If we continue our highly inefficient, dangerous energy usage, we’re headed for both economic and environmental catastrophe. However, the hard truth is that alternative fuels can’t fully replace fossil fuels for decades. What’s more, new research indicates that energy inefficiencies are retarding economic growth even more than most experts ever realized. Crossing the Energy Divide is about solving all these problems at once. The authors, two leading experts in energy and environmental economics, show how massive improvements in energy efficiency can bridge the global economy until clean renewables can fully replace fossil fuels. Robert and Edward Ayres demonstrate how we can radically reform the way we manage our existing energy systems to double the amount of “energy service” we get from every drop of fossil fuel we use. These techniques require no scientific breakthroughs: Many companies and institutions are applying them right now, but tens of thousands more could. This book offers a strategic guide for using them to solve the energy crisis once and for all—reducing carbon emissions, achieving true energy security, and reigniting economic growth for decades to come. More energy, without more emissions Recapturing lost energy from today’s fossil fuels There is such a thing as a free lunch Mitigating climate disaster and improving prosperity at the same time The future of electricity Reforming tomorrow’s electrical system: smarter, more productive, and more reliable The implications for cities, transportation, business, and government Making the decisions that prepare you for a high-cost energy future

Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil Fuel Dependence to a Clean-Energy Future

Business & Money

Ayres, Robert U.

Ayres, Edward H.

Economics

Ft Pr

Wharton School Publishing

Why the global economy has become increasingly unstable, and how financial “de-carbonization” could break the pattern of bubble-driven wealth destruction.
The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, banks “too big to fail,” financial regulation (or the lack of it), and the European debt crisis. Wall Street has discovered that it is more profitable to make money from other people's money than by investing in the real economy, which has limited access to capital―resulting in slow growth and rising inequality. What we haven't heard much about is the role of natural resources―energy in particular―as drivers of economic growth, or the connection of “global warming” to the economic crisis. In The Bubble Economy, Robert Ayres―an economist and physicist―connects economic instability to the economics of energy.
Ayres describes, among other things, the roots of our bubble economy (including the divergent influences of Senator Carter Glass―of the Glass-Steagall Law―and Ayn Rand); the role of energy in the economy, from the “oil shocks” of 1971 and 1981 through the Iraq wars; the early history of bubbles and busts; the end of Glass-Steagall; climate change; and the failures of austerity.
Finally, Ayres offers a new approach to trigger economic growth. The rising price of fossil fuels (notwithstanding “fracking”) suggests that renewable energy will become increasingly profitable. Ayres argues that government should redirect private savings and global finance away from home ownership and toward “de-carbonization”―investment in renewables and efficiency. Large-scale investment in sustainability will achieve a trifecta: lowering greenhouse gas emissions, stimulating innovation-based economic growth and employment, and offering long-term investment opportunities that do not depend on risky gambling strategies with derivatives.

The Bubble Economy: Is Sustainable Growth Possible?

Mit Pr

Uncertain Futures: Challenges for Decision-Makers

John Wiley&Sons

The management of productivity and technology in manufacturing. Assessment, impacts, and forecast

Robotics and Flexible Manufacturing Technologies: Assessment, Impacts, and Forecast

Engineering & Transportation

Miller, Steven M.

Engineering

Noyes Pubns

Market: Those in economics, especially thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, cybernetics, information theory, resource use, and evolutionary economic behavior. This book presents an innovative and challenging look at evolution on several scales, from the earth and its geology and chemistry to living organisms to social and economic systems. Applying the principles of thermodynamics and the concepts of information gathering and self- organization, the author characterizes the direction of evolution in each case as an accumulation of "distinguishability" information--a type of universal knowledge.

Information, Entropy, and Progress: A New Evolutionary Paradigm

American Institute of Physics

Economics and the Environment: A Materials Balance Approach (Routledge Revivals)

This monograph length report, first published in 1970, originated from a program of research at Resources for the Future that dealt with the management of residuals and of environmental quality. It presents some of the broad concepts that the program was based on and represents the effort to break out of the traditional approach in pollution and policy research, which had treated air, water, and solid waste problems as separate categories. This book will be of interest to students of economics and environmental studies.

Economics and the Environment (Routledge Revivals)

Kneese, Allen V.

d'Arge, Ralph C.

Routledge

This monograph length report, first published in 1970, originated from a program of research at Resources for the Future that dealt with the management of residuals and of environmental quality. It presents some of the broad concepts that the program was based on and represents the effort to break out of the traditional approach in pollution and policy research, which had treated air, water, and solid waste problems as separate categories. This book will be of interest to students of economics and environmental studies.

Achieving the goals and objectives of sustainable development requires better information about the consequences of proposed actions. Partial information accounts for many failed efforts in the past. The financial implications for the proponent of the projects have often been more thoroughly analyzed than the implications for other actors. The impacts on biological diversity, or on the social fabric of local communities, have often been ignored. Decisi- makers may also focus more on the short-term consequences instead of long- term impacts, creating negative unintended consequences. It is clear that better decision-making processes are needed. Making better decisions requires identifying, obtaining, synthesizing and acting on larger and more diverse data sets, including information that has previously been overlooked in development decisions. The good news is that better processes are being developed and are becoming available. If the goal is to reach decisions that are broadly understood and accepted, affected communities need to be consulted. Early public participation in defining problems is a prerequisite to effective decision-making. There is no universal formula or checklist of information applicable to every proposed project. The scope of information required should not be determined from the start by small cadres of experts. It is unlikely that any individual or small group processes all of the expertise to achieve the kind of profound int- disciplinary synthesis that is needed.

The Life Cycle of Copper, Its Co-Products and Byproducts (Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science, 13)

Ayres, Leslie W.

Råde, Ingrid

Springer

`Would you want your great-children in 2100AD to have a 22nd-century industrial economy? If so, read this book to grasp how strongly wealth depends on energy and its efficient use. Start treating fossil energy, not as continuing income, but as one-time energy capital to spend on efficiency and long-term sustainable energy production. Otherwise, your descendants will inherit a broken 20th-century economy that only worked with cheap fossil fuels. They will not be rich and they will wonder what their ancestors were thinking.' - John R. Mashey, PhD, Silicon Graphics `Current economic theory attributes most income growth to technical progress. However, since technical progress can neither be defined nor measured, no one really knows what policies will encourage income growth. Ayres and Warr show that access to useful work, which can be defined and measured, explain the bulk of post-1900 income changes in Japan, Britain and the USA. They see rising real prices for fossil fuel and stagnating efficiencies of converting raw energy into useful work as a threat to continued income growth. This brilliant and original work has profound policy implications for future income growth without significant improvements in energy conversion efficiency.' - Thomas Casten, Recycled Energy Development LLC `Following the up-and-down energy shock of 2008, Ayres and Warr offer a unique analysis critical to our economic future. They argue that "useful work" produced by energy and energy services is far more important to overall GDP growth than conventional economic theory assumes. Their new theory, based on extensive empirical and theoretical analysis, has important implications for economists, businessmen and policymakers - for anybody concerned with our economic future. Ayres and Warr argue persuasively that economic growth is not only endogenous but has been driven for the past two centuries largely by the declining effective cost of energy. If their new theory is correct, the inevitable future rise of the real cost of energy (beyond the $147 oil price peak in July 2008), could halt economic growth in the US and other advanced countries unless we dramatically improve energy with technology.' - J. Paul Horne, independent international market economist `This book addresses a very important topic, namely economic growth analysis from the angle of energy and material flows. The treatment is well balanced in terms of research and interpretation of the broader literature. The book not only contains a variety of empirical indicators, statistical analyses and insights, but also offers an unusually complete and pluralistic view on theorizing about economic growth and technological change. This results in a number of refreshing perspectives on known ideas and literatures. The text is so attractively written that I found it very difficult to stop reading. All in all, this is a very original and important contribution to the everlasting debate on growth versus environment.' - Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, University of Barcelona, Spain and Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands The historic link between output (GDP) growth and employment has weakened. Since there is no quantitively verifiable economic theory to explain past growth, this unique book explores the fundamental relationship between thermodynamics (physical work) and economics. The authors take a realistic approach to explaining the relationship between technological progress, thermodynamic efficiency and economic growth. Their findings are a step toward the integration of neo-classical and evolutionary perspectives on endogenous economic growth, concluding in a fundamental explanation of endogenous growth that is both quantifiable and consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. For two centuries fossil and other sources of energy (work) have been replacing human and animal muscles. Now our civilization is truly addicted to fossil energy availability at ever low prices. Can increasing efficiency compensate for coming scarcity? This is the crucial question. The most important implication of this is that future economic growth is not guaranteed because the efficiency gains that have driven growth in the past may not continue in the future. Exploring the theory of growth with an emphasis on the role of energy, useful work and technological change, this book will be of great interest to academics and students focussing on growth theory, energy and ecological economics. It will also prove insightful to those concerned with policy making or responding to changes in policy related to the energy-growth nexus.

The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity

Warr, Benjamin

Edward Elgar Publishing

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