If the use of electronics continues to spread at the current pace, their energy draw could double by 2022 and triple by 2030. At that point, they would absorb as much electricity as all houses in the U.S. and Japan today.
That could well be the paradox of our times. Even as technology has made gadgets more efficient, there are too many devices drawing power to do tasks that once were manual or did not require power.for what once was a manual job?
True they have released more time which can be used for for productive work. But if all the tasks we do now do expending biochemical and physical energy, were to be taken over by gadgets running on power, is that development?
Are we ending up conserving our energy for all the wrong reasons – conversion to mass!
And where will all the power come from, faced as we are with a crunch? Any bright ideas?
Of course, more efficient devices could be part of the solution as advocated by the IEA. But as a recent study says, energy efficiency could see ‘rebound effects’ where improvements are offset by behaviour changes. Like, getting more miles to the gallon might just make people drive more miles. Cheaper energy from making devices efficient could result in more people using more of it!
Called the Jevons Paradox, this was first applied to 19th century British use of coal where it was seen that the more efficient factories became at using the stuff, the more factories there’d be wanting to use it, pushing up overall consumption.
That should set the discussion going on energy efficiency!
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