Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
12.1 An example of a close relation between the growth of
economic product and TPES, Japan, 1880-2000. Plotted from
data published annually by the Institute of Energy Economics,
Tokyo.
decades, energy economics existed only as a segment
of resource economics, itself a field outside the main-
stream of the discipline. Matters did not change much
even after 1973. Energy as an economic factor got more
attention in microeconomic terms, but general treat-
ments remained relatively rare (Georgescu-Roegen 1976;
Slesser 1978; Gordon 1981; Bohi 1989; Banks 2000;
Stevens 2000; Buenstorf 2004), and only ecological eco-
nomics takes energy as a central concern (Hall, Cleve-
land, and Kaufmann 1986; Ruth 1993; Ayres, Ayres,
and Warr 2003; D. I. Stern 2004). The link between
TPES and economic growth in particular has attracted a
great deal of analytical attention.
When expressed in constant monies, and with national
data converted using purchasing power parities (PPPs),
the gross world economic product has been marching
in lockstep with the global commercial TPES. Between
1900 and 2000 energy use rose about 17-fold (from 22
EJ to 380 EJ), and the economic product (in constant
1990 dollars) increased 16-fold (from about $2 trillion
to $32 trillion), indicating a highly stable elasticity near
1.0 (Maddison 1995; World Bank 2001). The closeness
of the link is also revealed by very high correlations be-
tween national per capita GDP and TPES. For any given
year the correlation between the two variables for all
countries surpasses 0.95, as close a link as one may find
in the unruly realm of economic affairs. Similarly high
correlations can be found for the secular link between
the two variables for a single country (fig. 12.1).
A closer look reveals some nontrivial problems. On the
energy side is the exclusion of biomass fuels from all
TPES data (an omission that greatly underrates actual
energy use in many poor countries), inaccuracies in con-
verting fuels to a common energy denominator, debat-
able conversions of primary electricity (see section 1.2),
and complete neglect of energy quality. Substantial dif-
ferences in market prices of various energies recognize
these energy quality, but the common denominator in
