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Green Energy to Sustainability
Green Energy to Sustainability
Edited by
Alain A. Vertès
Sloan Fellow, London Business School
UK
and
Managing Director of NxR Biotechnologies, Basel Switzerland
Nasib Qureshi
United States Department of Agriculture
National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research
Peoria, USA
and
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Hans P. Blaschek
Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
USA
Hideaki Yukawa
Utilization of Carbon Dioxide Institute CO. Ltd.
Tokyo, Japan
This edition first published 2020
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
We will meet these challenges because we can and we will meet these challenges because we must
vii
Contents
21.5.5 Biodiesel Production from Waste Cooking Oil with Acid and Alkali Catalysts 530
21.6 Perspectives 531
References 531
25.6 International Action for Curbing the Pollution of the Atmosphere Commons:
The Case of CFCs and the Ozone Layer 634
25.7 Social Activism as an Engine of Change: Requiem for a Wonderful World 635
25.8 Perspectives: A Brave New World 636
References 639
Index 649
xxi
stem cells in regenerative medicine (John Wiley & Elsevier). Dr. Qureshi has received many
awards including from the World J. Microbiology & Biotechnology, American Chemical Society,
United States Department of Agriculture, and University of Nebraska (Lincoln, NE, USA). His
expertise in bioprocess/biochemical engineering and biofuels arena is widely and internationally
sought.
Prize at the Nikkei Global Environmental Awards for bioethanol production from mixed sugars
by genetically engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum. The first Japanese national to receive a
Fellowship Award (for achievements in the field of applied microorganisms) from The Society
of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB), Dr. Yukawa has authored many scientific
works, including papers, books and patents, and has mentored many scientists globally.
xxv
List of Contributors
K. T. Shanmugan
Nasib Qureshi
Department of Microbiology and Cell Science
United States Department of Agriculture
University of Florida
Agricultural Research Service
Gainesville
National Center for Agricultural Utilization
USA
Research
Bioenergy Research Unit Sutha Shobana
Peoria Department of Chemistry and Research Centre
USA Aditanar College of Arts and Science
Tiruchendur
Lawrence Reichle India
Abt Associates Inc.
Cambridge Vijay Singh
USA Agricultural and biological Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Jose Dilcio Rocha USA
Embrapa Agroenergy – The Brazilian
Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) Pedro F Souza Filho
Brasília Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery
Brazil University of Borås
Borås
Emrah Sagir Sweden
Département de Microbiologie
Lianghu Su
Infectiologie et Immunologie
Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of
Université de Montréal
the Ministry of Environmental Protection
Montréal
Nanjing
Canada
PR China
Ganesh Dattatraya Saratale
Mohammed Taherzadeh
Department of Food Science and
Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery
Biotechnology
University of Borås
Dongguk University-Seoul
Borås
Goyang-si
Sweden
Republic of Korea
List of Contributors xxix
Foreword
Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying “The difference between what we do and what we are capable
of doing is more than enough to solve the world’s problems.” This perhaps has never been more
true than when we consider Society’s greatest existential challenge of changing to a sustainable
manner of living.
“Green Energy to Sustainability” is a volume that should be read by every person that cares about
the future whether they are business people, policy makers, consumers, parents, activists, students,
or mere scientists and engineers. This book is an essential resource for designing tomorrow to be
better than today. With all of the valuable contributions by the leading figures on the topic of green
energy, one would think that this is the most compelling aspect of the book, but I believe that
it’s not.
The most powerful benefit of this book, is how clearly it articulates what is possible today. What
this book presents is not some unrealistic theory, distant vision, or science fiction. In the pages
there are solutions that are well-demonstrated at various stages of developement and are available
to be implemented at scale. It is the scale that will make the impact. It is the scale that is a matter of
will. It is the scale that will determine how serious we are about taking the necessary actions with
the urgency required in order to address the climate crisis and the related bio/geochemical cycle
crises the planet is facing.
There is not a lack of scientific imagination that is a roadblock. It is not a lack of technical and
engineering ingenuity that is an obstacle. It is not that we are waiting on new discoveries and new
inventions. This book demonstrates that fact in page after page.
If the decision-makers, thought-leaders, capital investors, activists and influencers are set on
mobilizing toward a sustainable future, this excellent volume has provided them with the infor-
mation they need. In the war on unsustainability, the scientific and technical ammunition is there
in abundance. But as has been said many times and in many ways, ‘the best battle plans do not
withstand the first encounter with the enemy’ and so the dedicated metaphorical soldiers in the
form of scientific innovators will be there to adapt and adjust to each unforeseen circumstance for
every step forward until we achieve the world that our progeny deserve.
We will meet these challenges because we can and we will meet these challenges because
we must.
Paul T. Anastas
New Haven, USA
xxxiii
Preface
Global warming (climate change) in the 2020’s is marked by an inflexion point in biodiversity
decline that is already translating into the premises of a mass extinction in numerous branches
of the tree of life and notably in the extinction of a countless number of species of mammals, birds,
insects, and fish as well as in dramatic global changes in plant and tree populations. All these conse-
quences already require that ancestral agricultural practices and permanent vegetal cover adapt to
changes in local climate given increased temperatures and more frequent severe heat waves, longer
droughts, and very large scale fires. Ultimately the consequences of climate change will coalesce to
significantly and durably impact the global food chain as illustrated by the impact that would result
in a dramatic loss in the populations of crop-pollinating insects, for example, thus requiring adapta-
tion to the new conditions. The last massive global extinction occurred 66 million years ago during
the Cretaceous–Paleogene era. All these changes, as well as the threat of a significant rise of sea lev-
els and the threat of an increasing desertification of whole regions that now constitute fertile lands,
will greatly impact not only human quality of life but also the current status quo of economic activ-
ities. This may further translate into disequilibria and the exacerbation of the need to access vital
resources as basic, but as precious, as water or hospitable lands. The accumulation of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere that drives the global warming experienced by the system Earth in the
current geological era is absolutely unambiguously anthropogenic by nature. The current episode
of climate change was initiated as early as the nineteenth century with the Industrial Revolution.
It was fuelled by the exponential rise in fossil energy use to power the fast increasing demand for
the cheap energy required to sustain economic growth at a heretofore unparalleled rapid rate and
to bring mankind, in only a few generations, from a predominantly rural and artisanal era to a
predominantly city-dwelling and industrial era accompanied by diminution of poverty and dra-
matic improvements in hygiene and healthcare; this was a period during which the quality of life
of human populations in what constitutes currently developed countries, to take only this prism
of analysis, dramatically rapidly improved as demonstrated by rises in life expectancies between
1850 and 2020 in various European countries. Changes in greenhouse gas concentrations that led
to global climate change were long left unnoticed, thanks notably to the inertia of the Earth as a
physical system. However, the wide-reaching impacts of climate change are now beyond question
and global mass actions as well as a deep change in the global economic model are urgently needed
to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change; this is hard to do because the inertia of the
system Earth will result in any action taking a long time at the human scale to translate into prac-
tical positive changes observable by the naked eye. What is more, the thawing of the permafrost
and the consequent release of its immense quantities of methane that have been sequestered for
immemorial times represent the threat of a ‘climatic event horizon’ when anthropogenic climate
xxxiv Preface
change in the present geological era will enter a positive reinforcement loop and become totally
out of human control, assuming it is not so already.
Climate change first and foremost constitutes a complex but burning political issue. It is a polit-
ical issue because its mitigation requires fundamental changes at many levels, and notably at soci-
etal and industrial levels, and particularly at the level of the national energy mix. Profound changes
are invariably painful. Profound changes impact vested interests that slow down needed changes.
As a result, appropriate political agendas need to be set to minimize the social impacts of the neces-
sary changes in lifestyles and fossil fuel consumption. This extreme challenge in efficiently dealing
with climate change cannot be better exemplified than by the example of coal-fired power stations,
which although they constitute a totally obsolete method of energy production remain in use in
several jurisdictions given the need to recoup on their capital expenditures or to maintain min-
ing industry gains, or to avoid the growing pain that inevitably accompanies a changing economy.
Here, the political agenda is how to redirect the workforce and the various economic actors deeply
dedicated to the coal-to-energy value chain and accompany them through the turmoil of change.
Climate change is a ‘tragedy of the atmospheric commons’. The current macroeconomic model
has evolved to maximally leverage comparative advantages, with the underlying assumption that
the cost of atmospheric carbon dioxide disposal is nil. While it is convenient, because it avoids polit-
ical complications and facilitates global trade by subsidizing the transportation industry in the form
of free atmospheric commons, thus enabling to maximize the synergies of comparative advantages
in the path to economic globalization, this model has for two centuries neglected the social cost of
carbon. It is this assumption that the acknowledgement of the reality of climate change challenges.
It is this assumption that made possible to economically transport at the antipodes commodity
goods and particularly agricultural ones in spite it being possible to efficiently produce the very
same goods locally; integrating a variable to capture the social cost of carbon could very well tip
the balance in the opposite direction of the comparative advantages of today. It is this assumption
that now needs to be urgently fixed. The current imbalance in global carbon budgets accumu-
lated over the course of two centuries and embodied by the adverse consequences of global climate
change calls for a global correction on a par with the geological imperative posed by the challenge
of mounting atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Permanent growth without recycling is not possi-
ble. The good news is that waste recycling has in a virtuous circle increasingly attracted attention
in G20 countries, and the trend is bound to expand widely as the true costs of de novo production
are increasingly integrated into the prices of goods. Here, CO2 recycling constitutes another vari-
able to integrate, with technological solutions being developed to achieve not only the mitigation of
atmospheric CO2 , but also its valorization and recycling into valuable products either by chemical
or by biotechnological means and by direct photosynthesis-mediated capture. Biochar obtained by
the pyrolysis of biomass notably represents a very attractive method for sequestering or recycling
CO2, with an estimated potential of fixing more than 10% of the current anthropogenic emissions
of this greenhouse gas. Recycling alone, however, is unlikely to suffice, and additional changes
will be necessary. This is where biotechnology has a major role to play to leverage the full poten-
tial of photosynthesis and biomass for sustainable energy and commodity chemicals production
to enable the production of the goods necessary for modern life, including not only bioethanol or
biodiesel but also sustainable chemical building blocks to complement conventional petrochemical
processing. The coming of age of the technology of photovoltaic power backed up by the electric-
ity generation potential of nuclear energy, which is still required for a few more decades but with
the Chernobyl and Fukushima catastrophies serving as warnings, is enabling electricity to become
a ‘universal energy currency’. Notably, the potential of photovoltaic power would be decupled by
deregulating and decentralizing energy production thereby enabling off-grid and on-grid electricity
Preface xxxv
management. Here, on-grid power integrates into national total factor productivity, while off-grid
power permits the harnessing of individual investments.
A lesson from history is that energy transitions take decades. This notwithstanding, a new tran-
sition is now urgently required to avoid the threat of experiencing a requiem for the natural world
we have today and to which humans and their societies have adapted for thousands of years. The
litmus test is whether the industrial world can evolve and achieve the synthesis of global trade with
local development while maximizing recycling and minimizing environmental impact. This would
represent the coming of age of a ‘hypermodern-capitalism’ characterized by accelerated changes
to sense and respond to trends and competition with the objective of maximizing economic and
social outcomes by optimizing the production function in terms of both local and global parame-
ters in parallel. This might call for a revisit of the balance between regulation and deregulation on
the one hand, and of corporate sustainability responsibility coupled with individual sustainability
responsibility on the other.
The book Green Energy to Sustainability: Strategies for Global Industries is structured as four parts
to revisit the green energy business and highlight critical potential and strategic directions for its
future development.
In Part I, elements of the structure of the energy business are described that complement or pro-
vide critical updates to the chapters published in the first volume Biomass to Biofuels: Strategies
for Global Industries that was published a decade ago. Whereas multiple parameters have evolved
in this timeframe and notably the increasing rates of burning of fossil fuels and the increasing
severity of the impacts of global warming, what has remained as a constant is the link between
energy use and gross domestic product (GDP) growth. The opening chapter in this section thus
examines in detail the relationship between economic growth and the global energy demand, with
this link being further explored in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the conditions that need
to be met to achieve the appropriate energy transition towards a decarbonization of the economy.
Strategic and operational considerations are also visited to propose an implementation roadmap
as well as measures to monitor progress along the trajectory of the greening of the global econ-
omy via integrated assessment and decision-making in transition processes. The critical question
of the national energy mix is subsequently explored through the lens of the Japanese economy
post-Fukushima, analysing particularly the measurable impacts of two complementary strategies,
namely the National Energy Strategy and the National Energy and Environment Strategy for Tech-
nological Innovation Towards 2050, implemented by the Japanese government to sustain economic
growth in an environmentally-conscious approach. This analysis is particularly instructive as the
policies at play aim at enhancing energy efficiency and clean energy deployment with the lead-
ing philosophy of meeting in parallel economic growth objectives and goals of greenhouse gases
emission in a context of the shutdown of nuclear plants. The deployment and green energy tech-
nology in China and in emerging countries is discussed in detail with an emphasis on Africa,
South East Asia, and South America, since although these jurisdictions are committed to advanc-
ing investments in green energy, they are confronted with very different driving forces and hurdles,
perhaps best exemplified by the contrast between China’s massive carbon footprint to power the
phenomenal economic growth it experienced in the past two decades and sub-Saharan Africa’s
still emerging economic development. Through the lens of energy needs, energy mix, and energy
policies, intrinsic roadmaps for greening of these economies are delineated. In a forward-looking
chapter, the development of solar energy generation technologies and global production capacities
are reviewed, progressing from the current state-of-the-art of photovoltaic cell science to global
solar energy production capacity, with the journey highlighting advantages of grid integration ver-
sus point-of-production use. The production of sustainable aviation fuel is discussed in a separate
xxxvi Preface
chapter in which recent trends and the driving forces behind the growing biojet fuel market, as
well as opportunities for implementing green chemistry principles and practices are highlighted.
Transportation is further discussed through the lens of the environmental impact of pollution and
pollution-prevention in the automotive industry and particularly in the automotive manufacturing
industry, which has a complex upstream and downstream supply chain. The lessons learned from
the manufacturing of combustion engine-powered vehicles are important lessons for a transition to
fully electric vehicles and notably for very large-scale battery manufacturing. This section closes on
an assessment of the global demand for biofuels and biotechnology-derived commodity chemicals.
Part II is centred on the technologies and practices of chemicals and transportation fuels from
biomass. In the opening chapter of this section, the technologies enabling the production of chem-
icals from biomass are highlighted, particularly focusing on platform chemicals that serve as inter-
mediaries in the synthesis of more complex compounds and notably for manufacturing a range of
chemicals and materials including a plethora of plastics, the use of which permeate virtually every
aspect of modern life. Genetic engineering techniques to develop performing microbial workhorses
to complement petrochemistry by biotechnology-enabled C2-C6 chemistry are reviewed, with a
focus on metabolic engineering techniques to develop superior microbial strains characterized by
increased yields, increased ranges of substrates, and reduced sensitivities to growth inhibitors as
well as reduced by-product formation. Scientific advances in the industrial-scale production of bio-
fuels from seaweeds and microalgae are summarized in a technical chapter in which the main
species that are being developed as biofuels producers are detailed. The major hurdles for reaching
cost-effective biofuels generation from microalgae and seaweeds are subsequently discussed and
forthcoming milestones in technology development to reach economic feasibility are proposed.
Advanced fermentation technologies to achieve the conversion of biomass to ethanol by organisms
other than yeasts are furthermore exemplified by the case of recombinant Escherichia coli though an
analysis of the relative advantages of this facultative anaerobe as a novel production workhorse as
well as hurdles to its industrial-scale implementation. The potential of strictly anaerobic bacteria is
in turn discussed through revisiting biotechnological strains of the genus Clostridium and their pro-
cess engineering for enabling cost-effective energy generation. In this chapter both the history of the
use of these organisms for acetone/butanol/ethanol (ABE) production and the economic modelling
of the ABE fermentation are integrated. The latest advances in the production of fuel ethanol pro-
duction from lignocellulosic biomass using recombinant yeasts are presented in parallel, including
the liquefaction and gasification of lignocellulosic materials, with the view of identifying techno-
logical opportunities to reduce the production costs of cellulosic ethanol. Advances in the catalysis
of biomass and its saccharification are explored in a chapter where the latest progress made in
biomass pre-treatment and hydrolysis technologies, including dilute sulfuric acid, sodium hydrox-
ide, ammonia, and combined chemical as well as enzymatic treatments are discussed. The question
whether generic pre-treatments exist that can be applied to most biomass sources, or whether
tailor-designed pre-treatments are needed, is addressed particularly via a review of the various
growth inhibitors that are generated during the pre-treatment and hydrolysis steps of biomass
and potential technical solutions to mitigate their negative economic impacts. Starting from this
review, a path to develop more robust cultures using microbial genetic techniques or adaptation
techniques is suggested. To ensure that the net sustainable value of manufacturing processes for
renewable chemicals is positive, life cycle assessments of biofuels and green commodity chemicals
are proposed, focusing on biofuels. Recommendations to optimize the life cycle of such sustainable
chemicals appear in the watermark of the chapter, including notably water usage, fossil fuel usage,
and pesticide usage as appropriate life cycle assessments requiring an ongoing understanding of
Preface xxxvii
the supply chain, systems boundaries, displacement effects, direct and indirect effects, as well as
the broader impacts that these effects have on wider sustainability issues.
Part III constitutes a brief overview of sustainable technologies to produce useful gases and the
market potential of these gases. The biotechnological production of fuel hydrogen and its market
deployment is first discussed, given that hydrogen represents an important option fuel for a clean
automotive industry. Moreover, the deployment of biogas production technologies and production
capacity in emerging countries is described. Remarkably, in emerging countries these technologies
can essentially be deployed in greenfield projects without having to retrofit existing infrastructures
albeit this sometimes implies conditions of limited general total factor productivity. Nonetheless,
proactive efforts have been deployed and significant manufacturing capacity is increasingly being
validated in many of these countries. Details of hydrogen production by algae are presented to
identify the areas of greatest innovation need. Here, innovating cost-effective photoreactor designs
appear to be the most critical success factor. Methane represents another gas with tremendous
economic potential and notably as a renewable fuel. Approaches to enhance methane production
from microalgae biomass are thus also reviewed, including pre-treatment methods and anaerobic
co-digestion processes.
In Part IV, perspectives are presented to integrate what has been learnt from the preceding
chapters and to highlight the potential and challenges of a sustainable economy. A first crit-
ical consideration is how to implement the biorefinery vision to displace and to complement
where conventional petrochemistry makes sense. Integrated biorefineries for the production
of bioethanol, biodiesel, and other commodity chemicals are revisited in terms of their key
technologies and processes as well as the portfolio of products that make them economically
competitive. Primary raw materials of the biorefinery of the future are lignocellulosic crops. These
materials are reviewed in light of an economic lens of analysis and how they, or their underlying
agricultural practices, could be enhanced in order to maximize their economic efficiency for
bioenergy generation. Exploring downstream the bioenergy value chain, industrial waste valoriza-
tion applied to the case of biofuels is also revisited, using food waste recycling as a key example of
the potential of recycling technologies applied to high volumes. In the specific case of agricultural
waste, cost-effective pre-treatment and hydrolysis methods remain particularly critical to convert
these into sugar monomers. The food manufacturing sector is used here to illustrate the various
positive impacts of the deployment of pollution prevention, sustainable energy generation, and
other sustainable development strategies. However, the implementation of a sustainable economy
enabled by green energy requires appropriate vectors for financial investment. An issue of large
volume biomass-to-energy or biomass-to-chemicals projects is that they typically require high
initial capital expenditures, have relatively long periods of break-even returns, and bear various
limitation such as the seasonality of primary raw materials or supply risks; in addition, the
competition with established petrochemical processes remains fierce. Financing strategies for sus-
tainable energy production plants could include green banking and sustainable finance methods
that are characterized by their factoring in environment risk and social burdens. Corporate social
responsibility and corporate sustainability responsibility are furthermore discussed as powerful
forces of change, the influence of which goes beyond the impact of public advocacy in changing
business models or the increasing deployment of cash-generating waste recycling programmes,
in that they already permeate management practices of today in leading companies given their
measurable impacts on the bottom line of businesses. The closing chapter explores the transition
of the industrial world that was inherited from the Industrial Revolution and is thus characterized
by compounding carbon budgets to a new economy where the production function and economic
xxxviii Preface
comparative advantages on the one hand include the social cost of carbon in the production and
transport of goods, and on the other deploys radical innovation to optimize operations via novel
practices ranging from artificial intelligence to run smart cities, to electric cars with electricity as
a universal high quality energy currency, generated and available on-grid as a component of total
factor productivity as well as off-grid as a marker of both individual sustainability responsibility
and of the re-localizing of the production function. This renewed impact of local production in the
context of globalized trade could pave the way to a hyper-modern capitalism in which the magic
hand of the market senses, responds, and swiftly adapts to maximize the production function while
maintaining locally high quality of life and the global climate.
Alain A. Vertés
Basel, Switzerland
Nasib Qureshi
Peoria, IL, USA
Hans P. Blaschek
Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
Hideaki Yukawa
Tokyo, Japan
1
Part I
CHAPTER MENU
Energy is the driving force of all natural processes and a condition for the development of life on
earth as well as for human society and its economic growth. From its origin, the character of energy
is expressed by conceptions rooted in both the natural-physical world and in the human-social
world. According to the Greek term, energeia (activity, reality) is an ‘effecting force’ that brings
about the transition from possibility to reality. Aristotle saw energeia in connection with activ-
ity, action, and power. Later, Wilhelm von Humboldt established the relationship between energy
and conscious human activity, and Leibniz spoke of the ‘living force’ (vis viva) which is preserved
(Mittelstraß 1984).
In the course of the physical confinement of the energy concept and the distinction from the con-
cept of force, energy has been regarded as an observable physical quantity to measure the motion
of material bodies and as an acting force to implement the transition from possibility to reality. The
theorem on the conservation and conversion of energy formulated in the second half of the nine-
teenth century proved that it is possible to convert different forms of energy (mechanical, elastic,
magnetic, electrical, chemical, heat, gravitational, and nuclear energy). While the total quantity of
energy is not lost, but retained in each sequence of conversions, the quality and usability of energy
declines with each stage. Following basic laws of thermodynamics, energy flows from a state of
higher order to one of lower order where its entropy is increasing. Against this gradient, living
organisms can maintain a dynamic equilibrium of flows by a continuous energy supply from the
outside as provided by sunlight and food, or by control over other energy sources. Without this
influx of energy, the order of living organisms disintegrates, and ultimately, they die.
The physical definition of energy as the ability to perform work offers a direct link into the human
world. The potential work contained in natural processes is converted into actual work, affecting
human values and shaping human interactions. Work is often associated with planned human
activity directed towards goals which can be the satisfaction of needs or the maximization of profit
and income. As an essential component of work, energy is becoming a factor of economic produc-
tion, a measure of society’s performance, a prerequisite for prosperity and satisfaction of needs, but
also a condition for growth, power, and violence. The term ‘power’ has a wide range of meanings,
from physical power to political power, also as an important instrument for empowering people
(Scheffran 2002).
For human beings, energy appears in two forms: energy as a driver of the natural metabolism;
and energy in the form of technical mechanisms that convert the energy available in nature to
make it usable for human needs. Energy production and consumption is ambivalent: on the one
hand, it is a prerequisite for human prosperity, on the other it affects the social and natural environ-
ment, with sometimes considerable risks for humans and nature. In the course of history, humans
have succeeded in accessing ever greater sources of energy for their own usage to serve their own
interests and develop societal structures. In long historical perspectives technological waves in agri-
culture and industrialization have been instrumental in shaping the modern developed world. Four
historical periods can be distinguished regarding the forms of energy use (Sieferle 1981):
1. In the solar energy system of hunters and gatherers, people derive as much energy from their
ecological niches as these can deliver sustainably, keeping the material cycles closed.
2. The sun was also the only source of energy in the modelled energy system of agrarian societies
after the so-called ‘Neolithic revolution’ 10 000 years ago, when the energy flow was used in a
much more focused way. This applied to the fields of agriculture, forestry, cattle farming and
fishing which largely relied on the muscle power of humans and animals as well as the use
of plant and animal biomass and, to a lesser degree, on water and wind power. In Europe, in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the limits of the energetic capacity were reached by a
growing human population and its rising demands.
3. The fossil energy system of the industrial society: Compared to the traditional solar energy system,
the exploitation of fossil sources of energy (coal, petroleum, natural gas) accumulated during
millions of years of Earth history, allowed humanity to multiply its energy consumption (EC) by
a factor of more than 16, from 26 EJ in 1850 to 432 EJ in 2000 (Smil 2010; EIA 2016). This unique
treasure of nature enabled the rapid growth of the industrial revolution but may be irretrievably
exhausted in a few decades to centuries. The wasteful use of energy mobilized vast amounts
of resources, ploughing through the surface of the Earth. It accumulated products of all kinds,
released novel chemical substances, changed and destroyed ecosystems, exterminated a number
of species, and polluted the world’s atmosphere, oceans, and soils (Sieferle 1981).
4. Post-industrial sustainable development in the Anthropocene: Ultimately humanity affected the
whole Earth system on a scale justifying a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (Crutzen
and Stoermer 2000). Humans are exceeding their footprint and population grows at a speed and
intensity that is not sustainable and tends to collide with the planetary boundaries and carrying
1.1 Historical Context and Relationship Between Energy and Development 5
capacities of nature (Rockstrom et al. 2009). The restraints on conventional energy supplies and
the limited absorption capacity of the earth’s atmosphere for emissions from the combustion
of fossil energy sources foster the need for a transformation of the industrial production and
lifestyle. The debate on the ‘limits to growth’ in the 1970s (Meadows et al. 1972), and on sustain-
able development in the 1980s and 1990s (WCED 1987) has triggered a wave of Earth politics
(von Weizsäcker 1994) to protect the planet’s integrity, notably the Rio Summit, the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), the quest for a sustainable energy transition and a ‘Great Transfor-
mation’ towards a decarbonization of the energy system.
The current situation in the energy sector is characterized by a growing energy demand
combined with declining reserves, North–South gaps in energy supply, environmental risks and
climate change, and geopolitical conflict potential due the dependency on fossil and nuclear
energy sources. Given the steady increase in energy consumption due to population and consump-
tion growth, the limits of the availability of cheap non-renewable primary energy carriers such as
oil, natural gas and uranium are foreseeable, which are expected to last for a couple of decades
at the expected usage rates. Although large coal reserves are still available, their risks and costs
could undermine their competitiveness. During the twenty-first century, high demands for energy
will encounter various problems of fossil and nuclear energy supplies, widening the gap between
human needs and the supply of affordable and responsible energy.
Decoupling is understood as creating more economic wealth per resource unit, thus diminishing
the input-to-output ratio. There is some evidence that global resource consumption has risen more
slowly than gross domestic product (GDP), as world GDP grew by a factor of 23 in the twentieth
century and resource use rose by a factor of eight (UNEP 2011). It is subject to debate whether it
is possible to decouple economic growth from energy consumption. Energy intensity (energy used
per unit of GDP) has declined in all developed and large developing countries, mainly due to tech-
nology, changes in economic structure, the mix of energy sources, and changes in the participation
of inputs such as capital and labour used (IPCC 2014a,b). Newman (2017) suggests that the ‘decou-
pling of fossil fuels from economic growth has not been imaginable for most of the industrial era
but is now underway’.
Moreau and Vuille (2018) found that almost all members of the European Union have decou-
pled since 2005 as measured by a ‘steady decline in energy intensity, the ratio of final energy
consumption and gross domestic product. Economic growth, energy efficiency and structural
changes have all contributed to changes in energy intensity of economic activities at the national
level’. The authors compare the energy intensities with and without embodied energy in trade
(which has reached 81% of final energy consumption in economic activities) and show that
‘decoupling is more virtual than actual’ (Moreau and Vuille 2018). Sorrell and Ockwell (2010)
summarize the controversy: ‘Orthodox economics assumes that the rebound effects from energy
efficiency improvements are small and that decoupling is both feasible and relatively cheap. In
contrast, ecological economics suggests that rebound effects can be large and that decoupling
is both difficult and expensive. At present, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate which
perspective is correct’. For the future, ‘resource productivity increases as high as 5–10-fold are
already available’ (von Weizsäcker et al. 2014).
While some reduction of coupling between economic growth and energy consumption is under-
way, largely due to efficiency gains in industrialized countries, it is outstripped by population
growth and the attempt of the Global South to catch up in development. In the Western industrial-
ized countries, the standard of living has so far been associated with comparatively higher energy
efficiency and energy consumption per capita than in the Global South that has lower economic
output per energy unit (IPCC 2014a). In some countries, available energy flows are below the
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— Jos sinä tahdot puhua kanssani jostakin, niin ole hyvä ja vaihda
puheenainetta, — sanoi hän yhtäkkiä.
— Ei, Ivan, sinä olet itse sanonut itsellesi useita kertoja, että sinä
olet murhaaja.
— Sinä olet sanonut tätä itsellesi monta kertaa, kun olet jäänyt
yksiksesi näitten kauheitten kahden kuukauden aikana, — jatkoi
Aljoša hiljaa ja selvästi kuten ennenkin. Mutta hän puhui aivan kuin
ulkopuolelta itseään, aivan kuin ei puhuisi omasta tahdostaan, vaan
tottelisi jotakin vastustamatonta käskyä.
Mutta yhtäkkiä hän aivan kuin hillitsi itsensä. Hän seisoi ja näytti
miettivän jotakin. Omituinen nauru vääristi hänen huuliaan.
6.
Smerdjakov huokasi.
— Jos sinä siis itse sanot, ettei voinut arvata, niin kuinka sitten
minä saatoin arvata ja jäädä? Mitä sinä sotket? — lausui Ivan
Fjodorovitš ajatuksissaan.
— Siitä juuri olisitte voinut hoksata, että jos kerran minä koetan
taivuttaa teitä menemään Tšermašnjaan Moskovan asemasta, niin
siis haluan teidän olevan täällä mahdollisimman lähellä, sillä
Moskova on kaukana, mutta kun Dmitri Fjodorovitš tietävät teidän
olevan lähiseuduilla, niin he ovat vähemmän rohkea. Ja minuakin
olisitte voinut, jos jotakin olisi tapahtunut, nopeasti tulla suojelemaan,
sillä minä itse viittasin teille sen lisäksi Grigori Vasiljitšin sairauteen ja
siihen, että pelkäsin kaatuvatautia. Ja kun minä selitin teille ne
koputukset, joiden avulla saattoi päästä sisälle vainajan luo, ja että
Dmitri Fjodorovitš oli saanut ne minun kauttani tietää, niin ajattelin
teidän itsennekin jo arvaavan, että he aikovat tehdä jotakin, ja silloin
ette olisi lähtenyt edes Tšermašnjaan, vaan olisitte jäänyt kokonaan
tänne.
— Mitenkä moitteeksi!