What Do I Mean by Energy Efficiency? Let Me ‘splain it to You

I liked “I Love Lucy.” One of my favorite things in the show was when Lucy would get in trouble and Ricky would tell her that she had some “‘splaining to do.”

A friend and I had a brief discussion on Facebook about energy efficiency. And it reminded me how twisted the definition of ‘efficiency’ is these days when it comes to natural resources.

The entire idea of efficiency in this area has been turned upside down by the left whose agenda is to control just about everything we do. If they can control how much energy, water, air, land, etc. we use, then they can pretty much control everything.

So they have redefined efficiency to mean using less of everything. The sad thing is that evangelicals have bought into much of this and so have decided that biblical stewardship of the earth that God gave us means using less of something in the future that we have in the past.

In my discussion on Facebook, I first noted that renewable energy is very inefficient. My friend replied: “Not sure how you’re defining ‘efficient,’ but combustion is about the least efficient way to generate electricity.”

Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth.

The truth is that combustion of coal and natural gas is the most efficient way yet man has discovered to generate electricity. How do I define efficient here?

Well, by efficient I mean combustion produces the cheapest energy. By efficient I mean combustion makes the best use of our natural resources. By efficient I mean combustion provides the best biblically-grounded stewardship of the earth. By efficient I mean combustion brings the most wealth, health, and prosperity of any form of energy use to humans. And it is not even close.

People forget that for most of the first 6,000 years or so of human history renewables, i.e., wood (biomass), water, wind, and solar, had about 100% of the market share for generating energy. Then coal, oil, natural gas, and (later) nuclear came along and the market share of renewables went to about zero except where water is abundant. It has only been a sustained effort by those who control government of taking money from most people to subsidize a few wealthy people attempting to produce energy from synthetic fuels, wind, solar, and (now) biomass that has given renewables about a 10% market share.

But if all those government-mandated subsidies disappeared today and the average person got to choose the best way to get affordable and reliable energy–rather than being forced by government to give billions of their hard-earned dollars to companies with multi-billion-dollar market caps to use renewables, the market share renewables would go back to about zero. That’s how I am defining efficient.

And this doesn’t even touch how fossil fuels allowed people to use machines to replace the human back-breaking work of filling the earth much more efficiently than humans, animals, and machines powered by humans, animals, or renewables had done.

Throughout most of human history, energy efficiency has meant learning to produce more with less, i.e., making energy less expensive so we can use more of it! Today, it means making energy more expensive so we use less of it. This concept is keeping third world countries in poverty and moving first countries in places like Europe toward poverty.

If some folks really want to go back to using windmills and watermills to grind their grain and the wind to power their transportation, be my guest! But please stop forcing me and a lot of other people to pay for it.