Revisiting the physical limits to economic growth, with a focus on the waste heat limit.

ABSTRACT: Whether there are imminent physical limits to economic growth has been the focus of a long-standing debate, often (but not exclusively) pitting natural scientists against economists. One side of the debate posits that finite resources constrain human economic growth, the other that productivity improvements and substitution can relax those resource constraints. However, the two sides lack a common framework to resolve their disagreement. We provide this framework and mediate this dispute using a combination of low-order economic and physical models, focusing especially on the waste heat limit. To start, we use a simple accounting identity to show that historical rates of growth in average productivity can support modest economic and population growth (totaling 1.2%). We model the future tr

SUBMITTER: Abbot DS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11906051 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature