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| ▲ | roenxi 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean, sure. They might use more electricity for lighting or less. How much electricity gets used for lighting isn't really the point here. More electricity gets used. Seriously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox has a pretty good explanation. This isn't a new effect, it's been an established consideration related to energy efficiency since the 1850s. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | If light bulbs get more efficient, and someone uses more electricity on something else, that's not Jevon's paradox, that's a coincidence because there's a million things using electricity and some go up and some go down. There's no significant causal relationship between the two. (Mostly little fluctuations in electric prices that even out over the years as supply is built to match demand.) Jevon's paradox is when a specific use case gets more efficient, so you do more of that use case, so much so that the extra use overwhelms the efficiency. It happens in many situations but definitely not all. You have a curve between how much you use and how much value you get, and the steepness of that curve decides Jevon's. For lighting in the past few decades, there's no Jevon's. The changes in light bulbs have caused a big reduction in electricity use. If we were stuck on incandescents we'd be using a lot more electricity total. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | And then the article discusses that even if Jevons paradox doesn't hold, we'd reasonably expect more efficient energy use to lead to more energy consumption. Energy is an absolutely classic field where it improvements in efficiency isn't a likely cause for dropping use. There isn't any reason to use less energy; if there are efficiency improvements then all else equal it makes the most sense to produce the same amount of energy and trade the excess into higher real living standards. Economies are good at sniffing that equilibrium out. The UK doesn't look like it is experiencing an efficiency utopia; it looks like it has a relatively poor population among the developed countries (per capita) and they're suffering from an advanced energy shortage. The costs appear to be going crazy, they're deindustrialising. That isn't efficiency. It looks like they ran out of coal and are suffering from an energy squeeze. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > And then the article discusses that even if Jevons paradox doesn't hold, we'd reasonably expect more efficient energy use to lead to more energy consumption. That's still the Jevons paradox. > There isn't any reason to use less energy; if there are efficiency improvements then all else equal it makes the most sense to produce the same amount of energy and trade the excess into higher real living standards. Economies are good at sniffing that equilibrium out. Massively wrong. Using more energy gives you sub-linear returns in value; you already got the lowest hanging fruit. For many uses you ramp up and use more power than before, but many uses you let your power bill drop. - To put it differently, read your own article. Right at the top it says "if demand is sufficiently price elastic". Demand is often not sufficiently price elastic. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | And then as you get through the article you get down to the section on the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate where start getting observations out of the academy that energy use goes up on efficiency increases even if Jevons' paradox doesn't trigger, and the section on energy conservation policy where the situation gets muddy but there isn't any reason to believe that improving energy efficiency would lead to lower energy use. There is no way that the dropping per capita energy efficiency in the UK is being driven by efficiency gains, there is no theoretical reason to expect the two to pair up in the first place and it is clearly an energy squeeze when you look at the situation in context of the political and other real economic indicators. If the UK could drop 33% of its electricity use while maintaining a healthy economy that'd be a miracle on par if not exceeding what China managed in the last 50 years. That is simply not the situation, nobody seems to be talking about the vast improvements to QoL being driven by their vast surplus that has theoretically developed in the efficiency scenario [0]. Any industry that needs electricity is considering leaving. As I learned in this comments section the UKians are literally rioting in the streets which is, sadly, not a surprise given their energy statistics and the head-in-sand strategy that seems to go hand in hand. [0] I also feel great temptation to allege that people in the UK have been forced into straits so dire that they subsist on a diet of lightbulbs, but my will is strong. |
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| > That looks like rationing. You concluded rationing before having evidence of real demand in the sense of need or even desire from the people. The less data you have, the more potential answers fit in the gaps. Do people overwhelmingly need or want more electricity and can't afford it? Or do they already get more but with less electricity? I get twice the light I had 20+ years ago with a third of the electricity consumption. I get way more computing power with less electricity too. Same with my TV, my fridge, etc. Excluding the switch from gas powered kitchen appliances which drove my electricity consumption up, everything else went down in consumption while giving me more. Do I mathematically want or need more? Am limited by the price of electricity, or by the price of the bigger/better product? Maybe I'd want a walk in fridge or a 3m tall TV but the electricity isn't the limiting factor. I need an extra room and taller ceilings first. Do I want more light? No. Do I need any of the things I mentioned? Also no. The increase in price could equally be the providers extracting the maximum value from the consumers. Current consumption could be exactly as much as the consumers want or need to consume, and the providers sell for as high as they can before that demand drops. We need more data to answer this and we don't have it now. So your answer is your bias put in words, not the certainty you want to make it sound like. The biggest consumers which dwarf the stove are industrial ones. And there the drop is real. Manufacturing moved abroad and electricity production moved with it. This is what the numbers of the article shows and it's hard for consumer demand to compensate, except maybe with mass EV adoption. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Do people overwhelmingly need or want more electricity and can't afford it? Well, yes? That seems somewhat uncontroversial? There are a lot of people out there who need more electricity and can't afford it. Electricity is one of the most fungible forms of energy, with infinite electricity we could all live like kings. It'd be very comfortable. The limit on use is the supply-demand balance represented by prices and if price were low enough people would up their living standards. That is also the explanation for a lot of the issues your post goes to. If you don't need to use the electricity, someone who is struggling can use it instead. And the way the math shakes out is it'd normally be economically optimum to increase their access to a good standard of living by giving them more energy than you gave up. These effects are over the entire economy. And I do want to plug what Citizen_Lame said in a sibling comment, the obsession with lightbulbs whenever energy comes up is a bit odd. If I were relying on HN comment threads I'd believe households in the UK were composed of nothing but light-bulbs and consumed nothing but the same given how much of a focus they are of the energy policy. | | |
| ▲ | watwut 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I personally use as much electricity as I want without care for price. It going cheaper wont make me spend more. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, if electricity dropped in price by 50% I don't think my usage would change in any significant way. There's no way in hell I'd use over twice as much and trigger Jevon's paradox. Thinking about what happens when prices approach zero makes it hard to make realistic predictions. Yeah infinite power would change everything, but for realistic price shifts there are very different price elasticities for different use cases. And one person changing their power use doesn't do much to the price, and a large group gradually changing their power use doesn't do much to the price either. So the idea of "If you don't need to use the electricity, someone who is struggling can use it instead." is misguided. The person who's struggling is going to see basically the same price either way. If we want to help them, conserving power won't do the trick outside of specific supply emergencies, we need other measures. Also roenxi I mentioned things other than lights, but lights happen to be a super clear example of Jevon's paradox not happening over a very significant amount of power usage so of course they'll get brought up. | | |
| ▲ | leonidasrup 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Cheap electricity would change your usage in indirect way: Cost of electricity is a significant part in aluminum production. Cheap electricity, cheap aluminum, more cars made from aluminum instead of currently cheap steel. Cheap reliable electricity would enable cheap hydrogen production, which could replace many uses of fossil fuels. Cheap hydrogen, cheap ammonia production, cheaper nitrogen fertilizers. |
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| ▲ | close04 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Let's put one thing front and center, you called it "rationing". You could be right or wrong, but you haven't supported your case at all, to demonstrate it's not just supply-demand. You just focused on arguing weaker interpretation of what I said, discussing infinities, and obsessing about why people bring up lights. > And I do want to plug what Citizen_Lame said in a sibling comment, the obsession with lightbulbs whenever energy comes up is a bit odd I think you want to distract from not making your point. But easy, light used to consume a lot. By some statistics [0] just a few decades ago it was ~10TWh, close to 15% of household consumption, which in turn was higher than industrial consumption (1.1:1). So lights consumed ~8% of UK electricity. Is 15% in a household or 8% for the country so insignificant that mentioning it is ridiculous? Personal anecdata, I can use more energy but I realistically (not in "infinite energy" world) want and need exactly as much as I use. [0] https://www.academia.edu/81562463/Energy_consumption_in_UK_h... | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Let's put one thing front and center, you called it "rationing". You could be right or wrong, but you haven't supported your case at all, to demonstrate it's not just supply-demand. Supply/demand and prices are rationing. Prices represent the limit on how much of a resource someone can use before there is reason to believe they should stop. It's happens to be best form of rationing we have, the other methods tend to lead to disincentives to improve the situation (consider, for example, how the market rations out limited supplies of RAM right now - prices go up and people who pay get the RAM and all the money going to RAM producers gives them resources and incentive to build new capacity to produce more RAM). There isn't a limit on demand for electricity other than the price, it does literally everything. At the extreme case, if it were somehow cheap enough, we'd be able to use it to fabricate new matter. But every step of the way there are population-level opportunities to use more energy to get more comfortable if there is enough of it. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You've been using the term "rationing" in a negative way, though. That implies more than the mere existence of supply and demand. |
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| ▲ | nothercastle 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes absolutely more electricity is kind of the cornerstone of industrial production and comfortable living. If you make it cheaper you have more goodness | | |
| ▲ | bluGill 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | There are diminishing returns on more. My life wouldn't be better if I was using more electric for the things I already do. Sure I could leave my lights on all day, but by turning the lights off I save more than enough money which I can use for something else as to be worth the effort to flipping the switch when I leave the room. All the things I see that would allow me to use more electric are not worth it - I'd rather spend my money on something else. My life would be better for an electric animated sculpture in my front year - but not by nearly enough that it would be worth building and so I don't have it. | | |
| ▲ | gadders 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think the OP means it would be great because we can leave our heating on all day and just wear bathing costumes in the house. It's more what it enables in terms of industrial production, and transportation and the knock-on effects from that. | | |
| ▲ | bluGill 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Again though, diminishing returns. My life would be better if Bolivia puts in better transit to in their mountain villages - but not by much since I currently believe I will never go there and so it is a just in case. Even for the people who live in those places the population may be so small as to not be worth the investment even if energy was free. |
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| ▲ | Citizen_Lame 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What is obsession with the light, that's like lowest consumer of electricity, also telly doesn't use much unless it's a really big one. Heating, cooking and appliances use the most, and people are definitely careful when using those, especially heating during the winter. Seems like you don't live in the UK. | | |
| ▲ | leonidasrup 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > What is obsession with the light It is historic, electric lighting was the first major application for electricity in households. "
Electric lighting is highly desirable. The light is much brighter than oil or gas lamps, and there is no soot. Although early electricity was very expensive compared to the 21st century, it was far cheaper and more convenient than oil or gas lighting. Electric lighting was so much safer than oil or gas that some companies were able to pay for the electricity with the insurance savings.
" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification#Benefits_of_el... | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > What is obsession with the light, that's like lowest consumer of electricity It used to not be! | |
| ▲ | close04 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What is obsession with the light Because the comment triggering this branch suggested improvements in efficiency must imply wanting to consume more. Light is one of those things, where the rule doesn't automatically apply. It's not the only thing I mentioned, you just chose to skip the others to make your job of arguing easier. > Heating, cooking and appliances use the most Even there you get more for less. Induction stoves are way more efficient than the old heating elements but do you want to spend more time in front of the stove because the electricity is cheaper? Some times, but not that common. Heat pumps are way more efficient than a boiler but it doesn't guarantee that you want hotter shower water or warmer room. But more importantly, most heating isn't electric. Natural gas, oil, or wood were always far more common. In the UK today almost 75% of heating is gas. Electricity is less than 10% [0] so it contributes little to the topic of the article. Now let's get to the confounding factors which go down the pit of ignorance. Natural gas was always subsidized almost everywhere in the world whether you know it or not. District heating is more of the same. Where I live there are still "heating electricity" plans so people get a better price if they happen to use electrical heating because the provider knows that small number of people will suffer compared to others. Another confounding factor, the push for extreme efficiency. Heat pumps have some big limitations that nobody wants but choose to live with for the sake of efficiency and self sufficiency. Because people also install solar panels on their roof and power their appliances without anyone ever reporting how much more heating or cooking was provided with 0 load on the grid. In reality the biggest consumers which dwarf cooking appliances are industrial ones. And there the drop is real. Manufacturing moved abroad and electricity production moved with it. Maybe mass EV adoption can push the demand/production line back up. > Seems like you don't live in the UK. You are correct, I do not. This shouldn't prevent me from having an informed opinion though. Much like how I can write to you in English without living there. [0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... | | |
| ▲ | whycombilater 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Writing in English is one thing but the cultural divide between the US and the UK is enormous, so I think all the context counts for quite a lot. I see things stated (and assumed as a norm) by people in this thread that are just miles off. If you're working off data and not assumptions though, fair enough. |
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