The Jevons paradox is a strange little thing, partially because it isn\u2019t actually a paradox but more because of how it keeps finding ways to be relevant.<\/p>\n
William Stanley Jevons, who is the father of the mathematical approach to economics, observed in 1865 that the increased efficiency with which coal could be used actually led to an increase in its usage. That may seem obvious today but the reasonably popular view at the time was that the technological developments that improved efficiency would in turn reduce usage.<\/p>\n
There have been plenty of other examples of it in the 160 years since. Some of you may remember the paperless office being discussed for years, but right now artificial intelligence<\/a> is creating a scenario where it is worryingly relevant.<\/p>\n It all comes down to code. Every line of code before the AI revolution was written by someone. A human had to do the work to input it. That put some natural barriers on how much code could be produced and also put a premium on the service.<\/p>\n With AI, code has become a lot easier to produce. The human limit on it has been reduced substantially as software developers can now use it to vastly increase their output. <\/p>\n Now consider the Jevons paradox. It\u2019s not just that the existing software will be produced and updated faster.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Replicant rock: How AI-generated pop stars are killing musicOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Thousands, more likely tens or hundreds of thousands, of projects that didn\u2019t previously make sense from a resource perspective are now viable. Everything is going to become a software project.<\/p>\n The growth of agentic AI is already showing this as small businesses can now create tools that previously required a development budget. They may need some human skills but these can be brought in on a contractor basis rather than requiring the investment in an entire team.<\/p>\n The world will still need people who can write code, it\u2019s just that access to them won\u2019t be as scarce. That will cause some market disruption for developers but there\u2019s a very good chance they end up as well or better off from it. Demand for coal miners increased substantially following the original observation by Jevons.<\/p>\n Demand for code will soar as it becomes more efficient to produce. This will also lead to far more projects that turn out to have no real value being executed. Budget constraints tended to be a rather good way of vetting a project adequately before giving it the green light. There will be follies and no shortage of them.<\/p>\n The issue is that this is going to require an awful lot of energy. The impact of data centres<\/a> on the grid is already a hot topic and the increased ease of access to code is only going to make that increase.<\/p>\n Even as the energy usage of data centres becomes more efficient \u2013 market forces indicate this is likely, as it\u2019s in everyone\u2019s interests \u2013 that doesn\u2019t mean the energy usage will drop. Increased convenience will only make demand rise, meaning that more total energy usage is effectively certain.<\/p>\n The International Energy Agency found that AI-related energy use in data centres jumped by 50 per cent in 2025 and expects that to jump by another 75 per cent this year. Consider that data centres accounted for 22 per cent of electricity demand in 2024, with their share forecast to rise to 31 per cent by 2034.<\/p>\n Even with pressure mounting on those running data centres to be more energy efficient and those tech giants largely working to respond in kind, the ease of access to code presents a problem.<\/p>\n Every data centre business in Ireland, indeed globally, could do its absolute utmost to improve energy efficiency and usage will still most likely go up. It\u2019s not quite Catch-22: a more radical shift to renewable energy<\/a> would solve the bulk of the environmental issues that come when the Jevons paradox is applied to code.<\/p>\n