{"id":1384,"date":"2012-06-20T23:10:10","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T22:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avbp.net\/?p=1384"},"modified":"2012-07-19T00:37:40","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T23:37:40","slug":"jevons-paradox-bust-by-new-emissions-fee-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/?p=1384","title":{"rendered":"Jevons paradox bust by new emissions fee mechanism."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Many inventors\u2019 eyes glaze over in wonder at the thought of having the opportunity to invent clean, more efficient, \u00a0technology.<\/p>\n

If only there were a market for it, the most wondrous machines could be manufactured and sold at a huge profit, they reason. And pollution would stop.<\/p>\n

But more effective solutions actually, according to the \u00a0famous Jevon\u2019s paradox, encourage more consumption. Famously, refrigerators are far more efficient that they were 40 years ago. On the other hand, the total energy used by refrigerators is still increasing, as more people are buying larger refrigerators \u2013 because they are relatively cheaper.<\/p>\n

Read a general account of the paradox on wikipedia here.<\/p>\n

(http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jevons_paradox)<\/a><\/p>\n

So the challenge that Jevons lays down is to find a way to encourage more efficient uses of resources in a way that will, at the same time, reduce demand for them. As illustrated in the\u00a0refrigerator\u00a0example above, \u00a0 making things more energy efficient merely increases their use and energy use goes up.<\/p>\n

Extremely efficient cars would make them cheaper to run and encourage more people to buy them and to use them more thus pushing energy consumption up.<\/p>\n

One researcher may have just found a way to bust the paradox. Anders H\u00f6glund, an engine\u00a0efficiency\u00a0expert who turned to exploring ways to apply advance control engineering to the economy, proposes a fee placed upstream of the energy source. For example, oil\u00a0could\u00a0be taxed when imported to the country, or when it leaves the refineries as petrol or diesel. The tax woudl be raised at regular intervals until the market responded by reducing demand.<\/p>\n

If we are to understand Jevons, this\u00a0would\u00a0mean that more and more efficient uses would appear and a cat and mouse game with raised levies could go on for a long time: inventors would find ways to increase efficiency, demand would fall, the levy would fall, but then demand would rise again as the use of the fuel would be cheaper. Levies would be raised, demand would fall off, but\u00a0innovators\u00a0would be back on track for more efficiency gains. And so on.<\/p>\n

But this cycle of increases\u00a0efficiency\u00a0then fee, then demand and efficiency again can be broken. Enter the next part of H\u00f6glund’s proposal: paying\u00a0money\u00a0collected back into tax payer’s accounts as a tax rebate.<\/p>\n

H\u00f6glunds ideas have been explored in a report by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The report focused on putting a price on pollution. It reasoned that a flexible fee, levied high upstream (in the case of oil, at the harbor) could be made progressively higher until the market behaved to introduce renewable \u2013 based alternatives.<\/p>\n

This progressive increase of fee acts like a price discovery mechanism: the price of pollution is the cost to not pollute.<\/p>\n

–\t\u201cBut would this not just encourage more effective uses which would encourage the same or more consumption ,\u201c argued detractors.
\n\u201cIt would\u201d, replied the inventor, Anders H\u00f6glund, \u201cif it were not for the return of the fee income back into the economy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The mechanism investigated includes a general return of collected fees, possibly as a tax rebate.<\/p>\n

Says H\u00f6glund \u201cthe more fossil fuel that is introduced into a country, and the longer it is used, the higher the fees and the more money collected\u201d.<\/p>\n

This money goes into the economy for consumers to spend. But fossil-fuel based solutions will be more expensive. So there will be an incentive for consumers to choose the alternatives. In this way we beat the Jevons paradox.
\nRead the full report here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many inventors\u2019 eyes glaze over in wonder at the thought of having the opportunity to invent clean, more efficient, \u00a0technology. If only there were a market for it, the most wondrous machines could be manufactured and sold at a huge profit, they reason. And pollution would stop. But more effective solutions actually, according to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","category-rethinking-money"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avbp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}