In the 1980s, the economists Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes independently put forward ideas about energy consumption and behavior that argue that increased energy efficiency paradoxically tends to lead to increased energy consumption. In 1992, the US economist Harry Saunders dubbed this hypothesis the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate, and showed that it was true under neo-classical growth theory over a wide range of assumptions.^[1]

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Further important considerations are the potentials and limits of the efficiency multiplier effect, considering efficiency as a kind of complex system learning process. At the beginning of the learning curve efficiency and productivity improvements get physically easier to achieve and then later improvement slows as the difficulty of learning increases and the practically achievable level of efficiencies is reached. In market systems the investor choices may be driven by physical benefits or financial ones independently, so they may conflict. Promoting efficiencies that accelerate the depletion of resource necessities may raise their monetary value by increasing scarcity, and successively decreasing physical returns on investment EROEI. Accelerating toward terminal limits of resource utility is a form of tragedy of the commons following the equivalent of a maximum rate of depletion rather than a maximum longevity or utility principle.