Time and money spent on wind and solar to limit fosssil fuel use are totally wasted for the purpose of cutting fossil fuel use.

# 4110

I have been thinking, is it possible that our efforts, mostly around wind and solar, are also destructive rather than helpful? As you may have read, the energy produced by wind and solar projects, instead of replacing fossil fuel use, has been added to it, making the problems worse. The strong statement would be that the money and human effort devoted to wind and solar projects is a waste, a form of Jevon's Paradox.

In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced.