[phil21]

What could Germany have accomplished otherwise if they had not focused on increasing efficiency?

Efficiency in of itself is not a useful work product. To game theory it - if you had an unlimited source of literally free energy, no one would waste time or effort on gaining efficiency. They would be working on making new products and services.

Every person or monetary unit working towards efficiency gains means those resources are not available on moving forward. It's basically the broken windows economic theory. You have to do a lot of this work just to keep up with previous outputs.

This is certainly reductionist, but I think it does bear out at least somewhat in real life. Instead of making a brighter lightbulb, you are focusing on getting the same lumen output out of the same watts. The goal of a lightbulb is not to be efficient - it's to output light. Efficiency is simply a design constraint.

I can spend my money adding new insulation to make my current home more efficient - or I can spend that same money adding a spare room as an addition to my property and increasing my quality of life. If I have to spend that money just to keep my heating bill the same it was 20 years prior, that's money I can't spend elsewhere.

[helsinkiandrew]

> Efficiency in of itself is not a useful work product. To game theory it - if you had an unlimited source of literally free energy, no one would waste time or effort on gaining efficiency. They would be working on making new products and services.

But we don't have an unlimited source of free energy - energy efficiency has been a goal of much of the developed world since the 1970s, for example the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation_in_the_Uni...

[IneffablePigeon]

Did it focus on it? Most efficiency measures are cash positive after a few years. My LED bulbs paid for themselves 3 times over at least by now. That’s before you even get to the positive externalities.