Oil prices are up, the International Energy Authority has some ideas about how to cut demand. We have some bad news for them:

Alternate private car access to roads in large cities (eg every other day)

Saves about 210,000 bpd.For example, cars whose number plate ends with an odd number can drive on Monday and those with an even number can drive on Tuesdays. Such schemes have been deployed to tackle congestion and air pollution peaks in Athens, Madrid, Paris, Milan and Mexico City. Exceptions could be made for electric vehicles. One downside is that households with multiple cars could game the rules.

The bad news is that it’s not “can” game the rules but “will”. There is considerable evidence from places where this has been tried on a permanent basis that one vehicle households rapidly become two such. As is likely when people are trying to run two capital assets they tend to run older, lower mpg and higher polluting vehicles as a result. The actual reduction in oil usage can thereby become negative.

Running two £500 beaters does not reduce petrol consumption that is, even if both are used only half the time.

This being the problem with these clever little plans. Every time that is, people can and do game those plans. The way to change consumption behaviour is to change the price. And with petrol asymptotically approaching £2 a litre that’s already been done, hasn’t it?

The nerds with spreadsheets isn’t the way to build a socioeconomic system. Something that should be obvious enough because economics really isn’t that difficult. No, really, it isn’t.