Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Encouraged by the response to my post on Adrian Bejan and the Constructal Law, which achieved what might be termed unprecedented levels of tepidity, I persevere. Here’s a lovely look at the energy use of the United States:
Figure 1. US 2002 Energy production and consumption by sector.
There are some interesting things which can be seen in this diagram.
1. Almost none of the power for electrical generation comes from oil. This means that even if the US could generate every Watt of electricity from solar/wind/whatever, it will not directly replace our consumption of oil.
2. Generation, transformation, and transmission losses eat up most of the energy used for electrical generation. Overall efficiency is 31%
3. Transportation is worse, with only 20% efficiency.
4. Nuclear is three times the size of hydro.
5. Wood, waste, alcohol, geothermal, solar, and wind electrical generation together are 3% of total energy use.
However, as interesting as I found those, that’s not the reason I started looking at energy use and GDP.
I was sucked into this subject by what I thought was an interesting quote from Adrian Bejan here (PDF, worth reading. My emphasis):
To summarize, all the high-temperature heating that comes from burning fuel (QH or the energy associated with QH and the high temperature of combustion; cf. Bejan 2006) is dissipated into the environment. The need for higher efficiencies in power generation (greater W/QH) is the same as the need to have more W, i.e. the need to move more weight over larger distances on the surface of the Earth, which is the natural phenomenon (tendency) summarized in the constructal law.
At the end of the day, when all the fuel has been burned, and all the food has been eaten, this is what animate flow systems have achieved. They have moved mass on the surface of the Earth (they have ‘mixed’ the Earth’s crust) more than in the absence of animate flow systems. The moving animal or vehicle is equivalent to an engine connected to a brake (figure 4), first proposed by Bejan & Paynter (1976) and Bejan (1982, 2006).
The power generated by muscles and motors is ultimately and necessarily dissipated by rubbing against the environment. There is no taker for the W produced by the animal and vehicle. This is why the GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned in that country. (Bejan 2009).
I must confess, I had thought about GDP and energy before, but never from a thermodynamic standpoint. Here is a graph of per capita GDP and per capita energy consumption for a number of countries:
Figure 2. Per Capita Energy Consumption vs Per Capita GDP for Different Countries. PPP values are used. Image Source
OK, call me slow. I knew that depriving the developing world of affordable energy would impede development. But I had never realized that energy use is development, that there is a thermodynamic relationship between the two. I hadn’t noticed that if a country wishes to develop, it can only develop to the extent that it has energy, and no further. Lack of energy doesn’t merely hinder or slow or delay development of poor countries as I had thought.
It puts an absolute ceiling on development.
Given the number of people in the world living on a dollar a day or so, that’s a discouraging insight in the context of the current war on fossil fuel energy.
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Actually what the figure 2 shows is that at high GDP per capita (rich countries there is no correlation with energy per capita whatsoever .
This is well known and there have been hundreds of studies .
The example Switzerland-Canada that has already been discussed , nicely demonstrates why the ratio energy-GDP becomes very very different when the GDP per capita is high (e.g the country is rich) .
It is because size matters .
A rich country has already presumably developped highly its infrastructure – roads , highways , railroads , power distribution net etc.
Now the energy needed for transport of goods and of persons as well as electrical energy transport losses and the energy needed to maintain the infrastructure is approximately proportional to the size of the country (N.B the number of people is not a factor because we use per capita parameters) .
Because electrical transport losses and transportation energy are the by far biggest factors of energy consumption of a rich conuntry and both depend on the size of a country this explains why the energy consumption per capita Switzerland is much less than in Canada .
Switzerland is simply a small country .
If you take an even smaller very rich country like Luxemburg , it can have a smaller energy consumption per capita than Switzerland if it wants while still staying very rich .
So a huge caveat before taking very complex parametres like GDP and energy consumption and then simply drawing a straight line through a chaotic cloud of points .
This is like taking temperatures in climate “science” , drawing straight lines through the points and pretending to explain everything with it .
Actually a strong correlation between energy and wealth only exists at the low end of GDP per capita (poor countries) .
Indeed when you are very poor and survive only on burning wood and walking (riding an animal for the richest) , only a brutal increase of energy consumption by constructing power plants , mechanizing agriculture and developping infrastructure can get you out of poverty and simultaneously significantly increase GDP per capita .
That’s exactly what China is doing right now if you look well .
The Chinese are moving very fast to the top right corner of Figure 2 because they have understood already in the Deng Xiaoping era in the 80ies that significantly expanding infrastructure and power generation (coal power plants in their case) was the way to go to make out of China a rich and powerful country .
Willis:
You say:
“OK, call me slow. I knew that depriving the developing world of affordable energy would impede development. But I had never realized that energy use is development, that there is a thermodynamic relationship between the two. I hadn’t noticed that if a country wishes to develop, it can only develop to the extent that it has energy, and no further. Lack of energy doesn’t merely hinder or slow or delay development of poor countries as I had thought.
It puts an absolute ceiling on development.”
But I have repeatedly said that in several placs including WUWT when I used these words:
“The use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture.
Most of us would not be here if it were not for the use of fossil fuels because all human activity is enabled by energy supply and limited by material science.
Energy supply enables the growing of crops, the making of tools and their use to mine for minerals, and to build, and to provide goods, and to provide services.
Material Science limits what can be done with the energy. A steel plough share is better than a wooden one. Ability to etch silica permits the making of acceptably reliable computers. And so on.
People die without energy and the ability to use it. They die because they lack food, or housing, or clothing to protect from the elements, or heating to survive cold, or cooling to survive heat, or medical provisions, or transport to move goods and services from where they are produced to where they are needed.
And people who lack energy are poor so they die from pollution, too.
For example, traffic pollution has been dramatically reduced by adoption of fossil fuels. On average each day in 1855 more than 50 tons of horse excrement was removed from only one street, Oxford Street in London. The mess, smell, insects and disease were awful everywhere. By 1900 every ceiling of every room in Britain had sticky paper hanging from it to catch the flies. Old buildings still have scrapers by their doors to remove some of the pollution from shoes before entering
Affluence reduces pollution. Rich people can afford sewers, toilets, clean drinking water and clean air. Poor people have more important things they must spend all they have to get. So, people with wealth can afford to reduce pollution but others cannot. Pollution in North America and Europe was greater in 1900 than in 2000 despite much larger populations in 2000. And the pollution now experienced every day by billions who do not have the wealth of Americans and Europeans includes cooking in a mud hut using wood and dung as fuel when they cannot afford a chimney.
The use of fossil fuels has provided that affluence for the developed world. The developing world needs the affluence provided by the development which is only possible at present by using fossil fuels.
We gained our wealth and our population by means of that use.
The energy supply increased immensely when the greater energy intensity in fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine. Animal power, wind power and solar power were abandoned because the laws of physics do not allow them to provide as much energy as can be easily obtained from using fossil fuels.
The greater energy supply enabled more people to live and the human population exploded. Our population has now reached about 6.6 billion and it is still rising. All estimates are that the human population will peak at about 9 billion people near the middle of this century.
That additional more than 2 billion people in the next few decades needs additional energy supply to survive. The only methods to provide that additional energy supply at present are nuclear power and fossil fuels. And the use of nuclear power is limited because some activities are difficult to achieve by getting energy from the end of a wire.
If anybody here doubts this then I tell them to ask a farmer what his production would be if he had to replace his tractor with a horse or a Sinclair C5.
So, holding the use of fossil fuels at its present level would kill at least 2 billion people, mostly children. And reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions, possibly billions.
That is not an opinion. It is not a prediction. It is not a projection. It is a certain and undeniable fact. Holding the use of fossil fuels at their present levels would kill billions of people, mostly children. Reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions or billions.
Improving energy efficiency will not solve that because it has been known since the nineteenth century that improved energy efficiency increases energy use: as many subsequent studies have confirmed.”
Richard
Someone should do a PHd thesis on the economic implications of the 50cc Honda step -through motorcycle. With all its derivatives and imitators, sales probably number in the hundreds of million (the 50cc Honda Cub itself passed 40m many years ago). Across Asia it provided a means to get to a job or to take (astonishingly large loads of) produce to market. It was, literally, a vehicle to take them off the bump-stop of substistence. It would be interesting to know, for instance, how many of the peasants who bought the first Cubs have grand-daughters whose parents send them to violin lessons.
In the discussion about alternatives to burning carbon, it’s often overlooked that no fuel has yet come close to the fungibility of liquid hydrocarbons, and therefore as a fuel for the green shoots of development.
The old saying “Energy is life. Cheap energy is properity” seems to be a provable fact.
What should strike one about the graph is the huge amount of losses in the system. Billions spent on green stuff would be better spent on improving efficiencies. If electrical generation systems were 10% more efficient, one could manufacture synthetic fuels with the extra “surplus” electricity, eliminating imported oil. Provided that one ignores all that oil shale, etc., laying underfoot.
The second item is how all this changes when one diverts power generation into electric cars which adds another huge energy loss conversion into the systems.
But, for sure, America should be exporting everything energy – from resource development through entire generation plants – into the “developing” world. As cheaply as possible. And it should be coercive in that America should require a economic freedoms as pre-requisite. If a nation refuses, don’t even send charity but ramp up propaganda aimed at their populace telling them what they’re missing.
Thanks Willis,
US EPA air trends:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/comparison70.jpg
The EPA updates this graph regularly, and it shows clearly that in the US we are cleaning our air VERY successfully, and we are increasing efficiencies. It also shows that we are curtailing our miles driven. I find it instructive that in the US since 1970, energy usage (and CO2 generation) has tracked population growth. GDP has outpaced both due to gains in efficiency.
Anyone care to venture a guess at why the decline in miles driven? I don’t think gasoline prices are sufficient to explain it. The trend used to stay constant while people bought more efficient cars and drove more while keeping their expenditures for gasoline relatively constant.
As a final note, with our air so clean, the complaints about “dirty” coal ring hollow!
TomVonk says: November 17, 2010 at 2:33 am
Excellent point, Tom. And frequently ( almost always, actually ) overlooked whenever solar and wind alternative energy sources, and high-speed rail, or even low-speed rail, transport are discussed relative to the USA. Here rail works for freight. It doesn’t work when you’re trying to get a dispersed low population density ( we love our single-family houses out in the boonies ) into a central location to get to work and the office. Another network, btw, that Bejan has investigated in depth. High-speed rail might work center-city to center-city, but even that hasn’t been successful here.
Here in the USA you can travel several hundreds of kilometers and not pass near any population centers, or any people, even. In Europa, in that distance you pass near a very large fraction of the population.
Energy consumption for oil is logarithmic; US oil consumption per capita is well below the level of 1979. The consumption of electricity is largely linear with GDP, although California has not increased per capita consumption since the 1970’s and enjoys the highest per capita GDP in the US, bar a few states. So, yes, there is a clear connection between energy usage and GDP, but it’s not the same thing.
Just to echo the final point of Richard S Courtney, it has indeed been clearly shown that, in a more or less free market economy, increased energy efficiency, i.e. achieving the same work for less cost, simply frees up more resource for investment in more and more diverse work, the end result being the consumption overall of more not less energy.
When politicians are asked for solutions to reduce carbon emissions, rather than accept THE only solution i.e. nuclear power (since resurgent medieval superstition about ionising radiation makes it unpolitic to do so) they trot out lame absurdities about insulating lofts, cutting waste and having grassy roofs.
Its rather like like making the following argument:
“Technological advances resulting in more efficient manufacturing, transport etc., will cause economic shrinkage and recession. The same goods and services can be delivered at less cost.
Therefore [here is the key flaw] since all economic and industrial activity basically stays the same, then less money changes hands for the same goods exchanges, less money generally sloshes around in the economy, thus the economy shrinks and everyone gets poorer.”
Since Willis has pointed out the intimate connection of energy use and economic activity / growth, it is clear that the above agument is just as nonsensical when applied to energy use and fossil fuel consumption as when applied to the economy and money supply.
Carnot was right. Perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible. Shame about that second law of thermodynamics thingy.
Willis says:
Not if you consider the ultimate goal of the Fabian socialists backing/promulgating AGW. They can’t come right out and declare food to be illegal–that would be too obvious. However, they CAN declare something integrally combined with food production to be illegal and get the same results–world depopulation.
Why are they doing this? I get the impression they want to share what they think is the Earth’s finite resources with the fewest number of people possible; being stuck in “single-pie mentality” has serious intended consequences. They’re greedy to the extreme–in terms of both power and possessions.
They believe the third world has got to go, and much of the developed world, too. The falacy of their thinking lies in the fact that if they want to be king and the rest of the world reduced to nothing, they can be proud of being king of nothing.
Hey Willis, you keep producing this stuff that even unscientific types such as I understand at first read, no headache supplied!
My dad, who never properly transitioned from the horse age himself, used to tell me back in the fifties that the orginal little grey English TEA Ferguson tractor (copied faithfully and produced in volume by Ford in America) with built-in power take-off and on-board hydraulics for raising and lowering ploughshares, for powering bolt-on front-end loaders and all manner of complex harvesting, sawmilling and industrial equipment etc, not only replaced the horse and spring cart, but allowed individual farmers to do huge amounts of physical work quite easily and eficiently, which then allowed small-acreage post WWII farmers in the Western world who had been one step up from peasants for generations, to prosper. Sadly, our current ecotard Western politicians would not recognise the beautiful simplicity of the Ferguson concept if they were smacked on the head with it, but continue to believe that income arrives by some magic process that involves neither energy (of any kind) or work.
The small slip of mixing GDP and GNP in the article is not terribly relevant to the arguments but there are other errors in intermixing words like GDP, Constructal theory and thermodynamic systems that lead to more extrapolations and errors.
First GDP as it is currently measured is a measure of human interaction. The laws of thermodynamics come first because without movement of energy there would not be cellular respiration. Cellular respiration is not measured in GDP. Similarly GDP measures non physical things, like the sale of intellectual property rights that incorporate no physical energy. If you can understand the differences in what the two measure you can begin to understand where the links are and where they are not. Energy is fundamentally linked to economics but relationships are non-linear and sometimes are not there at all. For example, an economy can still grow without using more energy, and I’m not talking about efficiency or green jobs or anything physical at all.
If not already said, the areas on the graph like Canada is a large country with a dispersed population, that is colder than much of the world. However, a major key is that it is an energy exporter. Note energy exporters and oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Canada are above the line. Switzerland has a very small heavy industrial base along with a disproportionately high financial sector so it substitutes high energy using industries for low ones. This can be misleading of course because it still benefits from the imports of heavy industrial countries and cheap energy suppliers.
Good figure, good conclusions, but two caveats:
1. It isn’t discouraging that energy IS development, if energy includes more than fossil energy. Oil will get more and more expensive, in all likelihood, as cheap resources are depleted and costly ones become the norm. Natural gas will have a longer run as a relatively inexpensive fuel. But electricity can be made by nuclear and solar. Solar will be a lot cheaper in 20 years, and small modular reactors, assembled in factories and fail safe, may become a norm for electricity in many places. Countries that can’t stand the crippling cost of importing oil in the future, or importing costly liquified natural gas, CAN still have electricity. Lights enables students to study at night, electricity powers the internet and cell phones and the most modern technologies. Solar, when it becomes cheaper (as it is, now that it is made in China), is especially good in countries that don’t have a large transmission grid, which are the poorest countries.
2. You are so right, and it is well past time that people recognized this, that solar and wind won’t make us “energy independent,” because they won’t substitute for oil in transportation.
However, in the longer run, as oil becomes more costly, plug in hybrids and perhaps, eventually, electric cars with cheaper batteries will in fact displace foreign oil. This is something we can hope and plan for. Everyone says we should think about the long run, but in practice people seem to only care about the short run. But in the long run, when oil is $150 and $200 per barrel, wouldn’t it be good for our balance of payments to use domestic electricity from nuclear and (eventually) cheaper solar, as well as from existing coal and natural gas plants, to substitute for oil at this price?
Perhaps most understand this, but of the 26.3 Quads “electrical system energy losses” only 1-2 Quads is likely due to transmission and distribution losses. The remainder, 24-25 Quads is likely the result of heat rejected from heat engines (at low temperatures and pressures) — a necessary requirement dictated by thermodynamics. Sure there can be some improvement in the efficiency of heat engines, but large expenditures would be required for only small gains in efficiency.
Just wanted to expand on this one item since sometimes these energy losses are portrayed as carelessness rather than trade-offs between economics and thermodynamics.
What a great graphic. Edward Tufte would approve.
So, we’re in the heating season. In areas that heat with oil, the forced conversion from classic lightbulbs to CFLs means that home owners will reduce electricity consumption (often created from burning coal) and increase oil consumption (by burning more heating oil). Way to go Congress, I wouldn’t expect better from you!
martin mason says:
November 17, 2010 at 12:59 am (Edit)
Mr Mosher
You use words such as “only” and “proof” to apparently give certainty to the fairly weak and uncertain hypothesis that man’s activities will significantly and harmfully increase surface temperatures. Where will I find one piece of evidence to show that current warming, if indeed there has been any, is caused by man and not natural variation.
#######
Dont be silly. I am pointing out what IPCC science says. Then I am saying, their science says this. Then I am showing how you can use their science against them, WITHOUT questioning it.
Ah, also. natural variation is the cause of nothing. Drop that argument.
One thing missing from this discussion which may help clarify how current world-wide government policies divert critical resources, is the understanding of money as a time-store of value.
What does that have to do with energy? It’s the release mechanism. Without money, energy sources remain potential not kinetic. With a release mechanism the whole flow starts. It also shows why a stable release mechanism is necessary, and how energy flows can be diverted when the time store of value is no longer stable.
I’ll leave further discussion to the members of this forum, perhaps in another thread.
Such a great graphic.
Only thing I add is it really doesn’t account for energy loss of charging and discharging batteries. When electric is stored with any means there will always be resistance and great power loss.
I have first tracked use of natural gas for cars over 25 years ago. It would be more energy efficient to power cars from gas than to ship gas to pipelines, generation of electric, batteries and electric motors at the wheels.
[Most of the loss – almost all of it compared to the resistance in the wires and transformers – is in the chemical change of AC power (from the lines) into DC electricity “into” the battery, then from DC electricity “from” the battery back to AC energy back “up” into the lines or household Storage itself in the battery over time loses some, but not much. But each loss adds up. Robt]
Someone else made the comment earlier that people in big cities do not know where their energy comes from, and they are so right. I would like to add that the same is true for knowing where your food supply comes from. If you don’t know where it comes from, you have no idea how hard it is to grow, process and ship your food to you–all energy consuming processes.
This is a great article, and the comments are equally great. This isn’t my favorite website for nothing.
Erik Ramberg says:
November 16, 2010 at 10:18 pm
“I come to a very different conclusion. The case of Switzerland vs Canada shows that you can reduce energy consumption by more than a factor of 2 without affecting GDP per capita.”
It’s quite easy to get a ‘false’ energy consumption figure, offshore your metals and cement industries.
You might want to ask BMW why they are spending $100 million on a carbon fiber spinning plant in Washington State, USA when 100% of the output of the plant will go into an ‘eco car’ being manufactured in Germany.
Not that I’m complaining, I’d like to personally thank the German environmentalists and German anti-nuclear power movement for the jobs.
I like your point. It seems that some of the other objections are demanding a coefficient of correlation of 1 in order to prove a trend. It also seems that they are demanding the absence of any other variables in order for you to argue your point.
Obviously, when one is wealthy, one naturally chooses to increase one’s consumption. Some of that consumption will be in the form of energy, or in ways that happen to consume energy. So it is not remotely surprising that there is a broad correlation between GDP and energy consumption. That is worlds away from the claim that there is a necessary connection between them. Furthermore, the wealthier one happens to be, the more energy one can produce; moreover, when there is lots of energy available, some of it will naturally be used in the production of economic goods to make us wealthier. So again, a broad correlation between GDP and energy is entirely unsurprising. But this does not in any way prove (or even tend to suggest) that one cannot become wealthier without more energy. The graph actually suggests the opposite, since there is almost an order of magnitude range in the GDP to energy consumption ratio, even on a single planet at a single moment in time.
Energy is one of many factors of production (to be pedantic, different kinds of energy are different factors). One naturally produces at or around the level of energy consumption that, for one’s particular circumstances, gives the lowest overall cost. If the energy cost only half as much, one would naturally use more of it, displacing other more expensive factors; and vice versa. There is no fixed relation between the use of any given factor of production (including energy) and the value of the output. Even if energy were orders of magnitude more expensive – so that far less of it were used – this would not prevent the production of economic value, or economic growth, or place any absolute upper limit on GDP.
Physically, there is a requirement to use some energy, as well as some land and other resources, in the creation of economic value. But there is no law that says how much, or places a minimum on the amount needed to sustain a given standard of living. There is even a physical “law” (the Biological Scaling Hypothesis) which has the corollory that there is no minimum, however small, not even the ~100W humans need to survive, because in physical terms intelligences and information processing can be embodied with arbitrarily low mass and entropy flows.
The idea that energy production and economic welfare are one and the same is a perennial fallacy, a “crackpot theory” (or ill-defined compendium of theories) that is a modern version of the Procrusteanism of Malthus or the agriculture worship of the Physiocrats. No industry or factor of production is that important; market economies are almost infinitely Protean.
I am considerably puzzled by the number of posters who repeat the mantra ‘when better/more effective/more eficient/lighter batteries are available’. As I understand the history, scientists and inventors have been working at achieving the wished-for battery for well over a century without getting much nearer their goal, but so far, this has been a dead end when cost is factored in. Putting gasoline or deisel in a can stills seems the most eficient and cheapest method of storing energy by a considerable way.
Electricity is a great motive power when large generating systems can be accessed via copper wires, such as in the case of electric trains or trolleybuses or trams. For affordable automobiles, it seems that will remain a dream until as yet undiscovered methods of storing electricity arrive.
Willis – Well put.
You cite: “This is why the GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned in that country.” (Bejan 2009).
Focusing on transport, commerce requires movement of goods.
Conversely: Biologically, starvation reduces energy until death. Consequently:
The GNP of a country is limited by the transport energy required to move goods.
Transport fuel constrains GNP: The energy use graph shows 96.6% of US transport (25.6 out of 26.5) depends on liquid fuel (petroleum or “oil”). Robert L. Hirsch warns that in the short term GDP varies directly with availability of liquid fuel. Consequently:
The GNP of a country is currently constrained by the liquid fuels it uses to move goods.
World Oil Exports Will Soon Decline: US used to be the world’s largest oil exporter. Then US oil production peaked in 1970. Oil wells deplete. Country oil production eventually declines. Global light crude oil eventually peaks and declines, necessitating production of alternative liquid fuels. In its World Energy Outlook 2010, the International Energy Agency’s graphs (slide 7) now show that global crude (light) oil production HAS ALREADY PEAKED in 2006. (IEA now shows it will “plateau”, down from growing in previous projections.)
(Nominally global light oil production has peaked with ~ 1 trillion bbl left, while 5 trillion bbl of bitumen/heavy oil (aka “tar”) exists but is much harder to recover.)
Export Land Model:
Domestic consumption reduces oil exports faster than oil depletion rates. The “Export Land Model” projects rapid declines in country and global exports. Peak Oil Versus Peak Net Exports–Which Should We Be More Concerned About? Jeffrey J. Brown, Samuel Foucher, PhD, Jorge Silveus, ASPO-USA Peak Oil Conference, 2010
OPEC Indonesia’s exports dropped at a rate from peak production to zero exports in 9 years. The UK’s exports dropped at a rate from peak to zero in 6 years. Brown et al. (2010) project that the net exports from the five largest oil exporters is likely to decline to zero exports within 20 years – by 2030. See Slide 22.
Rising oil imports: The USA now imports 65% of its oil growing at 5%/year. However, developing countries’ oil use is increasing. China’s oil use doubled in 10 years (1998 to 2008), while India’s increased 60%. Consequently competition for oil imports will rapidly increase, driving up prices, which reduces GDP, increasing unemployment.
Consequently: The GNP of oil importing countries will soon decline faster than globally declining available exports until alternative fuels are developed!
Extrapolating recent trends Brown et al:
Lloyds of London warns that this global “energy” (liquid fuel) crunch is likely to hit between 2012 and 2015! The biggest oil importers that will be most impacted: *United States, •Japan, •China, •South Korea, •Germany, •France, •Italy, •U.K. e.g., the USA will be forced to reduce total transport fuel use very soon e.g., by 22% by 2015.
Summary: Thermodynamics and geology will constrain then reduce liquid transport fuels (“light oil” / petroleum) and consequently GDP until alternative fuels are developed in sufficient volume to replace depletion and make up for desired growth.
This decline in global crude oil exports has begun and will likely cause very strong reductions in GDP of oil importing countries very soon – 2012 to 2015 time frame – until alternative transport fuels are developed.
Prepare ASAP!
Sorry, late to the party………”But I had never realized that energy use is development, that there is a thermodynamic relationship between the two.”
Thanks for catching up! Perhaps you may be able to articulate this knowledge better than myself. Energy use and economic activity are in a direct relationship. Money may be used as a proxy for available energy, be it food, oil, gas, etc. or an expression of energy used, be it clothes, cars, houses etc. In other words, what has been done or what may be done.