End-use or extraction efficiency in natural resource utilization: which is better?
✍ Scribed by Annababette Wils
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 295 KB
- Volume
- 14
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0883-7066
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The role of technology innovations in making the wealth of non-renewable resources available to the modern economy is indisputable. Yet, there have been very few studies that compare the eects of dierent types of technology improvements on natural resource use. This article undertakes the comparison of the relative merits of end-use eciency and extraction eciency. The model used includes the dynamics of non-renewable resource use, decreasing ease of access, research and eciency technologies. The simulation results show that, all else being equal, investments in end-use eciency research lead to higher levels of service gained from resource use than investments in extraction eciency alone. A combination of technologies, skewed towards end-use eciency is superior to either by itself.