Long-Term Energy Solutions: The Truth Behind the Silent Lie

It is surprising and distressing that both Albert Bartlett’s article and “Basic Choices and Constraints on Long-Term Energy Supplies” (Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 57 7 2004 47  https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1784302 July 2004, page 47 ) by Paul B. Weisz completely ignore energy efficiency as a factor in long-term energy supply needs, and that the reviewers of these articles apparently did not point out this omission.

Failure to account for energy efficiency in a meaningful way renders the rest of both articles virtually irrelevant. The Bush administration’s National Energy Plan states that energy use per gross domestic product declined 42% from 1973 and argues that about two-thirds of the reduction is due to energy efficiency. Other estimates give a larger percentage. Thus, energy efficiency has been the largest new energy source in the US, even without much attention from national policymakers.

If energy consumption continues to grow parallel to population or to the economy as the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts suggest, then the tradeoffs and scenarios presented in both articles could have some validity. However, if energy consumption in the US or the world levels off or declines, either absolutely or relative to population, the results will be drastically different.

Several studies, including the very detailed America’s Energy Choices, ¹ show that declining energy demands are consistent with, and supportive of, continued economic growth. Witness the history of energy consumption in refrigerators: In 1973, they were the largest user of household electricity in the US, but their absolute use of electricity has declined as a result of a more than fourfold efficiency increase. (The price of a refrigerator dropped twofold during that period as well.) This example shows how large an error one would make ignoring efficiency or treating it as a 20% effect, as Weisz offhandedly suggests. If refrigerator energy use had followed pre-1973 trends and forecasts by EIA’s predecessor agencies until now, the appliances would be consuming 150 gigawatts of peak power nation-wide compared to the actual value of less than 30 GW. If similar policy attention were applied to the other uses of energy, similar results would be obtained.

The implicit assumption behind these articles is that the choice of energy production is of policy interest, but the choice of energy consumption is beyond policymakers’ control. If anything, in the globalized market economy of the 21st century, the reverse is true: Governments have demonstrated their ability to cause dramatic reductions in energy demand without economic sacrifice. For example, California has held its per capita electricity consumption stable or at a slight decline for the past 30 years, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, while in the rest of the US, with slower economic growth, consumption per capita has increased 50%. In contrast, markets, and not government policies, have had a bigger say in determining the sources of energy supply.

As physicists, we pride ourselves on our ability to solve problems by first asking the right question and then seeking answers. Both articles fail primarily by asking the wrong question, namely, What can we, the government, do about energy use that rises inexorably with population (or with economic growth)? But a broader and more effective reframing of the question is, How can policymakers provide for the level of energy services that the market demands at the lowest cost? Studies that attempt to answer the first question arrive at substantially more pessimistic answers than those that attempt to answer the second. The reframing provides more degrees of freedom in which to search for good results.

Enlightened energy efficiency policy can have much greater effects on the problems addressed in these articles than any of the solutions or scenarios that the authors presented. It is sad to see how efficiency issues were ignored.