Green to Sustainable

Jevons Paradox also referred to as “The law of unintended consequences” discusses the subtle failure of “efficiency approach” in achieving the goals set for reducing consumption. Most proponents who believe ‘Energy Efficiency’, or for that matter, “Efficiency” in any form is the ultimate source of reduction tend to overlook the aggregate consumption patterns. For most part, all quarters of society report that efficiency has not served the purpose of aggregate reduction in consumption. Fuel efficient cars, energy efficient appliances and more efficient power plants are known examples, where consumption inherently increased even after operational efficiency was integrated. In my view, efficiency is not a solution; it is just a stepping stone. The policy makers are either ignorant about this fact (highly unlikely), or they believe that further technological advances will make efficiency “more efficient” (highly likely) and will lead to faster movement towards sustainability.

What goes wrong can be briefly explained by the concept of “Means-Ends Fallacy”. Efficiency proponents confuse between means and objectives. Efficiency is a means to reach the objective of sustainability. They consider efficient systems to be sustainable systems, while that is not the real case. Efficiency gains may decrease individual consumption, but aggregate consumption generally increases, as suggested by Jevons Paradox. Furthermore, what goes wrong in application of efficiency is our limited knowledge of sufficiency. The sufficiency concept raises a very important question of ‘How much is too much?’ and ‘What are the limits of more?’ We lack a language of sufficiency that communicates itself clearly to the community and makes itself a public agenda. It is necessary to create a social, cultural and political space which will assist in fundamentally changing the approach toward sustainability.

Showcasing a few approaches that may bring this change would include blending renewable energy sources, replacing physical products with services; formulate better social norms of sustainable re-investment and localizing our lifestyle etc. Replacing physical products with services is one unique way in which you do not take away people’s right to enjoy the service, but still do no push them to get into the vicious cycle of buying and selling. Also, it is very necessary to formulate social norms that will encourage sustainable re-investment. If benefits accrued from sustainable investments are reinvested to enhance sustainability, then over a period of time, the domino effect will bring recurring positive results.

Take home messages:

1. Efficiency is not a solution, it is a stepping stone.
2. Efficient systems are necessarily not sustainable systems.