Past world economic production constrains current energy demands: Persistent scaling with implications for economic growth and climate change mitigation.

ABSTRACT: Climate change has become intertwined with the global economy. Here, we describe the contribution of inertia to future trends. Drawing from thermodynamic principles, and using 38 years of available statistics between 1980 to 2017, we find a constant scaling between current rates of world primary energy consumption [Formula: see text] and the historical time integral W of past world inflation-adjusted economic production Y, or [Formula: see text]. In each year, over a period during which both [Formula: see text] and W more than doubled, the ratio of the two remained nearly unchanged, that is [Formula: see text] Gigawatts per trillion 2010 US dollars. What this near constant implies is that current growth trends in energy consumption, population, and standard of living, perhaps counterintuit

SUBMITTER: Garrett TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7451548 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature