Macroecology meets macroeconomics: Resource scarcity and global sustainability

Brown, James H.; Burger, Joseph R.; Burnside, William; Chang, Michael; Davidson, Ana D.; Fristoe, Trevor S.; Hamilton, Marcus J.; Hammond, Sean T.; Kodric‐Brown, Astrid; Mercado‐Silva, Norman; Nekola, Jeffrey C.; Okie, Jordan G.

doi:10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.07.071

Cited by 53 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Brown and colleagues also note that since 1980, the per capita energy consumption of a country scales with the 3 4 power of its per capita GDP just as a mammal's metabolism scales with the 3 4 power of its mass [9]. This comparison, while not directly comparable (i.e., GDP per capita measures a flow of money, but animal mass measures a stock), makes sense if one considers that both scaling relationships describe the energy cost of maintaining the structure and/or functions of a complex adaptive system [40].…”

Section: Summary Of Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Brown et al [40] note that many global materials have peaked in terms of global production rate per capita. Brown and colleagues also note that since 1980, the per capita energy consumption of a country scales with the 3 4 power of its per capita GDP just as a mammal's metabolism scales with the 3 4 power of its mass [9].…”

Section: Summary Of Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics, Part 1: Single Technology and Commodity Perspective

King

Maxwell²,

Donovan

2015

Energies

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Abstract:We translate between biophysical and economic metrics that characterize the role of energy in the economy. Specifically, using data from the International Energy Agency, we estimate the energy intensity ratio (EIR), a price-based proxy for a power return ratio (PRR ∼ P out /P invested ). The EIR is a useful metric, because for most countries and energy commodities, it can indicate the biophysical trends of net energy when data are too scarce to perform an original net energy analysis. We calculate EIR for natural gas, coal, petroleum and electricity for forty-four countries from 1978 to 2010. Global EIR values generally rise from 1978 to 1998, decline from 1998 to 2008 and then slightly rebound. These trends indicate one interpretation of the net energy of the world economy. To add perspective to our recent, but short, time series, we perform the same calculations for historical England and United Kingdom energy prices to demonstrate that a given energy price translates to different PRRs (EIR in this case) depending on the structure of the economy and technology. We review the formulation of PRRs and energy return ratios (ERR ∼ E out /E invested ) to indicate why PRRs translate to (the inverse of) energy prices and ERRs translate to (the inverse of) energy costs. We show why for any given value of an ERR or PRR, there is not a single corresponding energy cost or price, and vice versa. These principles in turn provide the basis to perform better modeling of future energy scenarios (e.g., low-carbon transition) by considering the relationship between economic metrics (cost and price) and biophysical metrics (energy and power return ratios) based on energy, material and power flows.

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Section: Summary Of Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summary Of Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics, Part 1: Single Technology and Commodity Perspective

King

Maxwell²,

Donovan

2015

Energies

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“…Further, it highlights that the environmental framing and representations through various energy efficiency programs have constituted to energy savings, resource savings and well-being; however, it has been lower than anticipated because it has not necessarily engaged all relevant EHS householders including householders (Bell and Lowe, 2000;Marchand et al, 2015;Scott et al, 2014;Haines and Mitchell, 2014). Therefore, there are justifiable social, economic and environmental representations (for example, see Petrova et al, 2013;Liddell and Morris, 2010;Brown et al, 2014;Genovese et al, 2013;Gough, 2013) that needs to be embodied into the broader conceptualisation of sustainable transformations. The above account of the EHS, therefore, identifies a need for dynamic and multi-layered governance structure that embodies multiple disciplines and multiple perspectives employed and accepted for framing processes (Mohrman and Shani, 2011;Holtz et al, in press;Voß et al, 2009).…”

Section: The English Housing Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Barriers to English housing energy efficiency: stakeholders' perspectives

Thakore

Goulding

Toogood

2015

IJMABS

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Sustainable transformation to energy efficient housing remains very challenging. While implementing effective governance remains specific to local and global contexts, more encompassing interrelated essential conditions have emerged which serve as prerequisite to varying degrees in implementing strategies for energy efficient housing in Europe. Notably, the existing English housing system has incorporated these critical drivers to leverage effective governance for energy efficient housing environments. Whilst these are important, there is a paucity of work on the understanding of 'barriers' against the backdrop of these prerequisite essential conditions from the whole system-wide stakeholders' perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues and identify a list of correlated and commonly agreed barriers from the stakeholders' perspectives. From the initial set of 40 barriers, this research identifies ten, as prioritised by online survey respondents. The paper, therefore, directs future research to investigate strategies that can overcome these key barriers.

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“…Therefore, the current per-capita consumption of 2,370 W identified above for an average person is about 24 times that of a hunter-gatherer ancestor. Furthermore, this average value does not indicate the wide variation in per capita energy consumption as a function of socioeconomic conditions, which ranges from only slightly more than the biological metabolic rate in the poorest developing countries to more than 11,000 W in the most developed countries with their energy-demanding industrialtechnological-informational economies (8,17). Compared with humankind's metabolic needs and the remaining chemical stores in the earth-space battery (distance to thermodynamic equilibrium), the rate of net discharge is very large and obviously unsustainable.…”

Section: The Dominant Role Of Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind

Schramski

Gattie

Brown

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Earth is a chemical battery where, over evolutionary time with a trickle-charge of photosynthesis using solar energy, billions of tons of living biomass were stored in forests and other ecosystems and in vast reserves of fossil fuels. In just the last few hundred years, humans extracted exploitable energy from these living and fossilized biomass fuels to build the modern industrial-technological-informational economy, to grow our population to more than 7 billion, and to transform the biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity of the earth. This rapid discharge of the earth's store of organic energy fuels the human domination of the biosphere, including conversion of natural habitats to agricultural fields and the resulting loss of native species, emission of carbon dioxide and the resulting climate and sea level change, and use of supplemental nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics governing the trickle-charge and rapid discharge of the earth's battery are universal and absolute; the earth is only temporarily poised a quantifiable distance from the thermodynamic equilibrium of outer space. Although this distance from equilibrium is comprised of all energy types, most critical for humans is the store of living biomass. With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of outer space with fundamental ramifications for the biosphere and humanity. Because there is no substitute or replacement energy for living biomass, the remaining distance from equilibrium that will be required to support human life is unknown.energy | evolutionary biology | earth-space battery | sustainability | thermodynamics As depicted in Fig. 1, earth is a battery of stored chemical energy where the planet is the cathode (stored organic chemical energy) and space is the anode (equilibrium). We call this the earth-space battery. It took hundreds of millions of years for photosynthetic plants to trickle-charge the battery, gradually converting diffuse low-quality solar energy to high-quality chemical energy stored temporarily in the form of living biomass and more lastingly in the form of fossil fuels: oil, gas, and coal. In just the last few centuries-an evolutionary blink of an eye-human energy use to fuel the rise of civilization and the modern industrial-technological-informational society has discharged the earth-space battery, inducing flow between the terminals, degrading the high quality biomass energy to do the work of transforming the earth for human benefit, and radiating the resulting low-quality heat energy to deep space.The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the difference in rate and timescale between the slow trickle-charge and rapid depletion is unsustainable. The current massive discharge is rapidly driving the earth from a biosphere teeming with life and supporting a highly developed human civilization toward a barren moonscape. Consider as an example that the energy state of the earth is akin to the energy state of a house powere...

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Macroecology meets macroeconomics: Resource scarcity and global sustainability

Cited by 53 publications

References 41 publications

Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics, Part 1: Single Technology and Commodity Perspective

Comparing World Economic and Net Energy Metrics, Part 1: Single Technology and Commodity Perspective

Barriers to English housing energy efficiency: stakeholders' perspectives

Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind

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