SciAm: "Does Increased Energy Efficiency Just Spark Us to Use More?"

Link to web site

"By 2025, the fuel efficiency of US vehicles will be required to double.

"As a result, oil consumption is predicted to fall and—given that the U.S. remains the world’s largest consumer of oil—global crude prices might fall as well. That makes using oil cheap again, encouraging yet more consumption, that ends up reducing the energy saving impact of the initial policy. 

"That is the story of the so-called 'rebound effect', more properly called Jevons paradox, after W. Stanley Jevons, the British economist who first proposed it in his 1865 book “The Coal Question.” Jevons paradox is undoubtedly real and has to be considered in any energy efficiency policy."

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Plus: Link to:

"How Much Will Tar Sands Oil Add to Global Warming?"