Efficiency, Production, and Resource Consumption

This work explores the historical effectiveness of efficiency improvements in reducing mankind’s impact on the earth. Ten activities are analyzed, including pig iron production, aluminum production, nitrogen fertilizer production, electricity generation from coal, oil, and natural gas, freight rail travel, passenger air travel, motor vehicle travel, and refrigeration. The data and analyses presented here show that historically, over long time periods, improvements in efficiency have not succeeded in outpacing increases in production. The result has been sizeable increases in energy-related resource consumption for all ten sectors. However, there do exist a few examples of shorter, decade-long time periods in which efficiency improvements were able to outpace production increases. In these cases, during times of relatively small increases in production, efficiency mandates, price pressures, and industry upheaval led to periods of reduced resource consumption. These cases suggest that with appropriate incentives, including, for example, efficiency mandates and price mechanisms, future resource consumption, and its associated environmental effects, could be controlled and even reduced.