Light bulbs got 6x as efficient and roughly nobody wants 6x as much light.
Most appliances don't see much increased use from efficiency. And air conditioners have had pretty stable efficiency; other factors drive use changes there.
As for gas or oil boilers - oil is uncommon except in rural areas - gas is far more common but not as ubiquitous in the past as you’d think - many folks heated their homes with resistive electric radiators or IR heaters - so a heat pump is a huge efficiency win.
1950: Lighting was 30% of total electrical demand [1] 1993-1997: 112 TWh, 9% of demand [2] 2020: 81 TWh, 6% of demand [3]
Couldn't find total used in 1950 but the point remains: Lighting used to be a major source of consumption and now it's pretty minor, and at least the trends in the last 30 years have been driven by efficiency gains, particularly following the energy crisis in the 70s.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222531686_Exergy_po...
[2] https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/lbnl-40...
An old 100 W incandescent bulb produced about 1500 lumens, and now a LED bulb of 12 or 13 W can produce slightly more than that.
In the now distant past, I used only 100 W incandescent bulbs, all of which had been replaced more than a decade ago with 13 W LED bulbs, so I have benefited from this 8x reduction in energy consumption.
The other significant reduction in electrical energy consumption happened when I replaced a many-decades-old refrigerator with a modern high-efficiency refrigerator.
Compared with a half century ago when I was a child, now I consume additional electrical energy with some computers, one or two of which are almost always on, and with a microwave oven used for cooking, but the additional energy consumption is normally less than what is saved by modern lighting and refrigeration technologies.
40 years of technological progress and prices went up :(
Now in 2026 the main generators are EDF (French state owned), RWE (German), and Scottish Power (Spanish owned). These companies tend not to publish executive pay, but back in 2012 the CEO of EDF in the UK was being paid £1.2 million a year.
I would submit that all this has some bearing on why the prices have gone up.
This is why distributed solar is actually cheaper than utility scale solar all-in: you need less of that very very expensive grid, even if you pay 3x on the initial install costs.
However, I think that often you should not need to be overly reliant on electric power. If you have enough windows then you should not need electric light in the day time, if the incandescent light in the winter time also provides heat, if you have candles when needed, moon light (depending on the phase of the moon), etc, and I can write by hand and many things can be done without a computer (including, walk to where you need to go; I do not have a car so I walk if it is close enough or car pooling with someone else if far away), there is sweater and blankets and candles (which also provide light) in case you are cold in the winter time, etc. If you learn to work things without electric power too then it avoids some of the overly reliance on it.
Getting rid of the roads for cars (and the cars) would also have some advantages (it would need more walking and others but those things can help, anyways).
Very appropriate nickname!
Where I live, in Europe, when I was a child there was a great abundance of insects of many different kinds. If I did a walk around my home I could see insects from perhaps at least 10 different orders.
Nowadays, the only insects that are still abundant are the true bugs (Hemiptera) why all others have mostly disappeared (a few, like mosquitoes, may still be seen from time to time). I do not know the reason, but I assume that the true bugs might be more resistant to insecticides.
Unfortunately, so do cockroaches.
I think the number of lights is about the same at least where I live in the UK, the big change is the light is now bright white not the yellow of the older sodium vapour lights.
I kinda miss that but mostly because it wasn't as bright and is what I grew up with, you can't really argue that the white light isn't more effective at it's primary goal (illumination) though.
IN fact white light is MUCH MUCH less effective. Red light doesn't affect your night vision, and yellow isn't much behind. White light means you can see very well where the light it, but you can't see beyond that radius and so more light is needed. I don't need to see colors at night (where white it good), I just need to see the dangers in time to avoid them, and so white is much worse for the goal.
Just to make it worse, it takes nearly an hour for your eyes to fully adjust to dark after leaving white light. So if the lights go off or you have to leave the place where they are shining you can't see as well.
White light is only good when you have enough of it that everything you want to see for the next hour is fully illuminated. If there is any exception to that, then you shouldn't have white lite.
We got an increase in lighting whether we like it or not but for lower overall consumption.
> not to mention headlights
40 years ago the highest powered headlight halogen bulbs consumed 80-100W per bulb. so you were looking at 150-200W for low/high beams. A pair of modern laser headlights now gives you 5 times more light for a fifth of the electricity. The limit is safety in traffic. A misadjusted 200W laser headlight will leave you short of 2 retinas.
> People also seem much less concerned with leaving lights on in unused spaces as well.
They consume so little that even wasting is still cheaper lower consumption than in the days of incandescent lights.
I mean not really.
Old aircon was off/on which mean that at temperatures near the target efficiency drops. (as in turning on for a few minutes, it takes a while to move the settle heat around)
Moving from fixed speed ac motors to "inverter driven" (brushless motors) means that AC can be run at a speed other than 100% or 0%. Yes, CoP hasn't increased 6x, but newer aircons have higher CoP over a wider range of temperatures.
moving from Plasma TVs to LED/oled is about a 2-3x improvement in efficiency.
Laptops are anywhere between 2 and 10x less power than desktop (caveats apply)
then double glazing has a large effect on heat rejection/storage. Non-coated glass lets in something like 1kw/m2 of heat, coated glass can reject anywhere up to 70% of that.
I want more than 6x as much light as I had in the incandescent bulb era. Indoor lighting is usually very dim compared to outdoor lighting, and that makes it harder to see things. As I get older and my eyes degrade I expect I'll want even more light. People running offices understand this and provide more lighting than typical for homes. See:
But they do just leave their lights on more[0].
Yes, that means we can use the energy we would have used on light for other things.
Dylan16807: Light bulbs got 6x as efficient and roughly nobody wants 6x as much light.
We're saying the same thing, but my spider senses are detecting we aren't on the same wavelength. Maybe if I point at the key words, that will help?
And while I'm thinking about it, let me recommend those heating bathroom lights. They are divine.
You concluded rationing before having evidence of real demand in the sense of need or even desire from the people. The less data you have, the more potential answers fit in the gaps.
Do people overwhelmingly need or want more electricity and can't afford it? Or do they already get more but with less electricity? I get twice the light I had 20+ years ago with a third of the electricity consumption. I get way more computing power with less electricity too. Same with my TV, my fridge, etc. Excluding the switch from gas powered kitchen appliances which drove my electricity consumption up, everything else went down in consumption while giving me more.
Do I mathematically want or need more? Am limited by the price of electricity, or by the price of the bigger/better product? Maybe I'd want a walk in fridge or a 3m tall TV but the electricity isn't the limiting factor. I need an extra room and taller ceilings first. Do I want more light? No. Do I need any of the things I mentioned? Also no.
The increase in price could equally be the providers extracting the maximum value from the consumers. Current consumption could be exactly as much as the consumers want or need to consume, and the providers sell for as high as they can before that demand drops. We need more data to answer this and we don't have it now. So your answer is your bias put in words, not the certainty you want to make it sound like.
The biggest consumers which dwarf the stove are industrial ones. And there the drop is real. Manufacturing moved abroad and electricity production moved with it. This is what the numbers of the article shows and it's hard for consumer demand to compensate, except maybe with mass EV adoption.
Because the comment triggering this branch suggested improvements in efficiency must imply wanting to consume more. Light is one of those things, where the rule doesn't automatically apply. It's not the only thing I mentioned, you just chose to skip the others to make your job of arguing easier.
> Heating, cooking and appliances use the most
Even there you get more for less. Induction stoves are way more efficient than the old heating elements but do you want to spend more time in front of the stove because the electricity is cheaper? Some times, but not that common. Heat pumps are way more efficient than a boiler but it doesn't guarantee that you want hotter shower water or warmer room. But more importantly, most heating isn't electric. Natural gas, oil, or wood were always far more common. In the UK today almost 75% of heating is gas. Electricity is less than 10% [0] so it contributes little to the topic of the article.
Now let's get to the confounding factors which go down the pit of ignorance. Natural gas was always subsidized almost everywhere in the world whether you know it or not. District heating is more of the same. Where I live there are still "heating electricity" plans so people get a better price if they happen to use electrical heating because the provider knows that small number of people will suffer compared to others.
Another confounding factor, the push for extreme efficiency. Heat pumps have some big limitations that nobody wants but choose to live with for the sake of efficiency and self sufficiency. Because people also install solar panels on their roof and power their appliances without anyone ever reporting how much more heating or cooking was provided with 0 load on the grid.
In reality the biggest consumers which dwarf cooking appliances are industrial ones. And there the drop is real. Manufacturing moved abroad and electricity production moved with it. Maybe mass EV adoption can push the demand/production line back up.
> Seems like you don't live in the UK.
You are correct, I do not. This shouldn't prevent me from having an informed opinion though. Much like how I can write to you in English without living there.
[0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
I see things stated (and assumed as a norm) by people in this thread that are just miles off.
If you're working off data and not assumptions though, fair enough.
It used to not be!
It is historic, electric lighting was the first major application for electricity in households.
" Electric lighting is highly desirable. The light is much brighter than oil or gas lamps, and there is no soot. Although early electricity was very expensive compared to the 21st century, it was far cheaper and more convenient than oil or gas lighting. Electric lighting was so much safer than oil or gas that some companies were able to pay for the electricity with the insurance savings. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification#Benefits_of_el...
Well, yes? That seems somewhat uncontroversial? There are a lot of people out there who need more electricity and can't afford it. Electricity is one of the most fungible forms of energy, with infinite electricity we could all live like kings. It'd be very comfortable. The limit on use is the supply-demand balance represented by prices and if price were low enough people would up their living standards.
That is also the explanation for a lot of the issues your post goes to. If you don't need to use the electricity, someone who is struggling can use it instead. And the way the math shakes out is it'd normally be economically optimum to increase their access to a good standard of living by giving them more energy than you gave up. These effects are over the entire economy.
And I do want to plug what Citizen_Lame said in a sibling comment, the obsession with lightbulbs whenever energy comes up is a bit odd. If I were relying on HN comment threads I'd believe households in the UK were composed of nothing but light-bulbs and consumed nothing but the same given how much of a focus they are of the energy policy.
Thinking about what happens when prices approach zero makes it hard to make realistic predictions. Yeah infinite power would change everything, but for realistic price shifts there are very different price elasticities for different use cases.
And one person changing their power use doesn't do much to the price, and a large group gradually changing their power use doesn't do much to the price either. So the idea of "If you don't need to use the electricity, someone who is struggling can use it instead." is misguided. The person who's struggling is going to see basically the same price either way. If we want to help them, conserving power won't do the trick outside of specific supply emergencies, we need other measures.
Also roenxi I mentioned things other than lights, but lights happen to be a super clear example of Jevon's paradox not happening over a very significant amount of power usage so of course they'll get brought up.
Cost of electricity is a significant part in aluminum production. Cheap electricity, cheap aluminum, more cars made from aluminum instead of currently cheap steel.
Cheap reliable electricity would enable cheap hydrogen production, which could replace many uses of fossil fuels. Cheap hydrogen, cheap ammonia production, cheaper nitrogen fertilizers.
Speak for yourself. The price of electricity immediately & directly effects the setup/operation of small business. I know home businesses (juicing plants) that became non-viable on the basis of electricity alone.
> And I do want to plug what Citizen_Lame said in a sibling comment, the obsession with lightbulbs whenever energy comes up is a bit odd
I think you want to distract from not making your point. But easy, light used to consume a lot. By some statistics [0] just a few decades ago it was ~10TWh, close to 15% of household consumption, which in turn was higher than industrial consumption (1.1:1). So lights consumed ~8% of UK electricity. Is 15% in a household or 8% for the country so insignificant that mentioning it is ridiculous?
Personal anecdata, I can use more energy but I realistically (not in "infinite energy" world) want and need exactly as much as I use.
[0] https://www.academia.edu/81562463/Energy_consumption_in_UK_h...
Supply/demand and prices are rationing. Prices represent the limit on how much of a resource someone can use before there is reason to believe they should stop. It's happens to be best form of rationing we have, the other methods tend to lead to disincentives to improve the situation (consider, for example, how the market rations out limited supplies of RAM right now - prices go up and people who pay get the RAM and all the money going to RAM producers gives them resources and incentive to build new capacity to produce more RAM). There isn't a limit on demand for electricity other than the price, it does literally everything. At the extreme case, if it were somehow cheap enough, we'd be able to use it to fabricate new matter. But every step of the way there are population-level opportunities to use more energy to get more comfortable if there is enough of it.
But when prices go up 100-200%, that suggests the market is rationing pretty hard.
All the things I see that would allow me to use more electric are not worth it - I'd rather spend my money on something else. My life would be better for an electric animated sculpture in my front year - but not by nearly enough that it would be worth building and so I don't have it.
It's more what it enables in terms of industrial production, and transportation and the knock-on effects from that.
And that doesn't happen at all with light bulbs. The cheapness caused a mild increase in lighting, but people are using way less electricity on lights now.
Seriously https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox has a pretty good explanation. This isn't a new effect, it's been an established consideration related to energy efficiency since the 1850s.
Jevon's paradox is when a specific use case gets more efficient, so you do more of that use case, so much so that the extra use overwhelms the efficiency. It happens in many situations but definitely not all. You have a curve between how much you use and how much value you get, and the steepness of that curve decides Jevon's. For lighting in the past few decades, there's no Jevon's. The changes in light bulbs have caused a big reduction in electricity use. If we were stuck on incandescents we'd be using a lot more electricity total.
The UK doesn't look like it is experiencing an efficiency utopia; it looks like it has a relatively poor population among the developed countries (per capita) and they're suffering from an advanced energy shortage. The costs appear to be going crazy, they're deindustrialising. That isn't efficiency. It looks like they ran out of coal and are suffering from an energy squeeze.
That's still the Jevons paradox.
> There isn't any reason to use less energy; if there are efficiency improvements then all else equal it makes the most sense to produce the same amount of energy and trade the excess into higher real living standards. Economies are good at sniffing that equilibrium out.
Massively wrong. Using more energy gives you sub-linear returns in value; you already got the lowest hanging fruit. For many uses you ramp up and use more power than before, but many uses you let your power bill drop.
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To put it differently, read your own article. Right at the top it says "if demand is sufficiently price elastic".
Demand is often not sufficiently price elastic.
There is no way that the dropping per capita energy efficiency in the UK is being driven by efficiency gains, there is no theoretical reason to expect the two to pair up in the first place and it is clearly an energy squeeze when you look at the situation in context of the political and other real economic indicators. If the UK could drop 33% of its electricity use while maintaining a healthy economy that'd be a miracle on par if not exceeding what China managed in the last 50 years. That is simply not the situation, nobody seems to be talking about the vast improvements to QoL being driven by their vast surplus that has theoretically developed in the efficiency scenario [0]. Any industry that needs electricity is considering leaving. As I learned in this comments section the UKians are literally rioting in the streets which is, sadly, not a surprise given their energy statistics and the head-in-sand strategy that seems to go hand in hand.
[0] I also feel great temptation to allege that people in the UK have been forced into straits so dire that they subsist on a diet of lightbulbs, but my will is strong.
> There is no way that the dropping per capita energy efficiency in the UK is being driven by efficiency gains
I don't want to get too far into that analysis. I just really dislike how you came in here talking about Jevons like it's a guarantee in every situation. And dressing it up as "mathematically speaking". That math only applies for specific shapes of demand curve. Whether or not the UK is seeing a squeeze, your original argument and a lot of the followups were deeply flawed.
If there is evidence that the country has freed up a third of its electricity for other uses and just run out of things to do with it then that is going to, without doubt, be one for the history books and would be a level of success that would be well worth talking about. The signalling out of the UK isn't "we're swimming in electricity, what do we do with all this power now that more efficiencies have been found? Lets go bitcoins and aluminium to find a use for these power plants!", it'd a pretty clear "we can't produce as much electricity as we once did, we don't have the resources, usage has to drop, heavy industry please leave".
But let's say the cost of Y (in electricity or money) drops 25%. If that makes people consume 60% more Y, then spending rises. But if it only makes people consume 15% more Y, then spending drops. Both results are plausible.
There's no mathematical reason to assume the demand increase is bigger than the price drop.
If I could suddenly make each gallon of household water use go 10x as far, I'd do somewhere between 1-2x as much stuff with water as before. This would mean I'm only consuming 10-20% as much water as before. Would you be different? Again just household use, don't try to stretch the premise too far.