energy quality and energy surplus in the extraction of fossil fuels in the u s abstract the goal of net energy analysis is to assess the amount of useful energy delivered by an energy system net of the energy costs of delivery the standard technique of aggregating energy inputs and outputs by their thermal equivalents diminishes the ability of energy analysis to achieve that goal because different types of energy have different abilities to do work per heat equivalent this paper describes physical and economic methods of calculating energy quality and incorporates economic estimates of quality in the analysis of the energy return on investment eroi for the extraction of coal and petroleum resources in the u s from 1954 to 1987 eroi is the ratio of energy delivered to energy used in the delivery process the quality adjusted eroi is used to answer the following questions 1 are coal and petroleum resources becoming more scarce in the u s 2 is society s capability of doing useful economic work changing and 3 is society s allocation of energy between the extraction of coal and petroleum optimal the results indicate that petroleum and coal became more scarce in the 1970s although the degree of scarcity depends on the type of quality factor used the quality adjusted eroi shed light on the coal petroleum paradox when energy inputs and outputs are measured in thermal equivalents coal extraction has a much larger eroi than petroleum the adjustment for energy quality reduces substantially the difference between the two fuels the results also suggest that when corrections are made for energy quality society s allocation of energy between coal and petroleum extraction meets the efficiency criteria described by neoclassical and biophysical economists

crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

sufficiency and consumer behaviour from theory to policy abstract it is increasingly obvious that for safeguarding environmental sustainability eco efficiency measures will need to be complemented by sufficiency in particular by strong sustainable consumption the theory of planned behaviour tpb and social practice theory spt offer different views on consumer behaviour and on ways to change it this paper briefly describes the challenges discusses the applicability of both theories and their meaningfulness for policy recommendations we suggest an approach combining results of both bodies of theory complemented by ideas from political economy to substantiate the prism of sustainable consumption we introduce as a heuristic sufficiency policy tool it is useful to identify affordability criteria for change in each dimension as the basis for deriving suggestions for effective policy interventions we conclude that i effective interventions are possible ii they have to address several dimensions of affordability simultaneously and iii the sufficiency policy space prism can be a useful tool in structuring planned interventions

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers

exposure to female colleagues breaks the glass ceiling evidence from a combined vignette and field experiment abstract we study discrimination among recruits in the norwegian armed forces during boot camp in a vignette experiment female candidates are perceived as less suited to be squad leaders than their identical male counterparts adding positive information leads to higher evaluations of the candidates but does not reduce the amount of discrimination however randomized intense collaborative exposure to female colleagues reduces discriminatory attitudes male soldiers who were randomly assigned to share room and work in a squad with female soldiers during the recruit period do not discriminate in the vignette experiment

field experiment tests for discrimination against hispanics in the u s rental housing market this article tests for discrimination against hispanics in the u s rental housing market using e mail correspondence with landlords advertising units online we divide hispanics into two groups those that appear assimilated into american culture and recent immigrants we find little difference in the treatment of assimilated hispanics and whites however hispanics we portray as recent immigrants receive less favorable treatment with margins of net discrimination as large as 6 89 of landlords we also find discrimination varies significantly at the region level and by the ethnic composition of neighborhoods

economic growth income distribution and climate change we present a model based on keynesian aggregate demand and labor productivity growth to study how climate damage affects the long run evolution of the economy climate change induced by greenhouse gas lowers profitability reducing investment and cutting output in the short and long runs short run employment falls due to deficient demand in the long run productivity growth is slower lowering potential income levels climate policy can increase incomes and employment in the short and long runs while a continuation of business as usual leads to a dystopian income distribution with affluence for few and high levels of unemployment for the rest

disability discrimination in the italian rental housing market a field experiment with blind tenants i test discrimination against blind tenants assisted by guide dogs in the italian rental housing market by using fake application letters i compare three fictitious household tenants married couples married couples where the wife is blind and owns a guide dog and married couples where the normal sighted wife owns a normal dog i find that the households with a blind wife are invited less often to visit apartments they applied for because of the presence of their guide dog using the language of italian and e u laws this behavior is called indirect discrimination against disabled people this result is robust jel r21

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

decoupling between human development and energy consumption within footprint accounts abstract historically the growth of energy consumption has fuelled human development but this approach is no longer socially and environmentally sustainable recent analyses suggest that some individual countries have responded to this issue successfully by decoupling total primary energy supply from human development increase however globalisation and international trade have allowed high income countries to outsource industrial production to lower income countries thereby increasingly relying on foreign energy use to satisfy their own consumption of goods and services accounting for the import of embodied energy in goods and services this study proposes an alternative estimation of the decoupling index based on the total primary energy footprint rather than total primary energy supply an analysis of 126 countries over the years 2000 2014 demonstrates that previous studies based on energy supply highly overestimated decoupling footprint based results on the other hand show an overall decrease of the decoupling index for most countries 93 out of 126 there is a reduction of the number of both absolutely decoupled countries from 40 to 27 and relatively decoupled countries from 29 to 17 and an increase of coupled countries from 55 to 80 furthermore the study shows that decoupling is not a phenomenon characterising only high income countries due to improvements in energy efficiency but is also occurring in countries with low human development index and low energy consumption finally six exemplary countries have been identified which were able to maintain a continuous decoupling trend from these exemplary countries lessons have been identified in order to boost the necessary global decoupling of energy consumption and achieved welfare

eroi and the icelandic society abstract in this paper the societal energy return on investment eroi soc is estimated for iceland between 1960 and the present the results indicate that the overall eroi soc was around 27 1 in the early 1960s and was volatile for a period of time before stabilizing at around 45 1 in 1974 after establishing a strong mix of renewable energy these findings further show that icelanders have generally had access to energy sources with higher eroi than if they had relied on fossil fuels except for the period between 1963 and 1967 if they had relied on fossil fuels alone icelanders would now have access to combined resources with an eroi of around 16 1 likely too low for prosperity and an even lower eroi for long periods of time regarding policies this paper shows that relying on an energy grid mix with an eroi higher than 20 30 1 especially for island nations has the potential to raise the standard of living greatly for policymakers in island nations attention should be given to this relationship between high eroi energy sources with low price volatility and the standard of living

evaluating energy embodied in national products through input output analysis theoretical definition and practical application of international trades treatment methods abstract production activities of modern economies are ultimately sustained by depletion of non renewable fossil fuels in the perspective of non renewables displacement an accurate evaluation of energy embodied in goods and services is crucial in order to select among alternative products or policies economic based input output models are widely used for this purpose however due to the increasing amount of international trades of products definition of appropriate methods to account for the energy embodied in trades is nowadays crucial in this paper international trades treatment methods in input output analysis are comprehensively formalized and applied to a case study based on the world input output database wiod energy embodied in final demand and in detailed products of key national energy sectors have been evaluated for the wiod countries according to single region and multi regional models it is found that an inappropriate use of international trades treatment models may produce very inaccurate estimations of numerical values of embodied energy three country groups has been identified characterized by different ranges of fractions of imported exported primary fossil fuels single region method a returns best results for countries of group 1 with high values of fossil exports and low values of fossil imports multi regional method c is to be preferred for countries of group 2 with high values of fossil imports and low values of fossil exports finally single region method b returns lower deviations compared to other methods for countries of group 3 with low values of fossil imports and exports this paper aims at supporting researchers in the field of life cycle assessment in the application of environmentally extended input output analysis finding the best trade off between the efforts due to data collection and the accuracy of results

errors in the numerical assessment of the benefits of price stabilization this paper presents a simple computational procedure for determining a consumer s willingness to pay to have a price stabilization policy implemented numerical simulations are then provided which demonstrate that the commonly used expected surplus measures whether hicksian or marshallian can in fact seriously misstate the true benefits of price stabilization these simulations also illustrate the extent to which the results may be dependent upon the assumptions made implicitly or explicitly regarding the consumer s attitudes toward risk thereby underscoring the need to conduct sensitivity analyses to determine the robustness of cost benefit assessments with respect to these assumptions

labor market effects of september 11th on arab and muslim residents of the united states we investigated whether the september 11 2001 terrorists attacks had any effect on employment earnings and residential mobility of first and second generation arab and muslim men in the united states we find that september 11th did not significantly affect employment and hours of work of arab and muslim men but was associated with a 9 11 percent decline in their real wage and weekly earnings with some evidence that this decline was temporary the adverse earnings effects were strongly linked to hate crime incidence estimates also suggest that the terrorists attacks reduced intrastate migration of arab and muslim men

a field experiment of discrimination in the norwegian housing market gender class and ethnicity we test for gender class and ethnic discrimination in the norwegian rental housing market by using fake application letters females individuals with high job status and ethnic norwegians are more likely to receive positive responses for example being an arabic man and working in a warehouse is associated with a 25 percentage point lower probability of receiving a positive response when showing interest in an apartment as compared to an ethnically norwegian female economist we conclude that gender class and ethnic discrimination do exist in the norwegian housing market and ethnic discrimination seems to be the most prevalent form of discrimination jel r21

steady state of energy feedbacks and leverages for promoting or preventing sustainable energy system development abstract while energy demand has been growing over the last few decades and is projected to keep expanding the current energy system is pushing biophysical source and sink limits at the same time growing demand for energy globally is associated with an expansion of welfare to avoid undesired environmental and social implications of energy developments in the long run a systemic understanding of the dynamics promoting or preventing sustainable energy development is needed departing from daly s steady state economics theory this study conceptualizes a sustainable energy system using a systems thinking approach efficiency increase the central element of daly s theory defined as the service throughput ratio is put in the center of a conceptual analysis of a sustainable energy system and is carefully scrutinized meadows leverage points concept is used to facilitate an analysis of different policies that aim at promoting sustainable energy system development this study concludes that energy policies always need to be explored as part of the broader causality structure into which they are embedded otherwise their impacts on other variables in the system may be overlooked such as in the case of efficiency increase which is shown to have undesired side effects for the development of a sustainable energy system

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

energy returns and the long run growth of global industrial society abstract the extreme interconnectedness of energy and economic systems will tend to confound any attempt to estimate the energy return on investment at anything other than the global scale here i apply a very simple model of global energy use to specify the dynamic characteristics of global scale energy returns on investment eroig this suggests that the observed long run relative growth rate of 2 5 yr 1 in global primary energy use is associated with an equilibrium return from infrastructure investments of 2 1 with returns accruing with a time constant of 40 years the analysis also attempts to show how growth leads to reductions in the supply efficiency of energy and how this decline is offset by increases in the efficiency with which industrial society can extract useful work from primary energy flows this observed preservation of the overall energy efficiency of the global energy system implicates variations in the decay decommissioning rate of infrastructure in observed long wave like variations in the relative growth rate of global primary energy use and hence eroig

do landlords discriminate in the rental housing market evidence from an internet field experiment in us cities abstract this paper tests for racial discrimination in the rental housing market using matched pair audits conducted via e mail for rental units advertised on line we reveal home seekers race to landlords by sending e mails from names with a high likelihood of association with either whites or african americans generally discrimination occurs against african american names however when the content of the e mail messages insinuates home seekers with high social class discrimination is non existent racial discrimination is more severe in neighborhoods that are near tipping points in racial composition and for units that are part of a larger building

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

why ecological economics needs to return to its roots the biophysical foundation of socio economic systems abstract ecological economics was formally established in 1989 with the ambitious vision of developing a new economic paradigm embedding the social and economic systems in the biophysical world ecological economics had its roots in the biophysical understanding of economics that pioneers of the field georgescu roegen 1971 odum 1971 daly 1977 jansson 1984 martinez alier 1987 and others developed while studying the thermodynamic bedrocks shared by natural and social systems subsequently however ecological economics has explicitly but controversially adopted a big umbrella approach to methodological pluralism focusing more on topics such as valuing nature and its functions rather than attempting to understand and quantify the biophysical roots of economic activities biophysical economics was established in response to these concerns focusing more on developing analyses and models of the transformations of nature to generate wealth and approached mostly from an energy and material flows perspective the present paper argues that to achieve its original vision ecological economics must return to its biophysical roots collaboration between the two fields will help the next generation of thinkers to address the socio ecological challenges of the 21st century requiring an energy transformation called for by aspirations such as the green new deal and the un sustainable development goals

evolution of erois of electricity until 2050 estimation and implications on prices abstract the eroi for energy returned on invested of an energy technology measures its ability to provide energy efficiently previous studies draw a link between the affluence of a society and the eroi of its energy system and show that erois of renewables are lower than those of fossil fuels logically concerns have been expressed that system wide eroi may decrease during a renewable energy transition first i explain theoretically that the erois of renewables themselves could then decrease as energy efficient fossil fuels would be replaced by less energy efficient renewables in the supply chain then using the multi regional input output model themis i estimate the evolution of erois and prices of electric technologies from 2010 to 2050 for different scenarios global eroi of electricity is predicted to go from 12 in 2010 to 11 in 2050 in a business as usual scenario but down to 6 in a 100 renewable one finally i study the economic implication of a declining eroi an inverse relation between eroi and price is suggested empirically even though theory shows that both quantities may move in the same direction

the decline of the world s energy intensity abstract energy intensity of the total primary energy supply tpes total final energy consumption tfc and losses in the conversion from tpes to tfc were analyzed for the world oecd and rest of the world row countries losses increased significantly for all groups of countries due to the increase of electricity production from coal in the period studied 1971 2008 electricity share final consumption almost doubled increasing from 8 8 to 17 2 in the period studied however the energy intensity of losses remained practically constant which reflects the fact that the efficiency of electricity generation from coal the main source of electricity remained practically constant in that period despite the attractiveness of end use devices running on electricity such as computers which is typical of modern societies the co 2 emissions are bound to increase unless coal is replaced by less carbon emitting sources such as natural gas renewables and nuclear energy

what is in a surname the role of ethnicity in economic decision making this article reports results from two experiments that investigate possible incidence of discrimination against people with foreign backgrounds in sweden in the first experiment participants play

from ecological macroeconomics to a theory of endogenous money for a finite planet abstract this paper takes stock of the achievements and gaps of the emerging field of ecological macroeconomics which has brought insights from specific schools of macroeconomics most notably post keynesian to ecological economics with a strong emphasis on the endogeneity of money ecological macroeconomics has proposed fiscal monetary and prudential reforms to boost green investments and developed new modeling frameworks to explore the interactions between the financial macroeconomic and biophysical spheres while these proposals open a broader range of possibilities to engage in a socio ecological transition than those offered by the current paradigm of a financialized global economy they paradoxically suffer from similar limitations by placing much faith in green investments they impose a vision of the transition that presents strong technical and institutional limitations the field also fails to revisit its own understanding of macroeconomics and of specific phenomena e g financial instability through a biophysical lens in spite of increasing transdisciplinary evidence supporting this approach we suggest overcoming these limitations through institutionalist perspectives that understand money as a language through which value is created and legitimized those perspectives seem essential to re embed the governance of money within a worldview that acknowledges the finiteness and incommensurable values of earth s life support systems

foreign direct investment and decoupling between energy and gross domestic product in developing countries on a sample of 20 developing countries we noticed a clear decline in the energy intensity as foreign direct investment increases the reason for that probably is the use of modern technologies that came with foreign direct investment i e a leapfrogging over the old fashioned traditional technologies in use in these countries

expected consumer s surplus and the welfare effects of price stabilization suppose a consumer faces a price which is uncertain ex ante a question which often arises is whether the consumer would benefit from a stabilization policy under which the price would then be fixed and known with certainty many authors have addressed this question by calculating the expected compensating variation of the price change others have used expected marshallian consumer s surplus often with the explanation that it is a good approximation to expected compensating variation 2 an important unresolved issue however is whether expected compensating variation does in fact provide a valid ranking of stochastic prices against stabilized prices i e a ranking in agreement with that given by expected utility in section 2 we demonstrate that expected compensating variation is not in general a valid utility indicator in essence while utility comparisons under uncertainty require the use of the cardinal properties of von neumannmorgenstern utility functions the expected surplus measures depend only on ordinal preference rankings expected compensating variation then is completely insensitive to and cannot reflect the precise factor of interest in suchstudies the consumer s attitudes toward risk we then derive a set of restrictions on the utility function which are necessary in order for expected compensating variation to be a valid measure we see that price stabilization policies can only be evaluated with compensating variation if consumer preferences are assumed to satisfy quite stringent requirements this is in constrast to the familiar certainty case in which compensating variation always provides correct rankings

food security policy in a stochastic world abstract food security may be increased by variance reducing strategies by food aid or by development strategies this paper uses a korea cge model subjected to random fluctuation in world prices and domestic food productivity to evaluate these policies we find that poverty reducing development strategies are the most food security strategies

the gains from price stabilization a quantitative assessment a widely discussed problem in economics is the benefits from price instability the original work by waugh used consumer surplus to show that individuals benefit from price variation vis a vis stabilization at the mean a later model by oi did the same for producers while massel integrated the two analyses an excellent account of the development of this problem is turnovsky 1978 these analyses relied on models of consumer surplus with linear or log linear demand functions neither of which can be derived from utility maximizing behavior as a result these demand curves do not relate to known measures of consumer welfare such as hicksian compensated variation or the true cost of living realizing this hanock recast the problem in terms of the indirect utility function under the assumption of cardinal utility hanock and turnovsky shalit and schmitz derived the conditions including those relating to risk under which consumers gain under the assumption of ordinal utility we prove the proposition that consumers gain from price instability next these benefits are quantified via a monte carlo experiment

economic dynamics and technology diffusion in indian power sector abstract there is a growing concern among policy makers about how electricity is generated and consumed in the context of energy security and global climate change in such a scenario renewable energy sources especially solar and wind energy are likely to play a significant role in providing reliable and sustainable electricity to consumers as they are locally available and their carbon foot print is small the future share of power by renewables will greatly depend on the expected generation cost and the government s support to investments in the sector using levelised cost approach capital cost operating and fuel costs of major electricity generation technologies are compared then a forecast is made for electricity generation in india using non linear bass diffusion model over 15 year horizon until 2030 for all major energy technologies viz coal natural gas hydro solar wind and biomass the results show how present trends and future forecasts of electricity generating technologies change the electricity generation mix and how solar and wind power may increase their share in the total generation however fossil fuels will continue to remain competitive relative to renewables due to their cost advantage the main issue considered here is whether each energy technology has reached its maximum penetration level this helps set out a path for renewable energy technology diffusion in the indian power sector

analysis of resource potential for china s unconventional gas and forecast for its long term production growth abstract china is vigorously promoting the development of its unconventional gas resources because natural gas is viewed as a lower carbon energy source and because china has relatively little conventional natural gas supply in this paper we first evaluate how much unconventional gas might be available based on an analysis of technically recoverable resources for three types of unconventional gas resources shale gas coalbed methane and tight gas we then develop three alternative scenarios of how this extraction might proceed using the geologic resources supply demand model based on our analysis the medium scenario which we would consider to be our best estimate shows a resource peak of 176 1 billion cubic meters bcm in 2068 depending on economic conditions and advance in extraction techniques production could vary greatly from this if economic conditions are adverse unconventional natural gas production could perhaps be as low as 70 1 bcm peaking in 2021 under the extremely optimistic assumption that all of the resources that appear to be technologically available can actually be recovered unconventional production could amount to as much as 469 7 bcm with peak production in 2069 even if this high scenario is achieved china s total gas production will only be sufficient to meet china s lowest demand forecast if production instead matches our best estimate significant amounts of natural gas imports are likely to be needed

more caution is needed when using life cycle assessment to determine energy return on investment eroi abstract cumulative energy demand ced estimates from life cycle assessments lcas are increasingly used to determine energy return on investment eroi but the difference in indicators can lead to a misclassification of energy flows in the assessment the core idea of eroi is to measure the relation of energy diverted from society to make energy available to society ced on the other hand includes forms of energy that are not appropriated by society such as fugitive methane emissions from oil wells as well as losses of heating value of coal during transport and storage such energy forms should be excluded from eroi failure to do so leads to results that are inconsistent with the intention of eroi and potentially misleading we demonstrate how this problem is at least partially rectifiable by adopting consistent energy accounting but also note that among the energy flows not appropriated by society occurring in ced not all flows can easily be removed further we point to inconsistencies in heating value assumptions in a widely used database that have misled analysts finally we argue that the differential weighting of primary energy forms in published ced based eroi work is unsubstantiated and should be reconsidered

some pervasive challenges to sustainability by design of electronic products a conceptual discussion sustainability should encompass responsibility for unintended environmental consequences of modern developments this study examined some pervasive challenges to sustainability by design of electronic products namely i product and consumption redundancies i embodied environmental and social impacts occurring distant in time and space from the point of consumption and iii production and consumption dynamics this analysis identified essential developments in certain areas that can assist design practice in preventing unintended environmental consequences these were 1 complementing life cycle assessment studies with analyses of unintended environmental consequences and 2 exploiting the vital role of product design in fostering a circular economy indicators that provide information about a the increasing spatial and decreasing temporal separation of production consumption and waste management b constraints in raw materials supply and c marginal changes in money and time spent should be available to product designers and consumers furthermore information technology namely computer aided design cad tools should be refined to assist product designers in designing for effective circularity and end of waste and limiting hibernation of resources in the use phase

macroeconomic modelling under energy constraints global low carbon transition scenarios abstract integrated assessment models provide a framework to study sustainability transitions and their economic impacts models seldom consider energy constraints taking supply availability for granted and thus suggesting a mere change in the energy mix from non renewables to renewables in order to address these limitations a macro economic module within a broader system dynamics model medeas has been developed the model has been run for the whole world from 1995 to 2050 under three different scenarios business as usual bau considering no further transition policies and keeping current trends green growth gg undertaking the low carbon transition according to the paris agreement set of policies and with high gdp growth standards and post growth pg testing the sustainability transition under a gdp non growth degrowth approach the results reveal the conflict between economic growth climate policy and the sustainability of resources whereas a bau approach would not even be an option to achieve climate goals a gg view would not only face the downsizing of economic output but neither would it be able to achieve the 2 c objective the success of the pg approach in meeting emissions objectives suggests a redirection from economic growth policies to an industrial policy that incorporates efficiency and redistribution

ecosystem maintenance energy and the need for a green eroi abstract a number of official energy forecasts including those compatible with the aspirational 1 5 c paris accord global temperature rise limit see both global primary and net energy use continuing to rise even out to 2100 various technologies including greatly increased use of renewable and nuclear energy negative emission technologies such as direct air capture and geoengineering are proposed as approaches for meeting the 1 5 c target in contrast we argue that meeting this target and avoiding significant increases in extreme weather events will require marked reductions in future energy demand we argue that the combined fossil fuel and renewable net green energy production will fall in the coming decades after subtraction of various energy costs essential for ecosystems maintenance including those needed to stabilise climate at best nuclear energy will only fractionally increase its global energy share because of its high capital costs and political opposition arising from accident risks waste disposal and proliferation concerns geoengineering will not solve fossil fuel depletion and has serious known and perhaps unknown risks we conclude that global net energy produced in an ecologically sustainable manner will start falling in a decade or so and suggest the need to account for this at a policy level by introduction of a green eroi eroig

do field experiments on labor and housing markets overstate discrimination a re examination of the evidence since 2000 more than 80 field experiments across 23 countries consider the traditional dimensions of discrimination in labor and housing markets such as discrimination based on race these studies

the post growth challenge secular stagnation inequality and the limits to growth abstract critics have long questioned the feasibility and desirability of exponential growth on a finite planet more recently mainstream economists have begun to suggest some secular limits to growth declining growth rates have in their turn been identified as instrumental in increased inequality and the rise of political populism this paper explores these emerging arguments paying a particular attention to the dynamics of secular stagnation it examines the underlying phenomenon of declining labour productivity growth and unpacks the close relationships between productivity growth the wage rate and social inequality it also points to the historical congruence and potential causal links between declining productivity growth and resource bottlenecks contrary to some mainstream views this paper finds no inevitability in the rising inequality that has haunted advanced economies in recent decades suggesting instead that it lies in the pursuit of growth at all costs even in the face of challenging fundamentals this strategy has hindered technological innovation reinforced inequality and exacerbated financial instability at the very least this paper argues it is now time for policy to consider seriously the possibility that low growth rates might be the new normal and to address carefully the post growth challenge this poses

the energy emissions trap abstract the requirement to reduce emissions to avoid potentially dangerous climate change implies a dilemma for societies heavily dependent on fossil fuels reducing emissions will necessitate the transition from relatively high eroi dispatchable fossil fuels to a combination of relatively low eroi intermittent renewables and geographically limited non intermittent renewables as renewable capacity requires energy to construct there is an initial fossil fuel cost to creating new renewable capacity an insufficiently rapid transition to renewables will imply a scenario in which it is impossible to avoid either transgressing emissions ceilings or facing energy shortages we term this the energy emissions trap in this paper we construct a mathematical model termed eetrap that builds the eroi metric and the energy characteristics of renewable generation into a macroeconomic framework eetrap is used for simulation analysis to test how differing assumptions about the eroi of intermittent renewables will affect the time path of renewable investment necessary to escape the energy emissions trap for all runs of the model the renewable investment rate by 2050 is significantly larger than the current energy investment rate for declining intermittent renewable eroi the renewable investment rate crowds out other forms of investment leading to a declining economic growth rate

can discrimination in the housing market be reduced by increasing the information about the applicants we investigate how increasing the information about applicants affects discrimination in the rental housing market we let four fictitious applicants two with typical arab muslim names and two with typical swedish names use application letters containing different amounts of information to apply for apartments over the internet in sweden the arab muslim applicants received fewer responses from the landlords than did the swedish applicants all of the applicants gained by providing more information about themselves but the amount of discrimination against the arab muslim applicants remained unchanged indicating that increasing the amount of information about the applicants will not reduce discrimination

are we entering the age of involuntary degrowth promethean technologies and declining returns of innovation any reflections on an eventual transition towards a degrowth society have to take into account the current crisis in the dominant system and question whether the latter will be able to grow again or not in order for the latter to happen the role played by technological innovation is crucial this paper starts by reconsidering georgescu roegen s definition of promethean techniques and tainter s principle of declining marginal returns with the aim of providing within the common framework of the theory of complex systems a sound theoretical basis for the analysis of the rise and fall of complex societies the main purpose is to verify whether after the last promethean revolution a great wave emerged or not the second part of the paper presents an initial investigation into this hypothesis using total factor productivity growth as an indicator of marginal returns on innovation 1750 2015 despite the limitations implicit in the use of this indicator data show three cycles of innovation corresponding to the first second and third industrial revolutions but of different magnitude and duration in particular the whole cycle that began with the first industrial revolution in england around 1750 reached a peak in the u s in the nineteen thirties and later declined following a trend that basically confirms the great wave hypothesis even recent innovations resulting from the ict revolution however considerable do not seem capable of counteracting this long term trend data on returns on innovation seem therefore to be coherent with evidence provided by research in other fields energy mineral resources agriculture health education and scientific research showing that advanced capitalist societies have entered a phase of declining marginal returns or involuntary degrowth with possible major effects on the system s capacity to maintain its present institutional framework

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

energy expenditure economic growth and the minimum eroi of society we estimate energy expenditure for the us and world economies from 1850 to 2012 periods of high energy expenditure relative to gdp from 1850 to 1945 or spikes 1973 74 and 1978 79 are associated with low economic growth rates and periods of low or falling energy expenditure are associated with high and rising economic growth rates e g 1945 1973 over the period 1960 2010 for which we have continuous year to year data for control variables capital formation population and unemployment rate we estimate that statistically in order to enjoy positive growth the us economy cannot afford to spend more than 11 of its gdp on energy given the current energy intensity of the us economy this translates in a minimum societal eroi of approximately 11 1 or a maximum tolerable average price of energy of twice the current level granger tests consistently reveal a one way causality running from the level of energy expenditure as a fraction of gdp to economic growth in the us between 1960 and 2010 a coherent economic policy should be founded on improving net energy efficiency this would yield a double dividend increased societal eroi through decreased energy intensity of capital investment and decreased sensitivity to energy price volatility

energy eroi and quality of life abstract the near and long term societal effects of declining eroi are uncertain but probably adverse a major obstacle to examining social implications of declining eroi is that we do not have adequate empirical understanding of how eroi is linked directly or indirectly to an average citizen s ability to achieve well being to evaluate the possible linkages between societal well being and net energy availability we compare these preliminary estimates of energy availability 1 eroi at a societal level 2 energy use per capita 3 multiple regression analyses and 4 a new composite energy index lambert energy index to select indicators of quality of life hdi percent children under weight health expenditures gender inequality index literacy rate and access to improved water our results suggest that energy indices are highly correlated with a higher standard of living we also find a saturation point at which increases in per capita energy availability greater than 150 gj or eroi above 20 1 are not associated with further improvement to society

limits to growth redux a system dynamics model for assessing energy and climate change constraints to global growth abstract this study investigates the notion of limits to socioeconomic growth with a specific focus on the role of climate change and the declining quality of fossil fuel reserves a new system dynamics model has been created the world energy model wem is based on the world3 model the limits to growth meadows et al 2004 with climate change and energy production replacing generic pollution and resources factors wem also tracks global population food production and industrial output out to the year 2100 this paper presents a series of wem s projections each of which represent broad sweeps of what the future may bring all scenarios project that global industrial output will continue growing until 2100 scenarios based on current energy trends lead to a 50 increase in the average cost of energy production and 2 4 2 7 c of global warming by 2100 wem projects that limiting global warming to 2 c will reduce the industrial output growth rate by 0 1 0 2 however wem also plots industrial decline by 2150 for cases of uncontrolled climate change or increased population growth the general behaviour of wem is far more stable than world3 but its results still support the call for a managed decline in society s ecological footprint

evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules abstract photovoltaic pv module costs have declined rapidly over forty years but the reasons remain elusive here we advance a conceptual framework and quantitative method for quantifying the causes of cost changes in a technology and apply it to pv modules our method begins with a cost model that breaks down cost into variables that changed over time cost change equations are then derived to quantify each variable s contribution we distinguish between changes observed in variables of the cost model which we term low level mechanisms of cost reduction and research and development learning by doing and scale economies which we refer to as high level mechanisms we find that increased module efficiency was the leading low level cause of cost reduction in 1980 2012 contributing almost 25 of the decline government funded and private r d was the most important high level mechanism over this period after 2001 however scale economies became a more significant cause of cost reduction approaching r d in importance policies that stimulate market growth have played a key role in enabling pv s cost reduction through privately funded r d and scale economies and to a lesser extent learning by doing the method presented here can be adapted to retrospectively or prospectively study many technologies and performance metrics besides cost

forecasting the development of china s coal to liquid industry under security economic and environmental constraints abstract coal to liquid ctl technology has attracted attention in china as an alternative way to alleviate oil shortages however due to low profits and environmental problems chinese ctl policy is cautious and unstable rendering the future development of ctl technology uncertain considering security economic and environmental constraints this study uses system dynamics models to predict the long term development of the ctl industry in china the results show that ctl production will steadily increase over the next few years and a greater increase will occur after 2021 if the government will not provide support policies for ctl industry we forecast ctl production will be 29 3 million tons by 2030 once government actively supports ctl its production is projected to reach 51 8 million tons which is 45 times greater than that in 2015 when environmental issues are also considered the production is expected to 47 3 million tons the sensitivity analysis shows that under different refined oil prices ctl production ranges from 29 3 to 56 3 million tons at present china s ctl only accounts for 0 2 of its oil consumption and the eroi value of ctl is approximately 0 9 1 the low eroi implies little importance for ctl from a net energy perspective based on these research findings this research offers some relevant policy suggestions

eroi of different fuels and the implications for society abstract all forms of economic production and exchange involve the use of energy directly and in the transformation of materials until recently cheap and seemingly limitless fossil energy has allowed most of society to ignore the importance of contributions to the economic process from the biophysical world as well as the potential limits to growth this paper centers on assessing the energy costs of modern day society and its relation to gdp our most important focus is the characteristics of our major energy sources including each fuel s energy return on investment eroi the eroi of our most important fuels is declining and most renewable and non conventional energy alternatives have substantially lower eroi values than traditional conventional fossil fuels at the societal level declining eroi means that an increasing proportion of energy output and economic activity must be diverted to attaining the energy needed to run an economy leaving less discretionary funds available for non essential purchases which often drive growth the declining eroi of traditional fossil fuel energy sources and the effect of that on the world economy are likely to result in a myriad of consequences most of which will not be perceived as good

can renewable energy power the future fossil fuels face resource depletion supply security and climate change problems renewable energy re may offer the best prospects for their long term replacement however re sources differ in many important ways from fossil fuels particularly in that they are energy flows rather than stocks the most important re sources wind and solar energy are also intermittent necessitating major energy storage as these sources increase their share of total energy supply we show that estimates for the technical potential of re vary by two orders of magnitude and argue that values at the lower end of the range must be seriously considered both because their energy return on energy invested falls and environmental costs rise with cumulative output finally most future re output will be electric necessitating radical reconfiguration of existing grids to function with intermittent re

multi dimensional pinch analysis for sustainable power generation sector planning in china emerging economies account for a fast growing share of the global energy market in particular energy use in china has become significant from both economic and environmental standpoints this trend makes it necessary to balance the need for affordable reliable electricity supply with the need to ensure that the power infrastructure is environmentally sustainable as such this paper presents a multi dimensional pinch analysis mdpa of the power generation sector in china the analysis considers five key indices carbon footprint energy return on investment eroi water footprint land footprint and risk to humans by simultaneously quantifying five different indices under a common methodological framework we are able to coherently assess the impact on five different environmental concerns this approach provides a more complete picture of the true environmental impact of china s power sector this information can thus help policymakers avoid the problem of shifting environmental impacts to other domains which can occur when the analytic procedure used focuses on a single environmental dimension

differences in co2 emissions of solar pv production among technologies and regions application to china eu and usa abstract a widespread implicit assumption is that renewable energy options are approximately low carbon however production and life cycles of such technologies tend to produce co2 emissions to minimize life cycle emissions one should account for such emissions and implement adequate policies to encourage innovation and adoption of well performing technologies in this respect we develop a framework to analyse this issue grounded in the concepts of energy return on energy invested eroi and net energy return on carbon invested eroc applying these to the main pv technologies and production regions namely china eu and usa displays considerable discrepancies we conditionally predict the development of average eroi and eroc over time under business as usual and low carbon electricity generation scenarios a main policy lesson is that without a systemic policy instrument such as carbon pricing incentives for low carbon production of renewable energy options are too weak which likely will delay a complete transition to a low carbon economy

the vermont common assets trust an institution for sustainable just and efficient resource allocation both private and public sectors have failed to adequately provide critical ecosystem goods and services or an equitable distribution of wealth and income to address this problem the vermont legislature is considering the creation of a vermont common assets trust vcat that would make the state s atmosphere aquifers and other resources created by nature or by society as a whole the common property of all vermonters present and future under the trust a board of trustees would have the legal obligation to manage these assets for the benefit of all vermonters including future generations this paper first explains why certain resources are likely to be managed more sustainably fairly and efficiently as common property than as private property it then discusses mechanisms for integrating assets into the trust estimates of potential revenue from a vcat suggest that it could eliminate the state budget deficit contribute to a better distribution of wealth and resources and help address critical ecological problems survey results suggest that a vcat is politically feasible the vcat promises to be an important pilot project that could later be scaled up to a national or global level

does increasing energy or electricity consumption improve quality of life in industrial nations among the world s nations per capita energy and electricity consumption is highly correlated with diverse indicators of quality of life this is often interpreted to mean that additional energy and electricity consumption causes improvements in life quality prior analyses of cross sectional data question this interpretation for industrial nations that already have high per capita energy consumption the present analysis with longitudinal data shows that among industrial nations increases in per capita energy and electricity consumption over the past three decades are not associated with corresponding improvements in quality of life

implications of trends in energy return on energy invested eroi for transitioning to renewable electricity abstract recent papers argue that the energy return on energy invested eroi for renewable electricity technologies and systems may be so low that the transition from fossil fuelled to renewable electricity may displace investment in other important economic sectors for the case of large scale electricity supply we draw upon insights from net energy analysis and renewable energy engineering to examine critically some assumptions data and arguments in these papers focussing on regions in which wind and solar can provide the majority of electricity we show that the above claim is based on outdated data on erois on failing to consider the energy efficiency advantages of transitioning away from fuel combustion and on overestimates of storage requirements erois of wind and solar photovoltaics which can provide the vast majority of electricity and indeed of all energy in the future are generally high 10 and increasing the impact of storage on eroi depends on the quantities and types of storage adopted and their operational strategies in the regions considered in this paper the quantity of storage required to maintain generation reliability is relatively small

a field study of rental market discrimination across origins in france abstract discrimination against particular groups in the housing market increases search costs and limits optimal matching thus resulting in economic and social inefficiencies this paper tests for the existence of discrimination in the french rental market against individuals with names which signal their connection to five immigrant groups northern africa sub saharan africa turkey poland portugal spain by implementing an online field study using one of france s largest online advertisements website the results show that applicants with foreign sounding names coming from northern africa sub saharan africa and turkey are 16 to 22 percentage points less likely to receive a response than applicants with french names or names associated with poland portugal or spain in addition when applicants with foreign sounding names from any origin receive a response it is significantly more likely to be negative or include a request for more information than responses to emails including french sounding names finally we find some geographic differences in response rate differentials that are correlated with differences in the local income and share of immigrants this provides evidence that landlords use names as a proxy for economic and other sociodemographic characteristics

decomposition analysis for assessing the progress in decoupling industrial growth from co2 emissions in the eu manufacturing sector decomposition analysis is used in this paper not only to explain changes in industrial co2 emissions but also to comparatively evaluate the progress made in 14 eu countries in decoupling emissions from industrial growth the analysis is performed for the period 1990 2003 by distinguishing two time intervals for assessing progress prior to and following the agreement on the kyoto protocol the refined laspeyres model is used to determine the impact of 5 explanatory factors output energy intensity structure fuel mix and utility mix the obtained results are further elaborated in order to assess the real efforts undertaken in each country and their effectiveness in dissociating the economic and environmental dimensions of development moreover a rescaling procedure is implemented in order to adjust efforts to the average progress in the eu and proceed to a fair comparative evaluation it is found that most eu countries made a considerable but not always sufficient decoupling effort while no significant acceleration is observed in the post kyoto period

multi scale integrated assessment of second generation bioethanol for transport sector in the campania region abstract current narrative on biofuels is backed up by a large number of studies published in the scientific literature that address second generation bioethanol only through a single topic approach nonetheless in the vast majority of cases transition to this energy carrier is evaluated as a generally promising technology this paper presents a first attempt in proposing an integrated evaluation of the actual benefits expected from bioethanol in the transport sector by applying the multi scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism musiasem to the prospective realization of a local system of bio refinery in campania region southern italy musiasem is a multi criteria analysis enabling to deal with the complexity of a territorial energy system since the unavoidable intrinsic uncertainty the study does not focus on predictions but adopts a strategy of quantitative story telling about some relevant results underlying the limits and critical issues about the energy converter fabric the economic profitability environmental constraints and the questionable concept of marginal land the findings suggest concluding toward falsification of key points in the current narrative i the system is not an efficient solar energy converter ii it fails to realize many of the expectations for a renewable energy carrier producer iii the contribution to decarbonization strategies is not as high as desired and other environmental impacts could not be neglected iv the very large land requirement is hardly compatible with conversion of truly marginal land in campania region v compared to alternate land uses it does not seem an actually promising strategy to regain value from rural economy

discrimination in the rental housing market a field experiment on the internet this paper presents a field experiment on discrimination in the housing market using the internet as a research platform the procedure involved our creating three fictitious persons with distinct

connecting net energy with the price of energy and other goods and services net energy is intuitively compelling and useful in calculating total impacts e g primary energy greenhouse gases land use and water requirements of delivering useful energy to the larger economy however it has little policy impact unless connected quantitatively to the price of energy and other goods and services i present an input output io based method to do this the method is illustrated by a two sector model fitted to u s io economic data in an io characterized system the energy returned on energy invested eroi and the energy intensity of energy are directly related however eroi and prices are not uniquely related because they depend differently on four independent io coefficients representing internal structure of and the relationship between the energy sector and the rest of the economy if only one of these coefficients varies then eroi does uniquely determine prices uncertainties in the io coefficients as well as persistent issues of choosing system boundary and aggregating diverse energy types further complicate the eroi price connection in this context i review two recent empirical comparisons of u s oil and gas prices and eroi for 1954 2007

impacts of minimum quality standards imposed through marketing orders or related producer organizations we analyze the impacts of minimum quality standards mqs imposed by producers acting collectively through a producer organization such as a marketing order mqs imposed in a competitive market can never enhance social welfare because in general an mqs creates two deadweight losses one due to inefficient enhancement of product quality and a second due to wastage of the low quality product any mqs that a competitive industry implements based upon a profit criterion causes all consumers in the market to be harmed however an mqs may be preferred relative to supply control as a second best instrument for transferring income to producers