Sustainability and the Limits of Innovation

1. Sustainability and the Limits of Innovation

2. Technology-Driven Sustainability The central premise of industrial ecology, ecological design, and related approaches is that we can devise a largely technological path that significantly reduces global consumption of materials and energy.

3. Technology-Driven Sustainability Implicit in this sustainability strategy is the idea that a focus on efficiency will give us the capacity to confront the challenges of the next century.

4. What are the Challenges? Global Population Growth

5. What are the Challenges? Global Climate Change

6. What are the Challenges? Energy Availability/Security

7. What are the Challenges? Loss of Critical Habitat and Declining Biodiversity

8. What are the Challenges? Fresh Water Scarcity

9. What are the Challenges? Inequitable Access to Resources

10. What are the Challenges? Estimates vary on the scale of the envisaged reductions (anywhere from 4X to 20X), it is becoming evident that it will be necessary to curtail per capita consumption of energy and materials in the coming century.

11. What are the Challenges? Given even the lower range of these targets, it is unrealistic to presume that we will be able to technologically engineer a more sustainable future on the basis of efficiency improvements alone.

12. Two Problems 1. Ecological modernization-inspired strategies are largely producer-driven. They focus on manufacturers devising more “sustainable” ways to satisfy consumer needs.

13. Two Problems Implicit in such strategies is the notion that producers will engineer more sustainable “win-win” practices and we won’t have to consider consumer adaptations that might prove politically divisive or socially contentious.

14. Two Problems 2. Proponents of ecological modernization do not offer much in the way of a strategy for getting from here to there. The theory is is politically underdeveloped and naïve.

15. Rebound Effects The singular application of technology to societal problems has a tendency to generate unanticipated “rebound” effects.

16. Paperless Offices? The advent of e-mail and the Internet promised the “paperless office.”

17. Paperless Offices?

18. Predict and Provide Transportation? The construction of new roadways has not contributed to long-term reductions in automobile congestion. Source: http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/aboutus/one_pagers/images/039_perfmeasi_h.jpg

19. Hazard Protection? We have greater knowledge today of meteorology and better technical understanding of storm patterns, yet losses from floods and other extreme events continue to increase.

20. The Law of Unintended Consequences This phenomenon is referred to by a number of names—Jevons’ Paradox, Revenge Theory, Rebound Effects, Take Back Effects, and Efficiency Traps.

21. William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) Jevons Paradox

22. Jevons Paradox

23. Jevons Paradox Steam Engine Efficiency ↑ Amount of Work per Ton of Coal ↑ Price of Coal per Ton ↓ Coal Consumption ↑

24. Energy Use in the United States Energy Intensity, United States, 1980-2005 Source: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/img/charts/US_intensity_large.png

25. Energy Use in the United States

26. Household Refrigeration Before the advent of modern means of household refrigeration, people chilled food using ground storage.

27. Household Refrigeration With large scale urbanization, the household preservation of food became reliant on ice boxes of various types.

28. Household Refrigeration Electrical refrigeration in households then became widespread after World War II.

29. Household Refrigeration Today household refrigeration is essentially universal and it is even common to refrigerate foods that do not need to be kept cool (e.g., cheese, bread).

30. Household Refrigeration In most homes, the refrigerator is the second most energy-intensive household appliance.

31. Household Refrigeration There has been significant improvement in the efficiency of household refrigerators over the last forty years.

32. Household Refrigeration

33. Household Refrigeration

34. Household Refrigeration Electricity Consumption in UK by Household Refrigeration Appliances, 1970–2020 (Source: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/1285/T172_1_007.jpg)

36. New Car Purchase Let us say you replace your old car with a new one that is twice as fuel efficient.

37. New Car Purchase It now costs you half as much money to travel the same distance.

38. New Car Purchase While some of the fuel savings offsets the cost of the new car, you will save money on monthly gas expenses over the longer term.

39. New Car Purchase You will now need to consider the secondary effects of your well-intentioned decision—namely what to do with this windfall.

40. New Car Purchase One option might be to move to a new house—instead of commuting 20 miles each day you travel 40 miles because you can now travel twice as far for the same cost.

41. New Car Purchase Another option might be to accumulate your petrol savings over a year and take a trip to Tahiti.

42. New Car Purchase The point is that one needs to be careful (and environmentally conscientious) to avoid squandering the efficiency gains that have been generated by a new fuel-efficient car.

43. New Car Purchase Several options exist. You could deposit your efficiency savings in the bank for an indefinite period.

44. New Car Purchase You could work fewer hours (i.e., earn less money).

45. New Car Purchase You could “ask” the government to tax your windfall.

46. New Car Purchase What started out as a seemingly sensible and unproblematic decision to improve your automotive fuel efficiency, in the end, has the unfortunate potential of generating a variety of problematic rebound effects.

47. The Delusion of Efficiency Focusing sustainability initiatives solely on efficiency may be politically expedient in the short term, but improvements are likely to be highly elusive over the longer term. Efficiency ≠ Aggregate Reduction

48. The Delusion of Efficiency In the quest to find a pragmatic and politically agreeable way to embrace sustainability, singular emphasis on efficiency is apt to miss the ultimate target.