What’s Wrong with Energy Efficiency?

In a response to a New York Times ‘Room for Debate’ forum on energy efficiency, Cato Institute scholar Peter Van Doren argues that energy efficiency standards are problematic, and that the most effective way to reduce fossil fuel use is to tax fossil fuels to increase their price. Van Doren writes “if fossil fuel combustion produces byproducts that cause negative health effects on third parties as well as changes in the temperature of the atmosphere, the obvious lesson from economics is to increase fossil fuel prices enough through taxation to account for these effects. Then firms and consumers will react… [more]