The standard view of energy saving devices such as LED lighting is that they will save energy. Well, sure. If I can replace a 30 watt incandescent bulb with a source of equivalent light that draws only two watts, I'll save energy, right?
It ain't necessarily so. I might use that light source more. I might use more of them and light things up more. I might use entirely new applications, like the little solar cell and battery driven LED lights that people put in their yards and gardens.
A new study suggests that if we extrapolate historical and pre-historical trends, we arrive at, not great energy savings, but rather greater use of light sources. And that will mean greater human productivity and greater human enjoyment of life.
In this paper, we provide new projections of the consumption of light and associated energy. Rather than assuming that consumption of light is insensitive to the cost of light, we assume a sensitivity consistent with simple extrapolations of past behaviour into the future. In addition, we analyse the interplay between lighting, human productivity and energy consumption. After all, lighting is consumed not to waste energy, but to increase human productivity—energy consumption is simply the cost of that increased productivity. That this has been so in the past is self-evident; that it will be so in the future is not unlikely.
Which means that new lighting technologies won't necessarily lead to energy savings, less carbon, etc. So all the puritans who want us to live in some fantastic pseudo-primitive ascetic idyll are pushing technologies that will lead to increased and more conspicuous consumption.