Comment by dosy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dosy | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Cool link, thanks I'll read it.

I'm not actually sure right now. Somehow I think that if you make those extra widgets without using more energy, then the extra people who buy and use those extra widgets will end up using more energy in doing so, and their extra purchase and use will, however incrementally, grow the economy as a whole a tiny bit, which will use that much extra energy.

So if it's growth, then it can't be static energy.

But somehow also I think that you can have static energy and not call it growth, but development, or something else like someone said before (maybe you).

What's development? I don't know. But maybe it's something like we produce 1000 widgets with more intricate decorations on them. And use no more energy doing so.

I grant that it's pretty confusing. And that's how it seems to me right now.

Thanks

The economy is a complex system, the only way to be sure that when you change something somewhere the energy consumption will remain constant is to put a constraint on it. You could set quotas, increase/decrese taxes to drive it to the desired targets, etc.

Imagine the system is at equilibrium at a certain output and energy usage and you discover a device than increases efficiency in the use of energy by 10%. The system could produce the same output as before using 10% less energy. But the new equilibrium won't be the same output at 10% less energy consumption, because some resources will be freed in the energy generation sector and the price of energy will go down resulting in some activities that were not economically viable before becoming viable. Maybe desalting sea water was too expensive before, but with lower energy prices and higher efficiency it does make sense, for example. You will have an increase in output but whether the new energy consumption is below or above the original level depends on the details. The latter is more likely, I guess.

Thank you for explaining / taking me through that. I totally agree that it's in the details.

My factory now makes the same amount of sneakers but uses less energy, and I have more profit which I can spend on more things, maybe making new markets viable. And in the macro picture, that extra energy, lower prices, makes some things become viable. And what happens from there regarding energy depends on the details. Very interesting and good, semi-detailed discussion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com