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Library / Economic Reasoning and Coordination Principles Framework
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ECO-EFFICIENCY - Decide what a unit saving should change

  • Situation: A process needs less energy or money per useful result, making several continuations possible.
  • Question: Should the gain reduce burden, expand valuable activity, retain capacity or help meet a resource cap?
  • First useful result or blocker: A conditional total-use comparison or a threshold that changes the choice.
  • Start with: Use ECO.10 to distinguish the technical saving from the economic response and to find a consequential threshold. ECO.2 helps revise resource use when prices change. ECO.3 helps when the released means make another useful exchange possible. A shared cap or access rule can bring in ECO.7 or ECO.9.

Halving energy per unit allows twice the original output at the same energy use, within a fixed simple boundary. It does not predict that output will double. Compare the attainable uses and their value; ordinary operation may already constrain demand, while lower cost can also make new uses practical.

If the purpose is a resource cap, keep the aggregate limit in the operating plan. If the purpose is useful expansion, a higher total can be acceptable while its financial and resource consequences still need to be understood. “Jevons’s paradox” does not choose between those purposes.

  • Stop or return: Use the supported comparison when it distinguishes the feasible alternatives. Return to the counterfactual, demand mechanism or receiving purpose if its change reverses the choice.