Money, I shrunk the chips

"Question: Everyone is inventing technology that uses less power. So why are our electricity bills constantly going up? Is power consuming still increasing?"

In regards to your question, I see it as capitalism coming into play. We're spending more money to use less electric while the electric bill is going up and in certain cases like in the USA power companies are being told by the government to go green, by following these orders these companies get tax breaks and more money in their pockets and charge customers more making more money.

One big thing that personally affected me was I used to run my old truck off 70% methanol 30% gasoline, got better performance out of it and 8 miles per gallon more economy, in three months time the methanol fuel I was buying went from $3US to over $12US! There's no shortage in methanol, so why the price hike?

Also the same thing happened with commercial bio-diesel, not as dramatically, but it went from less than $3US per gallon to $4.50US per gallon.

But yet the price of regular unleaded gasoline has lingered between $2.80US and $3.15US for the past 2 years! This is in the state of Washington, but why has gasoline stayed almost the same but non of the "green" fuels that the government wants us using?

The methanol I was using, burns off as water and carbon-dioxide, the same stuff we exhale and what trees can convert back to air.

Ah yes the conspiracy theorists! When was the last time you bought a stove with a chip INSTEAD of a heating element? What about a water heater, electric dryer or HVAC system?
Until chips can magically produce heat then our major appliances will "use" most of the electricity. 
Hey, I know we're getting took at the meter, it just is simple that more demand for a limited resource equates to higher pricing and the usery of the big utility corps just adds "fuel to the flame."

You may very well know that it is a rare thing for someone to be genuinely interested in going green for the sake of the environement.

The fact is that going green is a gimmick. It has started snowballing. Companies are going green because other companies are doing it. The news puts them in the headlights for free. Company X has done Y to be green!! yey.
But most of these green initiatives are not as the name suggests. They are reducing their carbon footprint and such other obscure measurements in some areas, or sometimes just one & continuing as usual in all other areas.

Question: does your company use electricity?

If it does its not green.

Why? because even a solar plant has backup generators that run fossil fuels, it has battery banks that are full of lead.

You know that cell phones are not really green, in fact 99% of anything that uses batteries simply cannot be "green"

iPods? Computers? CRT monitors/TVs?

It's like applying "revitalizing lotion" to your hair. Seeing as thoug hhair is made of dead skin cells, there is nothing to revive, sorry.

Green is just another commercial selling point for companies that has decent PR.

And don't even get me started on companies that run from the regular good old fashion coal power plant circuit grids.

Green sells, like other successful gimmicks. 

As for electricity consumption, that's really simple. Humans tend to spend more than they can afford, this applies to everything.
So as soon as you know that there are energy efficient light bulbs & energy efficient chips, what do you do? get more, use more, buy more, because its cheaper!!
(Cheaper per item maybe, more costly overall)

Do you want to be green? truly green? eat some rotten eggs, you will turn plenty green.

all these systems use less electricity, and that is true. But how many of these systems have you gotten rid of? I am pretty sure that the server you got rid of last year has found it's way into a computer room in Bangladesh somewhere. So even though everything is getting more power efficient, using less power per unit, we simply aren't getting rid of enough older units to make up the difference. That is the price you pay for a growing economy.

It's physically impossible to get better economy ("milage") by burning alcohol instead of gasoline. +8mpg over gasoline alone is clearly a fib. Energy density varies slightly by type, but no alcohol is as energy dense as gasoline. It may burn cleaner, but you will burn more to go the same distance.

Diesel on the other hand *will* give greater economy due to it's markedly higher energy density.

Attila also apparently ignores that fuel prices have more to do with speculative investment rather than simple supply and demand economics. This investor pricing model crosses over into all the centralized or "grid" energy sources.

Fuels that come from the ground in the form of growing things followed by refinement are also not a long term answer since they just shuffle harmful effects around and in addition put pressure on food supplies. Some challenges are starting to be addressed by using "weed" type plants that grow on non arable land, but there is still some pressure on agricultural concerns.

The only way out is to get off the grid, either petroleum or electric. It is unfortunate that environmental energy solutions such as solar, wind, wave, tide are so far off.

I think it’s fantastic that there is this big push to have electronics that use less and less power. You might even ask what is the limit? If reversible computing is ever figured out then the limit would be the electronics require zero power and would still function.

As for going green…why bother. It costs about twenty thousand to out fit a home with solar cells and batteries. That will cover my electric bill for about 17 years. I spend most of my day in an office lit by fluorescent lights, so you can darn well bet that when I get home after the sun is down, I burn those 500 watt halogen lamps and run the air conditioner to keep the place cool. It’s like having my own daylight inside. And the cost for having what I like is about four dollars to run the lamps for a month. A gallon of gas nearly cost that much and it only lasts about 40 minutes of driving.

"Everyone is inventing technology that uses less power. So why are our electricity bills constantly going up?"

This reminds me of a mayonnaise commercial of yesteryear. A woman in the clip is told her mayonnaise has half the fat of regular mayo. Her conclusion is that she can use twice as much then...