Another bogus report tries to discredit energy efficiency #p2

by David Goldstein.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

This piece was coauthored by Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney and co-director of NRDC's energy program.

Throughout almost four decades of societal progress in getting more work out of less energy, those who deny the promise of energy efficiency have persisted in a bizarre claim: Any energy savings from efficiency are offset by activities that demand additional energy consumption.

While implausible concerns about "rebound effect" have been around since the mid-19th century, they have not impeded recent progress in improving the efficiency of energy use and reducing its environmental impacts.

The most obvious rebuttal to "rebound effect" claims is the performance of the U.S. economy since the early 1970's: Between 1973 and 2009, U.S. economic production more than tripled even as total U.S. energy use increased by less than a third. If "rebound effect" advocates were right, that record would have been flatly impossible, since savings in energy use would be offset by activities that demand energy, keeping energy use trends in lockstep with economic growth (just as they were for the first three decades after World War II).

rest at http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-17-another-bogus-report-tries-to-discredit-energy-efficiency