Why Energy Conservation Fails

by Herbert Inhaber

Energy efficiency and energy conservation are often thought to be the same. They are not, according to Herbert Inhaber. Only when less total energy is consumed by all users will energy actually be saved. Energy efficiency schemes do not accomplish this goal of conservation: when one person or nation conserves energy, there is just more of it for others to use elsewhere. This is the first book to answer, comprehensively and objectively, the question:...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567205976
• ISBN13: 9781567205978
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Alan Caruba in Bookviews.com, January 2003

An interesting book exposes the fallacies of "conserving" energy. It is a fundamental fact that energy unused is not "conserved." Why Energy Conservation Fails by Dr. Herbert Inhaber, Ph.D. (Quorum Books paperback), an economist, explains why in an interesting book that why artificial and coercive policies aimed at conserving anything simply do not work. Supplemented with detailed illustrations and calculations, he demonstrates this truth that is as certain as the law of gravity. The decades of government mandates, instituted by so-called "environmentalists", to require "saving" energy and other natural resources demonstrates that the failure to use energy is the failure to grow the economy and provide for our national needs to provide the electricity and heat for our expanding population and the creation of new jobs through industry and small businesses. The bottom line is that our improved technology provides ways to both find and use all forms of energy and natural resources. Just one example will suffice. The use of fiberglass, made from the most abundant mineral in the Earth's surface, has transformed communications and reduced the dependence on copper. Americans are beginning to reexamine the claims made by environmentalists, discovering they do not stand the test of scientific or economic facts.

Review by Dr. Jay Lehr, Environment & Climate News, 11/2002

A Page-turner on Economics (!?)Book review by Jay LehrPublished: in Environnment & Climate News, November 1, 2002Why Energy Conservation Failsby Herbert Inhaber, PhDQuorum Books, paperback, 237 pagesWhy Energy Conservation Fails is, in many ways, the most readable book on economics you will ever read. It is so innovative and fascinating in its approach that it is a page-turner.Dr. Inhaber uses basic economic theory coupled with our well-known human nature to prove in dozens of ways that no artificial coercive strategy aimed at conserving anything can ever succeed. Through simple prose, supplemented with detailed illustrations and ample calculations, he makes his premise as certain as the law of gravity.In making his case, Inhaber stands on the shoulders of giants of the past. These truths have been illustrated and handed down for centuries ... and yet the folly of coercive conservation runs rampant even today. Sadly, those who do not study the failures of the past are destined to repeat them, and that we do again and again.Over the past two decades, Americans have been subjected to an unprecedented barrage of government edicts telling them to save energy, water, natural resources, and many other substances.If we trade in a large car for a small one, surely we use less gasoline ... or do we? If cars are smaller and driving is cheaper, families may own two cars instead of one, and they will drive more miles with their cars. The counterproductive end result is that people will ultimately use more gasoline. Simple economic reasoning makes it clear: When the price of a commodity falls, more of it will be used than if its price had remained constant.Conservation on a national scale does not and cannot exist. In the case of gasoline, its use has risen, not fallen, since the imposition of strict mileage standards in the late 1970s. According to those who advocated those laws, gasoline use should have declined.In our homes, when we attempt to save electricity through improved insulation, our electric bill goes down ... so we tend to use more electricity in other ways, such as by raising our indoor temperature in the winter or lowering our indoor temperature in the summer.Inhaber points out that Karl Marx made a similar mistake when he reasoned capitalism would fail when production efficiency increased, thereby making many employees redundant. He failed to see that with increased efficiency comes a decline in the effective price of a service or commodity and that in the face of a lower price, increasing demand will require more workers.The statues of Karl Marx have come down all around the world, but the conservationists who say that saving a kilowatt hour here and there will reduce the total amount of energy we use still have a loyal following. Inhaber feels strongly that their efforts should be-and can be-thwarted by teaching simple economics to coercive conservationists.Inhaber explains clearly how conservationists have always assumed that man would r

Down Goes Another Myth

If one doesn't look too deeply, it is somehow obvious that if our machines are more efficient, we will use less energy overall. But what is superficially obvious isn't necessarily true. If nothing were to change *except* the efficiency, the result would indeed be lower overall consumption. But that is never the case. For example, if an automobile engine required 500 gallons to get us a few miles to the grocery store, nobody would use automobiles for anything. The consumption of gasoline would be negligible. In truth, as automobile efficiency has improved, the overall usage of gasoline has increased. In the matter of steel manufacture, superficial logic says that when we improve efficiency, we should reduce consumption of coal used to manufacture steel. But Bessemer's process, which greatly improved efficiency, led to greatly increased consumption of coal, along with an abundance of high-quality steel.Inhaber presents an excellent case, piling example upon example, to show that improved conservation has consistently resulted in increased consumption. His book is a great antidote to the journalistic nonsense to which we are daily exposed.Incidentally, Inhaber is not making a case that we should be wastrels. He is merely pointing out the unintended consequences of conservation.