Comment food for thought (Score 1) 854
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi984.htm
For a single machine, improved fuel efficiency lowers the cost of fuel consumption. Historically the number of fuel-consuming devices in a particular industry usually increases as the costs decline. Each individual machine is more efficient then earlier technology, but overall fuel consumption rises when their increased numbers outstrip the individual fuel savings.
The article also mentions the failures of government enterprise (an oxymoron, IMHO) to solve these problems in the 1980's. Energy is the single most important factor for standard-of-living, so I question the agenda of anyone that wants to strangle the energy economy with taxes, regulation, etc.
Ultimately, the possible ways to structure the energy economy has two extremes: rely on centralized decision making from "government intelligence" or rely on the unregulated and distributed decision making of "market intelligence." (The many options along this spectrum include nationalization, public corporations, regulation, tax structuring, etc.) The expectation that "market forces" are preferable to "government control" has been ascendant for the last few decades, and I expect it will continue to be so for a good part of the 21st Century. For more on this point, I redirect you to a well-known public corporation:
