An interesting take on a hypothesis I've seen bandied about here from time to time."Two recent articles have argued that as the energy efficiency of products improve, it becomes less expensive to operate these products and as a result, people increase their use of these products, increasing energy use and potentially wiping out the energy savings caused by the efficiency gains.
In 'Solid-State Lighting: An Energy-Economics Perspective,' Tsao and his co-authors look at lighting energy use and efficiency over the past 300 years and conclude that over this period, the world spent about 0.72% of its GDP on light. As lighting has improved in efficiency and as incomes have risen, use of light has increased. The authors then extrapolate these trends into the future to conclude 'that there is a massive potential for growth in the consumption of light if new lighting technologies are developed with higher luminous efficacies and lower cost of light.'
Likewise, David Owen, in an article published in The New Yorker entitled 'The Efficiency Dilemma,' notes that '
growing group of economists and others have argued that aren’t coincidental… efforts to improve energy efficiency can more than negate environmental gains…” As support for this idea, he discusses the rising amount of refrigeration and air conditioning since the 1950’s.'"
http://theenergycollective.com/aceee/55991/our-perspective-rebound-effect-it-true-more-efficient-product-becomes-more-its-owner-wil?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29