Energy Consumption

Energy consumption refers to the consumption of energy, in the form of raw biomass, processed fuels, or electricity, to provide heat, cooling, light, motive power, and other services that support and enhance human activity. Energy consumption did not really become a subject of academic or policy interest until after the so-called oil shocks of the 1970s. Prior to the 1970s, access to energy was considered to be infinite, and growth in the consumption of energy was taken for granted. Energy planning was a forecasting activity in which future demand was based on recent growth trends. The task was to bring enough production on line to meet the projected demand. The environmental side effects of energy use were not an issue in energy planning. The theory and policies concerning energy consumption at mid-twentieth century were either positive or indifferent to growth. The oil shocks of the 1970s shook up bedrock assumptions about energy. The so-called Arab oil embargo shut down energy supplies in Europe and the United States overnight. By the time Jimmy Carter took office as U.S. president in 1977, he declared the “saving” of energy as “the moral equivalent of war” and created the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct it. The idea of energy conservation was born, and scrutiny was given to the ways that energy is consumed. The first theories to be brought to bear on how to reduce energy consumption came from technologists and economists. The technologists saw the problem as one of technical inefficiency. The solution lay in increasing the efficiency of the multitude of energy-using technologies that by the 1970s had saturated everyday life. A policy effort was put in place to increase research and development on technical efficiency of things like cars, refrigerators, food appliances, home heating systems, and light fixtures. On the policy side, new laws and regulations were put in place to force manufacturers to increase the energy efficiency of their products.

Economists saw the problem of reducing energy consumption in terms of economic efficiency. From this perspective, the effort to save energy should aim at improving the economic efficiency of markets, both energy markets and markets for energy using products. Consumers in this model were assumed to be autonomous economic actors; consumption was reduced to weighing of the economic benefits and costs of choice alternatives (utility maximization). Social, cultural, and material considerations and constraints were ignored. These economic and technical perspectives together constituted a powerful discourse that would dominate the theory and policy of energy consumption for decades. The methodologically individualistic view of consumption yielded a policy portfolio consisting mainly of price incentives: information and motivational campaigns intended to get individual consumers to conserve energy.

By the mid-1980s, there was a growing body of evidence that techno-economic models were not living up to their predictions. Energy consumption was continuing to grow in spite of efficiency gains. This allowed for the entry of noneconomic social science into the theory and practice of energy consumption, first in the United States in the mid-1980s, then in Europe by the end of the decade. A number of empirical studies conducted by sociologists, anthropologists, and social psychologists cast doubt on the assumptions of reductionist economic models. Their findings showed that people were concerned about prices and costs but that economics were only one of many considerations. People consume energy to create a solid, cozy home; to make a statement about their home and family; to conform to ideas [Page 526]about how a normal family should consume; and so on. In spite of these new insights, energy conservation research agendas were stubbornly resistant to incorporating a broader social view of consumption and sociotechnical change. However, the specter of climate change brought a new set of pressures to the theory and policies of energy conservation: 80 percent of climate gas emissions can be attributed to energy production and consumption. There was a grudging recognition that while changes to nonfossil energy sources will make a contribution to emission reductions, national commitments to reducing climate gas emissions would not be achieved without significant reductions in energy consumption. The mandate to reduce energy-related emissions by as much as 20 to 25 percent over a couple of decades opened for new thinking and innovations on the techno-economic and individualist theories which had dominated energy consumption for decades.

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