The first time I ever learned about black boxes was in a computer science class fall semester of my freshman year. At first, they were described to us in terms of the algorithms they were teaching us. We didn’t know enough about the way code worked for them to teach us what specifically the code did, so it’s effects were generalized, and we were told to trust it to take our inputs to get the outputs we wanted. Later, the term was expanded to mean any system that was so complex that it is nearly, or completely, impossible to understand the inner workings of. The outputs of such systems are often trusted, but it is difficult to actually determine their accuracy.

This inability to verify results from black box systems, and the decision making behind them, proves a real-world issue. My first experience looking into the issues of obfuscating processes with black boxes was in a computing ethics class I took, where I researched the use of algorithms to determine a felons risk of reoffending. These algorithmic verdicts were then used by judges as an extra piece of evidence, but due to something called “algorithmic bias” – essentially a persons tendency to trust computers even if there’s no real evidence to prove the computer is correct. This use of an algorithmic black box in the judicial decision making process unavoidably obfuscates the judicial process. This violates the defendants right to due process as there is no longer a traceable path of reasoning between the evidence and the final decision.

I’d spent a lot of time learning about black boxes, but I’d never really considered really considered what a black box would look like in a non-computing context – which I’ll admit is a bit silly considering it is essentially the exact same thing. The reading Opening the “Black Box” of Climate Change Science was my first look into the application of the idea of a black box in a wider context.

Black boxes aren’t necessarily sinister, sometimes processes are simply too complex to be understood, but when decisions involving answers from black boxes are stripped from the context that they have resulted from black boxes, that the outcome is not necessarily understood and is divorced from that context, they can become harmful. Just as they obfuscate judicial decisions, their introduction into any decision making process wherein the participants aren’t privy to the inner workings of said black box thereby makes that process opaque at best, and harmful at worst.

Black boxes in sustainability have tangible effects on sustainability. The black box of the production process means that it is difficult or nearly impossible for the everyday consumer to discern whether or not a product is actually sustainable. This obfuscation is often used at the companies benefit, allowing them to make persuasive claims as to why their product should be purchased without the consumer being able to verify them without, at the very least, researching the product a great deal. This was proved clear to all of us through our ecofriendly product reviews where we were forced to tackle the question “Are these products actually sustainable?”.

These black boxes can effect not only consumer decisions, but also ones with much more weight. Government decisions and regulations are one such, especially as they come to a vote; if the black box cannot be understood by those who are voting on the decisions, for better or for worse the outcomes they are voting for and their impacts undeniably obfuscated. This is not to say that the public should not vote in these matters, but simply a concession that must be made whenever black boxes are involved. Because the truth is if these black boxes are obfuscating the steps of a process, or is being used to purposefully hide them, and we don’t know these steps are happening, we can’t do anything to change them.

Richard D. Besel (2011) Opening the “Black Box” of Climate Change Science: Actor-Network Theory and Rhetorical Practice in Scientific Controversies, Southern Communication Journal, 76:2, 120-136, DOI: 10.1080/10417941003642403

In one of my other classes, Environmental Geoscience, we had a unit on renewable energy sources. As my research paper is about solar panels, I was naturally intrigued to see if the lecture would present new ideas about solar power I could utilize in my research paper. One slide about solar power showed this image that shows the amount of land that would have to be covered by solar panels in order to meet our global energy needs, which is 18 TWh’s per hour. TW stands for Tera-Watt hours, which is equivalent to one trillion watt hours.  A watt-hour is a unit representing the total energy supplied if a power of one watt is maintained for one hour.

The map shows the daily global solar irradiance in Watts/square meter.  I found this very interesting. Aside from being as entirely impractical as these placements are – not taking into account geographic features or existing structures – it also shows that global sustainable energy production is less out of reach than it may seem. Impractical as the image may be, the many things it doesn’t take into account actually provide a greater argument for the achievability of global sustainable energy. For one, the solar irradiance displayed on the map is what hits the earth straight on, whereas solar panels are tilted in order to better absorb sunlight. Secondly, it also only took into account 8% efficient panels, whereas todays are anywhere from 15-25% effective, meaning that the land usage would be at least 50% less if using todays panels.

Furthermore, the image doesn’t take into account existing renewable energy sources currently in place. Currently, renewable energy production accounts for 30% of our global energy production, with about 15% from hydro power, 5% from solar, 7% from wind, and about 3% from other renewable sources. Another 9% is produced by nuclear power which, while not a renewable source, is a very low carbon emitting source of energy. These already implemented renewable and low-carbon sources further cut down the land required another almost 40%.

The land estimation required to fully power the world is estimated to be about half a million square kilometers. With the reductions above factored in, the actual land required to bring global energy production to 100% sustainability is about 150,000 square kilometers which, while a very large amount of land, is not unreasonable or infeasible.

Another factor to take into consideration is location. Loster’s estimation takes into account only area, not the geographic features underneath, nor the people and ecosystems that call those places their home. It seems impossible that we could possibly spare that much land to install solar panels as such a scale, let alone that we have so much land available. However, we do have this land available. It just isn’t thousands of uninterrupted square kilometers in the middle of the desert, its all around us. Our rooftops and parking lots are prime real estate for solar installations without requiring the unnecessary development of untouched land. With parking lots covering approximately 5% of urban land in the United States, equivalent to about 13,778 square miles. Now, not every square inch of every parking lot is ideal for solar generation, but even estimating that a quarter of this land would be viable for solar production would produce a significant of energy. This alone would make a very significant impact on sustainable energy production; combined with the estimated 8 billion square meters of suitable rooftops in the United States this represents a staggering amount of land with solar potential. Expanded to the global scale, this very well could represent more than enough land to generate solar power to make non-renewable sources obsolete.

Johnson, Scott K. “A Solar Panel on Every Roof in the US? Here Are the Numbers.” Ars Technica, 16 Feb. 2018, arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/a-solar-panel-on-every-roof-in-the-us-here-are-the-numbers/.

Schrenker, Nadine. In Situ Microscopy Study on the Mechanical Integrity of Flexible Silver Nanowire Electrodes. 1 Jan. 2021

“The Overlooked Solar Power Potential of U.S. Parking Lots.” Time, 8 Dec. 2022, time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/.

van de Ven, Dirk-Jan, et al. “The Potential Land Requirements and Related Land Use Change Emissions of Solar Energy.” Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 1, 3 Feb. 2021, p. 2907, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82042-5, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82042-5.

While looking into topics for my ecofriendly product review, I noticed a trend. While sustainable advances allow us to use otherwise unsustainable technologies more sustainably, the ideal the public often associates with them is that because they are more sustainable, they can be used more. Electric cars encourage people to drive more because they have less of an impact than regular gas powered cars. LEDs are so much more efficient than their predecessors that their environmental impact seems almost nonexistent, leading to people using them more frequently and longer than they would have other kinds of lights.  I won’t lie, I also definitely have used this mindset before; it’s very easy to fall into. This is further exacerbated by the fact that a lot of comparisons of sustainable products encourages the line of thinking that more efficient products can be used more and for the same cost as their predecessors; for example, the statistic that electric vehicles are 2.6 times more efficient at traveling a mile than gas vehicles can make a consumer come to the conclusion that they can travel 2.6 times more miles in their electric vehicle than their gas vehicle for the same environmental impact.

This is called the direct rebound effect. For example, if a new form of light promised 50% electricity efficiency, but only caused a 20% drop in electricity use, there would be a 60% rebound effect, accounting for the “missing” 30% electricity savings that the new product promised. This “missing” 30% is due to factors such as people leaving lights on longer, or people installing more lights, because they see improvements in efficiency as a way to use the lights more, instead of a way to use the lights the same way as they did, but for less environmental cost.

Many of the sustainability numbers given, like this product is x% more sustainable than y product, assume usage of the two products will be exactly the same. However, when people start seeing sustainable products as a way to do more of something for the same impact, instead of as a way to do something for less impact, the environmental benefit is lessened. While this process rarely, if ever, cancels out the benefits of more sustainable products, it means that their sustainability is never as impactful as advertised. There are five different rebound effect types.

1. Super conservation, wherein the savings are larger than expected, and therefore the rebound effect is negative.
2. Zero rebound, wherein the actual savings are equal to the savings that were expected, and the rebound effect is zero.
3. Partial rebound, where the actual savings are less than expected. The rebound effect is somewhere between zero and one. This is the most common rebound effect.
4. Full rebound, wherein the actual resource savings are equal to the increased usage. The rebound effect is one.
5. Backfire, wherein the resource savings are negative because usage increased beyond the potential amount of savings. The rebound effect is greater than one.

The first instance of this effect was discovered in 1865 when an English economist William Jevons observed that technological improvements that led to an increased efficiency of coal led to an increased consumption of coal in many industries. He came to the conclusion that technological progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption; reduced fuel consumption therefore must come through some other means. The fifth rebound effect type, backfire, is also called Jevon’s paradox.

I think this effect is very interesting. Usually, discussions of sustainability focus on the benefits alone of technological innovation. The idea that all innovations lead us to a sustainable future is unquestioned and so no conversation happens about how sustainable products must still be used responsibly in order to actually be eco-friendly.

“Rebound Effect (Conservation).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Feb. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation).