Energetic Limits to Economic Growth

[GliderGuider]

More scientists are picking up on this theme.

Energetic Limits to Economic Growth

Authors:

James H. Brown ([e-mail]) is a distinguished professor at the University of New Mexico and external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. William R. Burnside, William C. Dunn, Jordan G. Okie, and Wenyun Zuo are PhD candidates in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. Ana D. Davidson is a postdoctoral researcher at the National University of Mexico and adjunct professor of biology at the University of New Mexico. John P. DeLong is a postdoctoral associate at Yale University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Marcus J. Hamilton is an archaeological anthropologist at the University of New Mexico and the Santa Fe Institute. Norman Mercado-Silva is a research specialist with the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Jeffrey C. Nekola is an ecologist at the University of New Mexico. William H. Woodruff is a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

Abstract:

The human population and economy have grown exponentially and now have impacts on climate, ecosystem processes, and biodiversity far exceeding those of any other species. Like all organisms, humans are subject to natural laws and are limited by energy and other resources. In this article, we use a macroecological approach to integrate perspectives of physics, ecology, and economics with an analysis of extensive global data to show how energy imposes fundamental constraints on economic growth and development. We demonstrate a positive scaling relationship between per capita energy use and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) both across nations and within nations over time. Other indicators of socioeconomic status and ecological impact are correlated with energy use and GDP. We estimate global energy consumption for alternative future scenarios of population growth and standards of living. Large amounts of energy will be required to fuel economic growth, increase standards of living, and lift developing nations out of poverty.



Figure 1. The relationship between per capita energy use and per capita gross domestic product (GDP; in US dollars) of countries, plotted on logarithmic axes, from 1980 to 2003. Note that the slope or exponent, 0.76 (95% confidence interval = 0.69–0.82), is close to three-quarters, which is the canonical value of the exponent for the scaling of metabolic rate with body mass in animals. If per capita GDP is taken as the size of an average individual's economy and per capita energy use as the rate of energy consumption required to support that economy, this relationship may not be coincidental. Total per capita energy consumption is calculated as the caloric intake of humans (about 130 watts) plus the energy derived from all other sources, including fossil fuels and renewables. The thin colored lines show trends for individual countries from 1980 to 2003. The thick black line is a regression model fit to the mean values for each nation during this period. GDP data are from the World Resources Institute (http://earthtrends.wri.org/index.php). Total energy consumption data are calculated from the sum of energy consumption from eating (data from the World Resources Institute) plus all other sources of energy consumed for other purposes such as utilities, manufacturing, and transportation. Source: Data are from the International Energy Agency at www.iea.org/stats/index.asp.

Conclusions:

Our explicitly macroecological and metabolic approach uses new data and analyses to provide quantitative, mechanistic, and practically relevant insights into energetic limits on economic growth. We hope the evidence and interpretations presented here will call the attention of scientists, policymakers, world leaders, and the public to the central but largely underappreciated role of energetic limits to economic growth.

See also Tim Garrett's related work at http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Economics/Economics.html

[daleanime]

1. Kick....

As important as anything else in the news, but will be skipped over by most.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

2. He's wrong.

I could go on and on, but I'll just quote one thing, from the crux of his argument, Jevons' Paradox:

While these counter-examples may be true, they are also very misleading, especially if the subject is climate change. Through international trade the world shares and competes for collective resources. Quite plausibly, the only reason the USA appears to consume less energy is because it has become more efficient at outsourcing its more energy intensive manufacturing to China.

This is flat wrong.
People wildly overestimate the importance of China to the US. Just think about this one thing even before I give you the actual figure for the share of GDP that China's trade with us is: we're self-sufficient in food.
One more time, for emphasis and with emphasis: We are self-sufficient in food.

There are three things an economy has to provide, at base, which are the necessities: food, clothing, and shelter. Of these three, the only one with a substantial import component is clothing.
Now on to the share of GDP China represents: China trade for 2013, imports and exports, in total amounted to 562 billion dollars. Sounds like a lot, right? That's the tipoff: it sounds like a lot. US GDP in 2013 was 16.8 trillion dollars. So China's trade with the US, in total, amounted to 3.3% of the total output of the US.
But of course if we're going to claim that the US has outsourced so much of its "energy intensive manufacturing" to China that it actually alters any plausible measurement of the total energy consumed by the US to such an extent as to make looking at the energy efficiency of the US when considering its total energy efficiency irrelevant, which is what he is claiming in that passage, then what you're actually interested in is the net, because obviously you have to net out what we export to China.
Obviously, the net is smaller than the gross: 318.7 billion is the net. That's 1.9% of the US economy.
So, he's claiming that even though China represents less than 2% of the total output of the US economy, it so fundamentally alters the nature of the economy that using the US economy as a counter-example to his argument is invalid.
This is laughably absurd.

[GliderGuider]

3. What about the crux of Garrett's argument?

Now, if efficiency increases then expansion is faster for any given amount of energy consumption. Civilization is able to accelerate even more rapidly into the reserves of energy and raw materials that it requires leading to even further and faster consumption. As with the child, this is the feedback that is the recipe for emergent growth, not just of civilization but of any system. Doing expansion work efficiently ultimately allows for greater rather than lower energy consumption.

And do you have any any comments on the Oxford Journal paper in the OP?

[Benton D Struckcheon]

8. The crux of his and your argument is fatalism in re CO2.

As I've said before: if you just extrapolate the rate of growth of wind and solar here in the US for a mere 10 years out, they replace ALL fossil fuels in electricity generation.
China is growing their renewables sector faster than we are. The EU is much farther along than us. CFC's, which were responsible for quite a bit of the warming up through the nineties, are banned. Methane has been increasing at a much slower rate.
Your position amounts to throwing up your arms and saying it's hopeless. Your, and his, argument, depend on their not being any counterexamples. But if the US, which hasn't exactly been a paragon to follow, counts as a counterexample, your argument falls apart.
Given that food, which is extremely energy intensive, has not at all been affected by China's rise, except to actually increase demand for its products, the argument that the most energy intensive industries having been exported to China explains the decrease in energy use in this country falls flat on its face.
With that, so does all the rest of your (and his) argument. Because if it can happen once, then it's NOT a law like the Law of Thermodynamics, but just a description of the past with the usual invalid extrapolation into the future that all doomsday arguments make and have depended on since Malthus.
Expansion demonstrably doesn't mean greater energy use, because that has not been the case for the past decade at least here in the US. Per capita energy use has declined. The same has been true for the EU. The actual evidence shows that past a certain point of development, you turn a corner and can continue to grow without continuing to expand your use of energy, on top of which of course the sources of that energy are being converted from "renting", where you take stuff out of the ground and consume it, to "investing", where you build something - a solar panel, a wind turbine, a heat pump - and use it to exploit the energy that is already present in the air, the Earth, and the sky.
Once you stop renting, the problem - this one, the energy problem - is solved. That solution at most is going to take another fifteen years to push fossil fuels out of the way.
In the meantime, we have a host of other problems that need addressing and that aren't going to go away, like saving, just to take one small example, the monarch butterflies. That problem doesn't get solved by people who throw up their hands and say it's useless.

[GliderGuider]

11. It's a question of system boundaries.

I view global civilization as my top-level system of interest. Within that system are many components, some of which are individual nations. A principle of self-organizing or "autopoietic" systems (including social systems like nations or civilization as a whole) is that a change in one component doesn't invalidate the system structure. Similarly, a change in the behaviour of one component doesn't necessarily imply a possibility for a similar overall system-level change.

You might want to try reading Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's work on autopoeisis and structural coupling, or perhaps Fritjof Capra's latest book "The Systems View of Life". Seeing the world through a system science lens gives quite an interesting view. This is where my pursuit of human behavioral explanations in terms of thermodynamics, evolutionary psychology and cybernetics has led me.

It's hardly fatalistic to recognize that many aspects of a system's behavior are constrained by its current structure (one of Maturana and Varela's observations). There is still plenty of significant work to be done at smaller scales - like saving the Monarchs, building communities, doing engineering work, raising children, gardening, painting, writing - or just thinking about things. It doesn't matter if we can save the world or not. There are plenty of other meaningful things to do in the interim, just as we've always done - even in the face of the certain knowledge of our own personal deaths.

[NickB79]

4. Funny, you sound very similar to another poster that used to be on EE a lot

Who also used to attack GG's posts with vigor.

But he hasn't been seen around here in a while.

[GliderGuider]

6. Jevons is a favourite whipping-boy

For those who don't understand (or refuse to acknowledge) the economic expansionary effects of energy efficiency.

[NickB79]

5. "We are self-sufficient in food."

Self-sufficient, so long as we keep up the massive energy inputs required for synthetic fertilizers, diesel and irrigation to keep our heavily industrialized factory farm system running.

Energy inputs derived almost entirely from finite supplies of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels that are cooking the planet as we speak.

Yep, sounds fully self-sufficient to me

[Benton D Struckcheon]

7. If you'd bother to actually read what I wrote,

I don't disagree. This person is saying the most "energy intensive" industries wound up in China. Only a completely ignorant person would say such a thing, given that we are a net exporter of food, and our methods of growing food aren't exactly energy efficient.
Next time, read for comprehension.

[GliderGuider]

9. Chinese exports to the USA

In 2013 China exported $440 billion dollars worth of goods to the USA: about 57% was electronics, 26% household goods, and 11% machinery of one sort or another.

It looks like the main arbitrage is in labour costs, not industrial energy per se. The energy growth in China seems to be mainly in service of the domestic economy. Not sure what food production has to do with this discusion - China is a net importer of food, not an exporter.

Data from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/country/

[Benton D Struckcheon]

10. One more time,

it's very simple: the US is a net food exporter. NONE of that industry has gone over to China. It's also very energy intensive. We get two percent of our stuff from China, once you net it all out. That leaves 98% still here, and beyond that, a lot of that 2% is stuff that we used to get from Mexico, Taiwan, and so on. So that one sentence where he says that the US drop in energy consumption is due to our energy intensive industry moving to China is wrong. If that's wrong, so is the rest of his argument, since US energy use peaked in 2007, but the US economy is now larger than it was that year. He claims, as he obviously knows this, that the US can't be used as a counterexample to his supposed law. I'm saying it can.
That's all.