6 ms·

I wish the people downvoting this guy would actually research this claim. Seems reasonable to me. Seeing for a scatterplot of consumer good MSRP's vs. energy of

I wish the people downvoting this guy would actually research this claim. Seems reasonable to me. Seeing for a scatterplot of consumer good MSRP's vs. energy of production would be enlightening.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
That claim assumes no externalities and no shenanigans with business models. I too would like to see a scatterplot, but I already expect GP's claim not to hold for phones, IoT, and anything bought used. And that's also only the manufacturing part. The energy used when operating a device is not usually incorporated in purchase price.
crygin 7y ago
I would assume that they're being downvoted not for their claim (which I would not agree with, though I would love to see that graph), but for missing the point of the comment they responded to which points out that even if older hardware consumes more electricity, it may still be less environmentally harmful than purchasing new hardware which required many resources to manufacture.
- wwweston 7y ago
  That would miss gowld's point, which seems to be that a good first order approximation of the energy expended in the manufacture of a new machine is probably captured in a fraction of how much its retail price is. You would definitely not expect that a machine selling for $1000 would have used more than $1000 of energy in its manufacture. Even accounting for energy costs all the way down the chain (materials arguably don't have any other cost other than energy and attention involved in collecting/isolating/refining them), my uninformed guess would be that with something like a computer, it's something like a bit less than half, with the rest of it being amortized human attention at various stages plus some profit margin, though I'm sure there's more refined and accurate models available. So, throw out $480 as an energy number for our $1000. That means old hardware that's less energy efficient to the tune of $40 a month will out-impact the manufacturing cost of the new machine in a year. As an exercise, contrast this with older automobile. If you've got a well-functioning 10-20 year old vehicle, it's probably somewhere between 80% to 50% as energy efficient as the higher efficiency choices you can buy new off a lot today. But the sticker price of a vehicle will tell you that it probably $10-20k of energy to produce. Because that number is high, from today, it will probably take your used vehicle longer than its remaining lifetime to exceed energy use involved in making the new car (and most new vehicles won't get you where you're going any faster either).
  - jhayward 7y ago
    > You would definitely not expect that a machine selling for $1000 would have used more than $1000 of energy in its manufacture. This is a misconception. Energy is not a transportable, fungible quantity the way dollars are. It is entirely possible that the device one buys for $1000 would require more that $1000 of energy to make, if manufactured in a modern economy with high environmental standards. The major forces in the global economy over the last 3 decades have been this imbalance in labor, energy, and environmental compliance costs. The $1000 retail price in the US does not contain the largely externalized costs that its place of manufacture may have permitted.
    - sitkack 7y ago
      Buying items in highly competitive industries from far away places is the most efficient way to turn western dollars into pollution. What the parent didn't enumerate is that the energy cost has to be calculated as the point of use. You can do this for say solar panels made in China. If you assume that 100% of the purchase price is translated into energy costs, zero physical resources used, etc. That 100% of what you pay, went into energy, used by the nastiest sources you can get an upper bound on energy costs to create an item are. In China, $/KwH is 2.5-5 cents US. Probably lower if you are in some direct use of coal scenario. Using the lower bound, say a $100 solar panel made in China consumes energy costing 2.5C/KwH. It could have used at most 4MWH of electricity.
    - wwweston 7y ago
      > Energy is not a transportable, fungible quantity the way dollars are. You mean energy and dollars aren't both transmitted up/down wires or moved around with mass that represents stored potential? > It is entirely possible that the device one buys for $1000 would require more that $1000 of energy to make This.... doesn't sound like a business model that will last long. Can you give a concrete example?
      - jhayward 7y ago
        Electrical power does not cross oceans. Dollars do. A factory in China running on a local coal plant's energy does not pay the same cost that a factory in Texas would pay.
Spooky23 7y ago
It depends where you are. In New York, about 60-65% of your electricity is emmission-free, with most of the rest being gas. In Ohio or Kentucky, it's all coal and gas. You're probably emitting more in Kentucky with a laptop than you are in NY with a workstation. The whole argument is tedious and obnoxious anyway, as the marginal negative impact of squeezing a couple of years out of an older device is overstated and minimal -- you'd be better off assuaging your guilt by taking a 5m shower.
- potiuper 7y ago
  What about Perry, Davis-Besse, and Beaver Valley nuclear plants along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Ohio and hydro on Ohio river?

I wish the people downvoting this guy would actually research this claim. Seems reasonable to me. Seeing for a scatterplot of consumer good MSRP's vs. energy of production would be enlightening.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

That claim assumes no externalities and no shenanigans with business models. I too would like to see a scatterplot, but I already expect GP's claim not to hold for phones, IoT, and anything bought used. And that's also only the manufacturing part. The energy used when operating a device is not usually incorporated in purchase price.

crygin 7y ago

I would assume that they're being downvoted not for their claim (which I would not agree with, though I would love to see that graph), but for missing the point of the comment they responded to which points out that even if older hardware consumes more electricity, it may still be less environmentally harmful than purchasing new hardware which required many resources to manufacture.

wwweston 7y ago
That would miss gowld's point, which seems to be that a good first order approximation of the energy expended in the manufacture of a new machine is probably captured in a fraction of how much its retail price is. You would definitely not expect that a machine selling for $1000 would have used more than $1000 of energy in its manufacture. Even accounting for energy costs all the way down the chain (materials arguably don't have any other cost other than energy and attention involved in collecting/isolating/refining them), my uninformed guess would be that with something like a computer, it's something like a bit less than half, with the rest of it being amortized human attention at various stages plus some profit margin, though I'm sure there's more refined and accurate models available. So, throw out $480 as an energy number for our $1000. That means old hardware that's less energy efficient to the tune of $40 a month will out-impact the manufacturing cost of the new machine in a year. As an exercise, contrast this with older automobile. If you've got a well-functioning 10-20 year old vehicle, it's probably somewhere between 80% to 50% as energy efficient as the higher efficiency choices you can buy new off a lot today. But the sticker price of a vehicle will tell you that it probably $10-20k of energy to produce. Because that number is high, from today, it will probably take your used vehicle longer than its remaining lifetime to exceed energy use involved in making the new car (and most new vehicles won't get you where you're going any faster either).
- jhayward 7y ago
  > You would definitely not expect that a machine selling for $1000 would have used more than $1000 of energy in its manufacture. This is a misconception. Energy is not a transportable, fungible quantity the way dollars are. It is entirely possible that the device one buys for $1000 would require more that $1000 of energy to make, if manufactured in a modern economy with high environmental standards. The major forces in the global economy over the last 3 decades have been this imbalance in labor, energy, and environmental compliance costs. The $1000 retail price in the US does not contain the largely externalized costs that its place of manufacture may have permitted.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    Buying items in highly competitive industries from far away places is the most efficient way to turn western dollars into pollution. What the parent didn't enumerate is that the energy cost has to be calculated as the point of use. You can do this for say solar panels made in China. If you assume that 100% of the purchase price is translated into energy costs, zero physical resources used, etc. That 100% of what you pay, went into energy, used by the nastiest sources you can get an upper bound on energy costs to create an item are. In China, $/KwH is 2.5-5 cents US. Probably lower if you are in some direct use of coal scenario. Using the lower bound, say a $100 solar panel made in China consumes energy costing 2.5C/KwH. It could have used at most 4MWH of electricity.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    > Energy is not a transportable, fungible quantity the way dollars are. You mean energy and dollars aren't both transmitted up/down wires or moved around with mass that represents stored potential? > It is entirely possible that the device one buys for $1000 would require more that $1000 of energy to make This.... doesn't sound like a business model that will last long. Can you give a concrete example?
    - jhayward 7y ago
      Electrical power does not cross oceans. Dollars do. A factory in China running on a local coal plant's energy does not pay the same cost that a factory in Texas would pay.

Spooky23 7y ago

It depends where you are. In New York, about 60-65% of your electricity is emmission-free, with most of the rest being gas. In Ohio or Kentucky, it's all coal and gas. You're probably emitting more in Kentucky with a laptop than you are in NY with a workstation. The whole argument is tedious and obnoxious anyway, as the marginal negative impact of squeezing a couple of years out of an older device is overstated and minimal -- you'd be better off assuaging your guilt by taking a 5m shower.

potiuper 7y ago
What about Perry, Davis-Besse, and Beaver Valley nuclear plants along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Ohio and hydro on Ohio river?