MattChatter: What Goes On

Thanks to Brian for posting this on his reader.  Extremely interesting.

This is Jevons’ Paradox: the more efficiently you use a resource, the more of it you will use. Put another way: the better the machine—or fuel—the broader its adoption.
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Energy, transportation and urbanism are inextricably entwined, but as far as I can tell, no one has asked the founders of biofuel startups what kind of world they envision if they succeed. The assumption is more of the same. Only more of it. Last Thursday, I was in Washington D.C. for a briefing sponsored by the Biotech Industry Organization (a lobbying group) to update lawmakers on their progress. Executives from Solazyme, Algenol, HP Biopetroleum, Gevo, and Coskata took turns explaining how sunlight/sugars/miscanthus/waste products would be converted by algae/microorganisms/yeast into oil/ethanol/isobutanol. Each laid out plans to leave the lab behind and begin scaling up production to millions of gallons per year.
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Two days earlier, Accenture published a survey of 9,000 individuals in 22 countries about their attitudes on energy: 90% were concerned by rising energy costs, and 76% by the prospect of shortages; 83% were concerned by climate change, and 89% thought it was important to reduce their country’s reliance on fossil fuels. But barely a third thought they should do so by using less energy; the remainder believed their governments should find new sources, stat.
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“We cannot address climate change or energy security unless we both create new sources of clean energy and reduce consumer demand,” said the report’s primary author. “But our survey shows that consumers do not think lower energy use is a priority.”