I find this a somewhat disengenious argument. First of all, he sets up a straw man (assumption that consumers “use too much energy”)to knock down. After all: how much is too much? Who decides? Too much for me may be not enough for someone else. Clearly, this is a subjective, values-based judgement and any such assumption can be easily discredited on that basis.

Of more importance is the next part of his argument; that consumers “who want to” conserve or save money on energy can figure out on their own how to conserve and that they have a wide range of options to do so.

Both of these assertions are correct, but that’s not really the point. It is a truism that informed people can figure out how to do the right thing, and often have a variety of options for taking action, in a given situation. But the implication that, left to themselves, consumers will actually *do* the right thing, is suspect. It is well known that people often do not take the necessary action, even when equipped with the right information.

For example: consider the problem of obesity. Most people in the developed world know how to lose weight or keep their weight down, but (according to World Health Organisation data) people all over the world are getting fatter.

Then, there is the question: how many consumers “want to” conserve? Does everyone want to? Should everyone want to? Energy conservation has long been accepted as a good thing for society in general. In free societies (and constrained by the law) people can “want to” do anything. But if incentives are available to increase the number of people who actively want to conserve, that would seem to be a good thing as well.

So the issue comes back to the problem of providing the right incentives for action. In this case, incentives need to be provided to both sides of the electricity consumption equation: the supplier side and the consumer side. Whether decoupling is the most effective supply-side policy or not is debatable, but it seems clear that a laissez-faire approach has not worked in the area of energy conservation.

I find this a somewhat disengenious argument. First of all, he sets up a straw man (assumption that consumers “use too much energy”)to knock down. After all: how much is too much? Who decides? Too much for me may be not enough for someone else. Clearly, this is a subjective, values-based judgement and any such assumption can be easily discredited on that basis.

Of more importance is the next part of his argument; that consumers “who want to” conserve or save money on energy can figure out on their own how to conserve and that they have a wide range of options to do so.

Both of these assertions are correct, but that’s not really the point. It is a truism that informed people can figure out how to do the right thing, and often have a variety of options for taking action, in a given situation. But the implication that, left to themselves, consumers will actually *do* the right thing, is suspect. It is well known that people often do not take the necessary action, even when equipped with the right information.

For example: consider the problem of obesity. Most people in the developed world know how to lose weight or keep their weight down, but (according to World Health Organisation data) people all over the world are getting fatter.

Then, there is the question: how many consumers “want to” conserve? Does everyone want to? Should everyone want to? Energy conservation has long been accepted as a good thing for society in general. In free societies (and constrained by the law) people can “want to” do anything. But if incentives are available to increase the number of people who actively want to conserve, that would seem to be a good thing as well.

So the issue comes back to the problem of providing the right incentives for action. In this case, incentives need to be provided to both sides of the electricity consumption equation: the supplier side and the consumer side. Whether decoupling is the most effective supply-side policy or not is debatable, but it seems clear that a laissez-faire approach has not worked in the area of energy conservation.

Once again the government is getting involved and the people get gouged whether they conserve or splurge on the use of utilities. The US appears to be heading toward a Socialist State more and more as each day passes.