What does a 19th century logician have to teach us about renewable energy?
It’s not often that you hear the name William Stanley Jevons these days, but he may be due a comeback. In 1865, Jevons wrote a book called The Coal Question. In it, he pointed out that coal use in Britain was on the rise, despite vast technological advances which had improved its efficiency. It’s easy to see how the so-called “Jevons Paradox” could apply today. Give a man a Prius and, everything else being equal, his carbon footprint will shrink. But what about the savings he makes from buying less petrol? If he spends them on a new fridge-freezer, or a family holiday, his total emissions may actually rise.
A new paper by Richard York allows us to see the Jevons effect in action. According to York, investments into renewable energy over the last fifty years have replaced less than a tenth of the electricity which they have created.
It’s often assumed that, once it is developed enough, clean energy will completely replace fossil fuels. What if that’s wrong? In that case, as York points out, we need to not only be investing in new technology but actively supressing fossil fuel use.
Massive fuel subsidies must be the first to go.