Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

  California, whose population is 12 million higher than ours,
  uses only 60 percent of the energy we do

This is sometimes called the Rosenfeld Effect for the long-time member of the California Energy Commission who pioneered energy efficiency standards, Dr. Arthur Rosenfeld.

Here's a great interview with Rosenfeld upon his retirement from the commission, "Art Rosenfeld, the 'godfather' of energy efficiency",

  http://www.mercurynews.com/2009/12/23/art-rosenfeld-the-godfather-of-energy-efficiency/

There's also a Wikipedia article for Rosenfeld Effect,

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect

There are disputes about how effective California's strict energy efficiency standards have been. But the Mercury News article is a great read simply because Rosenfeld seemed to have been a great scientist who left lasting impressions with all the people he worked with, not to mention on our laws and standards. He passed away at the beginning of this year.

There is something else going on, Texas home energy usage only accounts for about 1/8 of their total so even eliminating home usage (and commercial, too) would still leave a large difference. Maybe the cheaper gas probably insulates drivers from the costs of poor fuel efficiency and this lets people choose long commutes in spite of the driving time, and the laxer industrial standards encourages a concentration of some processes like the chemical plants in East Texas.

poor city planning and urban sprawl contribute far more to fuel consumption than low gas prices. See Los Angeles.

> See Los Angeles.

See what? Los Angeles -- whether you slice by city, county, metropolitan statistical area, or combined statistical area -- ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles in the United States. In fact, the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area has the second-lowest household fuel consumption in the country, just behind New York-Newark (at least according to a poorly-sourced Forbes article [1]).

Unfortunately, publicly available fuel consumption data split by city/county/Census area is much harder to find. But what I have found suggests that Forbes's ranking of Los Angeles relative to other US metro areas is probably accurate. The National Household Travel Survey [2] is likely the best source of raw data for investigating this question.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/05/10/am...

[2]: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/su...

> Los Angeles -- whether you slice by city, county, metropolitan statistical area, or combined statistical area -- ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles in the United States. In fact, the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area has the second-lowest household fuel consumption in the country, just behind New York-Newark (at least according to a poorly-sourced Forbes article [1]).

Wow, thanks for the info. As someone born and raised in LA, I never would've guessed this.

> ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles

It's not about miles covered, it's about energy consumed.

100 miles on the freeway would use the same amount of fuel as 30 miles in the city with traffic.

But low gas prices are a cause of sprawl. If gas was more expensive it would change the economics of commuting.

No it wouldn't.

Gas is about 2x as expensive in the UK. I work in London but commute (by motorcycle) from the next county.

Plenty of people commute by car even though it's considerably more expensive.

Plus we Texans "all" own V-8 pickup trucks.

Nah, only the city folks. Us country bumpkins have straight 6 diesels.

Whats wrong with a V-6?

The main divergence between California and the rest of the US is around the time of Rosenfeld's work... but also the same time as mass adoption of AC. Since half of California has a cooler coastal climate (such as the Bay Area) AC is not nearly as prevalent as almost any other state that experiences a typical hot summer.

Estimates of the impact of this climate seem to claim the majority of the 'energy efficiency' gains claimed by Rosenfeld.

He still did great work, just lets ensure we have the right features in our mental models.

I always wonder how these sort of things square away with Jeveron's Paradox [1]. To me, a stable energy/capita isn't prima-facie evidence that they are more efficient! It suggests prices are higher than they should be.

I dunno, maybe I've misunderstood what energy efficiency is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

EDIT:

http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/california/ & using electricity price as an energy price proxy - average residential use is ~30% reduced vs national average, and rate is ~30% higher. I'd believe the "Rosenfeld Effect" is the key to per-capita use if it is the factor keeping these costs relatively high.

> To me, a stable energy/capita isn't prima-facie evidence that they are more efficient! It suggests prices are higher than they should be.

TL;DR: If I'm understanding you correctly, you're holding up Jevon's paradox as something that we should _aim_ for? Why?

It's not clear to me how you came to this conclusion. Jevon's paradox isn't prescriptive: how do you conclude what energy usage growth (and thus prices) _should_ be? If anything, most policy experts are defining the goal as decreasing the rate of growth of energy growth (ceterus paribus), which means that stable energy/capita is a good thing, not that usage growth is lower than it should be.

Clickable links:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2009/12/23/art-rosenfeld-the-godf...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect

Dunno if it is just Firefox, but at least for me having the urls in block quotes makes them unclickable.

double or tripleclick, rightclick, open works in firefox

Reply on news.ycombinator.com