The energy requirements of a developed world

By I. Arto, Íñigo Capellán-Pérez, R. Lago, Gorka Bueno, R. Bermejo. 2016

262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Through history, special attention has been paid to the study of the relationship between the energy use of a country and its level of development. While the interest of this research area is unquestionable, the energy indicators commonly used (e.g. total primary energy) are problematic. In the current context of globalization, the energy used by a country is not anymore a suitable indicator for measuring the total energy requirements associated with its level of development; the significant variable is the energy consumed worldwide to produce the goods and services demanded by that country, i.e. its energy footprint. In this study, we compare the human development index of 40 countries with their total primary energy demand and total primary energy footprint for the period 1995–2008. The results show that the total primary energy demand underestimates the energy required to maintain a high level of development, since a significant part of the energy used by emerging countries is being increasingly devoted to sustain the welfare of developed countries by means of international trade. We also find that the minimum total primary energy footprint per capita to achieve a high level of development is 33% higher than current world's per capita energy use.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f1f78f33611b0c88bd4a213037e3ad82c8dc6970

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In Environmental Engineering

In Pollution

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

Assessing vulnerabilities and limits in the transition to renewable energies: Land requirements under 100% solar energy scenarios (2017, background): “[3] showed that an increasingly large proportion of the energy used by emerging countries is being devoted to sustain the welfare of advanced capitalist economies by means of international trade.”
Human well‐being and climate change mitigation (2017, background): “, above 70 years life expectancy, full access to water, sanitation, electricity and other basic infrastructures).(69,70,81) This minimum sufficiency threshold is also observed to shift downwards over time.”
Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies (2019, result): “In any case, these numbers are roughly consistent with the current EROIst of the global system obtained in this work (~12:1), given the high inequalities in energy consumption and levels of development at global level [11].”
Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario (2020, background): “of their populations – social returns on energy consumption per capita become increasingly marginal (Arto et al., 2016; Steinberger and Roberts, 2010; Steinberger et al., 2012; Martínez and Ebenhack, 2008).”