Energy efficiency fallacies—a postscript

A special issue of Energy Policy—28 (2000)—was devoted to a collection of papers, edited by Dr. Lee Schipper. These papers were addressed to various aspects of the debate on the role of raising energy efficiency as a contributor to meeting international obligations in the context of global warming. The collection included a paper entitled “Energy efficiency fallacies revisited” in which it was argued that economically justified measures to raise the productivity of energy increased the demand for it at the macroeconomic level:1 thus such measures had no part to play in meeting international obligations to reduce fuel consumption for environmental or other reasons. It was claimed in that paper that an economic rather than an engineering definition of energy efficiency led to the conclusion that energy efficiency was simply part of general economic efficiency although the point was not pursued. The following brief postscript to the paper offers a simple graphical justification for the claim and discusses the implications.