What matters?

This is the fourth article about the blessing and curse of the straight line. Here I want to discuss some factors that might have a great impact on the current industrial civilization. My focus here is not discussing them as “problems” or even “challenges” but as drivers of change.

Energy has all throughout human civilization been very important. The correlation between energy use and economic growth is, on an aggregate level, robust. That should be no surprise. Economic value is created by labour and external energy is used to multiply the energy of our bodies (the so-called energy slaves). An interesting, but largely neglected, discussion is if energy use drives economic growth or if economic growth drives energy use or if both are driven by one or more other factors. I hope to explore this further in the future.

The focus in the debate about the energy future is mostly around carbon dioxide. In the dominating narrative renewable energy* is supposed to replace fossil fuels and most things will be the same. But our energy future will not be the same, with or without fossil fuels. And global warming is one of many symptoms of the gargantuan metabolism of the current industrial civilization.  

Wright’s law might be wrong

Some promoters of solar power refer to Wright’s law that claims that costs fall dramatically and continually when a technology spreads. This “law” is clearly not very strict or universally applicable, the cost of nuclear power comes to mind. While it is true that photovoltaic panels have dropped so much in price that solar power is now cheaper at the panel than electricity from fossil fuels, that doesn’t mean that the actual price at the point of use is cheaper. The cost of the panels is actually just one part of the cost. The infrastructure, the electronic equipment necessary, the connection to the grid and the work are costly and are certainly not subject to Wright’s law. This is the reason for why solar power increasingly is located in enormous solar parks instead of being located on already built-up land such as roof tops.

If you add costs for grid regulation and energy storage, the cost for useful electricity from renewables almost shows a reversal of Wright’s law (Rundgren’s law perhaps?) and the cost of electricity at the point of use actually increases when the share of the electricity in a system that originates from sun or wind increases over a certain point (depending on a number of other factors). This is also the reason for why so few wind or solar systems are designed to work off-grid, despite the appeal of having electricity even in the case of grid blackouts. This aspect is even more relevant when it comes to the conversion of renewable power into liquid fuels and sometimes back to electricity (as for hydrogen fuel cells). 

There is also the question to what extent solar and wind energy are “subsidised” by fossil energy through the production of the equipment and transportation. If and when they are constructed with their own energy all along the supply chain, their cost will increase (I have not seen any credible calculation of this, though). In addition, there are high costs involved in maintenance and decommissioning, especially for off-shore wind farms, which mostly are omitted or downplayed in calculation.

Photo: Gunnar Rundgren

Don’t misunderstand me. Solar and wind power can play a useful role in a future civilization. But we should not fool ourselves that we can just replace fossil fuels with renewables and things will be the same.

The real crux is not the source of energy, but the use of it

But there is more to it. The debate over decarbonisation of energy hides the fact that there is considerable environmental effects, and costs, in the use of energy. Energy is used for various purposes. Most prominent is to increase labour productivity as when an excavator replaces 100 persons with shovels and wheel barrows or a combine harvester replaces 200 persons with scythes and flails. Essentially, the mechanization of primary industries is a pre-condition for the whole modern civilization as otherwise, most of the work force would be occupied in agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing. Transportation is another major use which could also be seen as process to increase labour productivity, i.e. to transport by lorry instead of having people carry stuff. But transportation is also what makes trade and markets possible. The third big application is temperature regulation, of indoor environment as well as food (cooling and cooking) and industrial processes (e.g. smelting iron).

Of these, heating is the use that has the least environmental consequences apart from the energy source itself. But the appliances and networks used to bring heating to our homes or to our food still has huge environmental impact. If transportation is shifted to electricity (or electricity derived hydrogen, methane, ammonia etc.), the carbon footprint is likely to shrink, but all other environmental impact will remain the same or in many cases increase as the use of fossil fuel is replaced by other material use.

Matter matters

This aspect of materials, or matter got more attention following the 2024 report of the International Resource Panel. It shows that growth in resource use since 1970 increased from 30 to 106 billion tons – or from 23 to 39 kilograms of materials used on average per person per day, and this has dramatic environmental impacts. The link between resource use and energy use is very strong and this means that a, highly unlikely, future of abundant and cheap energy would not be a blessing but an environmental disaster. For instance, if battery costs go down and electricity is dead cheap, electric cars will not only replace all fossil fuel guzzlers, but also public transportation and bicycles as well as leading to that each person will travel more. The end results would be more cars, more roads, more parking lots, more garages, more tires, more accidents and more waste. 

For the material footprint of industrial production and our corresponding consumption, a change of energy source itself makes in most cases little difference. 

The energy-materials nexus

Apart from the environmental perspective, there is also an economic perspective that the cost for obtaining the materials are increasing. Even if we hardly will run out of any of them, the cost for extraction may become prohibitive. The interest of sea-bed extraction of minerals can be seen, in a similar way as fracking for oil and gas, as an indication of scarcity. Even for simple materials, such as sand, costs of extraction are increasing rapidly. There are also strong linkages back to the cost of energy; increasing energy costs lead to more expensive materials, which in turn lead to more expensive energy and so on.

Fossil-free forms of energy, such as solar, wind or nuclear don’t change this at all and they also come with high material footprints for their production. Therefore, in order to reduce the human ecological footprint we also need to lower the use of energy.

Perhaps this is about to regulate itself as the cost of energy seems to be on a long term upward trajectory. It seems that huge chunks of the economy have problems to work when oil moves towards 100 dollars per barrel, or if electricity is too expensive. A substantial part of the last the last years’ inflation and cost of living crisis is caused by increasing costs of energy. A bigger share of the energy is also used to “produce” energy (we insist in saying that we produce energy, while in reality we capture energy inherent in matter). This can be expressed in terms such as the Energy Return on Investment, or Energy Cost of Energy.

Peak population

Birth rates are falling rapidly all over the world. There are many explanations vented for this. I plan to write a separate article on this soon. My working hypothesis is that falling birth rates is primarily a result of internal contradictions of the human being in modernity. The focus on the individual, the alienation from and the rejection of the fundamental biological and ecological foundations of the human species make the decision to have or not have children to a matter of personal choice and preferences. It is easier to have a dog than to raise a child and the dog will (mostly) give you unconditional love. Be that as it may, after falling birth rates, with some time lag, populations will fall. This will create enormous shock waves in the economy and in human societies. The question of who will take care of the elderly is a minor consideration compared to the contraction of the economy and societal metabolism which inevitably will follow.

The question of who will take care of the elderly is a minor consideration compared to the contraction of the economy and societal metabolism which inevitably will follow peak population.

Environmental pollution and degraded ecosystems also drive changes. Of these, the emissions of carbon dioxide causing global warming has got most attention. But there are many other serious cases that we already know and most likely many more the come. I have written extensively about the enormous effects of the disruption of the nitrogen cycle. Our impact on the rest of the living and the degradation of ecosystems is a challenge of the same order of magnitude as pollution and they are mutually reinforcing each other. This is often discussed as harm to nature, which it is, but one can also see the pollution, and the cost incurred, as inefficiency of the modern civilization. Societies have to spend increasing shares of their capacity to re-create ecosystem services (or whatever you like to call it), such as clean water, irrigation and drainage, a livable climate, pollination and prevention of floods.

The make-up of the global capitalist system also has inherent weaknesses. While complexity (such as the division of labor and outsourcing of production), homogenization, standardization, intensification and hyper-connectivity have some advantages they do make societies vulnerable to various disturbances, both internal, such as financial crises and external such as the covid pandemic. Most trends point towards that we have reached peak globalization already, economically, politically and culturally. Globalization has been a forceful driver of change and globalization in reverse will also be that.

External drivers and emergent properties determine our destiny

Even if we like to believe that we are omnipotent and that we can chose our destiny, human societies tend to a very large extent be shaped by external forces and internal emergent features, rather than a result of any intelligent design either by us or any other higher being. The capitalist economy, the fossil fuel metabolism as well as money and the financial system are all examples of such emergent features. We never chose them, they just evolved, and now we see them almost as laws of nature. This makes it incredibly hard to avoid their power over us. Just try to live without money and you will experience how strong the grasp of it is, despite money being an abstraction and a human institution with no inherent value.

Nevertheless, in my next and final article, I want to discuss some paths ahead which may not save the current modernist and capitalist civilization, but at least pave the way for a transition.

* Nuclear energy is also promoted in the same vein. It has some clear advantages from a functional perspective, but it comes with a great package of complications and high costs.