Energy efficiency is not enough

...this is a cross-post from my work blog, which you can check out here: www.isis.sauder.ubc.ca/media/blog...

Amongst the many discussions on climate change, it is often noted that widespread adoption of existing technology to reduce energy demand offers one of the greatest opportunities for avoiding catastrophic global warming. For this reason, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is rapidly becoming a hot topic for individuals, organizations, and regions looking to reduce their energy consumption. While only making up 2-3% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, ICT presents an enormous opportunity to generate GHG reductions in other areas such as smart meters, grids, and buildings. A recent virtual event at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference noted that ICT can play a dramatic role in reducing or mitigating climate change through improving energy efficiency, enabling renewable energy technologies, monitoring of emissions and energy use, and collective systemic changes in the way we live and work.

The systemic changes in user behaviour offer the most interesting and unknown possibilities for change. Will users telecommute or teleconference? Will they purchase fewer physical goods and demand more digital products, thereby transferring more of their consumption to the digital realm? Will users react to the availability of more information by needing less of it? Or conversely, will users seek out more information and more digital products in such large quantities that they will offset the energy and emission gains made by producing fewer physical goods? This uncertainty in predicting user behaviors highlights the difficulty in projecting efficiency gains from the transition to a digital world. It is a known phenomenon that improving efficiency can result in increasing consumption rates. The Jevons Paradox states that ‘technological improvements that increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, tend to increase the rate of consumption of that resource’. In other words, as energy efficiency improves, the cost of goods or services decreases, which in turn drives up consumption.

So the question remains: will behaviour and efficiency changes enabled through ICT really reduce GHG emissions, or will increasing consumption offset the gains made? The most probable answer is likely ‘it depends’. Where ICT enables energy efficiency, particularly in the manufacturing sector, it is possible that reductions in manufacturing costs could indeed spur increased consumption. To offset this effect, policy changes and taxes, such as BC’s Carbon Tax, are needed to hold steady (or increase) the cost of certain goods and services, with the aim of preventing increased consumption. Where ICT can provide substitute products or services, policy instruments will again be key to promoting the desired changes in user behaviour that are systemic and are maintained over the long term.

ICT has the capability to significantly alter the way we interact with each other and our world, and this power can be harnessed for positive environmental change. However, ICT alone will not bring about the reductions in GHG emissions that are needed to mitigate climate change. Good policy decisions are required to realize the full potential of ICT and drive long term reductions in GHG emissions.