption = emissions:
I'm skeptical about disentangling wealth/gdp from energy in the long term. I'm optimistic about disentangling energy use from emmissions. I want to see the equation become become:
I don't get your objections. Cap&trade and carbon taxes are specifically about emissions, not about energy consumption. They seem to match exactly what your want.
I don't see any movements in the EU against energy usage per se; I see a movement against pollution, and against waste of energy (which is essentially a form of pollution).
I'm not sure I understand the OP exactly, but I think I feel similarly. The issue for me is that by improving efficiency without changing the long-term growth curve, you're only buying a few years of reprieve. The fear is that this reprieve that feels effective in the short term might actually be delaying development of a proper solution.
Consider an immediate 50% improvement in fuel efficiency, but with a 10% increase in usage per year. In less than a decade, you are back to where you started, but now the chances of another 50% improvement in efficiency are very low. Worse, the lower cost due to the efficiency improvement may have actually accelerated consumption.
The question is whether the "kick the can" approach will eventually leave you in a position where you can't recover, and whether your efforts would have been better spent on solving the underlying problem of system that depends on limitless growth and the externalization of environmental damage. Unfortunately, it's hard to come up with a "real" solution that doesn't involve massive cutbacks in consumption and/or hard caps on human population.
Ah, thanks, re-reading the previous post in light of yours makes sense (hence the "detour"). I guess I hadn't understood before because I don't see carbon taxes as fitting with that complaint against efficiency - people are free to become more efficient or to keep consuming as much energy, as long as its from non-emitting sources.
It's true that in some areas the EU does mandate efficiency, such as in ICE vehicles. But even there, it's not like they say "you must build N efficient diesel cars", what they're saying is "if you're going to sell diesel cars, they must be efficient".
In summary, I think the sale of efficient cars and such is still a market process. If the EU didn't mandate efficiency, all we would get is inefficient gas guzzlers, not EVs.
Worse, the lower cost due to the efficiency improvement may have actually accelerated consumption.
I don't think so, because the efficiency requirements are accompanied by higher taxes in fossil fuels. At least in my country, the amounts spent on gas monthly hasn't really been dropping, even as cars become more efficient.
At least in my country, the amounts spent on gas monthly hasn't really been dropping, even as cars become more efficient.
I'm not familiar with this area, but I think that in the US retail gasoline prices (that is, including all taxes) have been historically flat. This means that efficiency gains fairly directly to lower operating costs, and hence result in greater demand: "In constant dollar terms, the price of gasoline in 2015 was only seven cents higher than in 1929."
I don't think that fuel taxes have increased much on a constant-dollar per-gallon basis. Considering inflation, the federal rate has in fact dropped significantly: "Since 1993, the US federal gasoline tax has been 18.4¢/gal (4.86¢/L)."
I don't know how the state rates have changed (they are of the same magnitude as the federal rate, ranging from 20-40¢/gal) but my guess would be that they too are historically fairly constant per gallon over the recent decades of efficiency improvements, resulting in an inflation adjusted decrease in the proportion of tax being paid.
It's hard to for me to compare directly because the US standards are expressed as miles/gallon while the EU standards are g CO2/km, but I think the US has about the same standards as the EU, although historically trailing by 5 years or so: http://www.rff.org/files/document/file/RFF-PB-16-03.pdf
But answering the implied general question, yes, the US does have legally mandated efficiency standards for vehicles, and the total number of miles driven is about 3 times what it was in 1970: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10315.
That said, I don't like the efficiency/austerity focused approaches to carbon reduction. Subsequently, I don't like a lot of price-based approaches to reductions like cap & trade or carbon taxes, particularly in the EU where I live.
I don't like them for a few reasons: protectionism & other hijackings, price flexibility of demand, the regressive burden on poor people... But for here, I'll stick to the implications of reduced power consumption.
The link between GDP & energy use is very long term. Efficiency can be an effective equivalent of volume but that can only take us so far. With lots of caveats, political perspectives and such.... I am still in favour of economic growth, technological progress... I think without exponentially increasing energy consumption we are contrained. I want a future with more transport, more computing, floating buildings, exotic new materials, space travel. These will require energy.
To take an analogy from cars... The EU has put a lot of effort into energy efficient cars. Light cars with small efficient motors. Hybrids, less driving.... This can get you some reduction, lets call it 50% for the sake of argument. Once you reach that point, there are no more gains to be made. Most "experience points" we've accumulated on the way are not very useful past this point and you need to pretty much start fresh.
Electric cars OTOH...These bottom out at 0. IE, when we get to the point where ICEs can be banned, we're at 0-emissions directly from car motors. Still need to deal with grid and manufacturing (probably the same ways), but vehicle emmisions is solved.
Said another way, electric cars are en route to the finish line. 700cc hatchbacks are a detour. I think it's smarter to invest in the path that leads where we want to go, at least now that it has become obvious.
I think most of us, particulalry those of a radical bent, are naturally dicotomous thinkers. My greeney college friends 15 years ago took the problem to be "too many people, too rich." That wasn't crazy, but I think it was essimistic.
TLDR. The old equation was
I'm skeptical about disentangling wealth/gdp from energy in the long term. I'm optimistic about disentangling energy use from emmissions. I want to see the equation become become: