Inspiration (from economists!) Inspiration (from us!) Your last chance to register for the X-Change No Images? Click here April 2019 NewsDear colleagues I was inspired recently watching a documentary by Jeremy Rifkin on the ‘third industrial revolution’. I recommend it as essential watching. It includes important messages about the critical role of energy productivity in economic development. This is from a Rifkin article: ‘Until very recently, economists measured productivity by two factors: machine capital and labour performance. But when Robert Solow — who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1987 for his growth theory — tracked the Industrial Age, he found that machine capital and labour performance only accounted for approximately 12.5% of all of economic growth, raising the question of what was responsible for the other 87.5%. This mystery led economist Moses Abramovitz, former president of the American Economic Association, to admit what other economists were afraid to acknowledge—that the other 87% is a “measure of our ignorance.” Over the past 25 years, analysts including physicist Reiner Kümmel of the University of Würzburg, Germany, and economist Robert Ayres at INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France, retraced economic growth of the industrial period using a 3-factor analysis of machine capital, labour performance, and thermodynamic efficiency of energy use. They found that it is “the increasing thermodynamic efficiency with which energy and raw materials are converted into useful work” that accounts for most of the rest of the gains in productivity and growth in industrial economies. In other words, “energy” is the missing factor’. So, the key to lifting overall economic productivity (and boosting growth while slashing carbon emissions) is innovation that transforms energy productivitythrough:
A2EP aims to catalyse this energy transition through our work to promote and communicate innovation. Next Monday 08 April you have an opportunity to be inspired and stimulated by our Innovation X-Change on the energy transition. You don’t want to miss it. The X-Change features many of the partners and technologies in the CRC bid we are supporting: RACE for 2030. See you in Ultimo next Monday! All the best Innovation X-Change: The customer-centred transformation In the news It’s Federal Budget day and the Coalition Government might be about to reveal further enhancements to policy and programs for energy productivity. Meantime, the alternative government, the ALP, has published its Climate Change Action Plan. A summary is available here. We continue to be concerned about a focus on renewables absent comprehensive action on efficiency. The annual Ipsos climate survey reveals that two thirds of Australians believe that climate change is already affecting Australia. About half of respondents attribute increased frequency of drought and bushfire to climate change. Two thirds favour boosting renewable power generation. The report is online here. The World Economic Forum ranks Australia outside the top third of nations in its annual energy transition index. We join other advanced economies Canada and South Korea outside the top quarter “due to the high carbon intensity of… fuel mix… and high per capita energy consumption and carbon emissions”. The report is available online here. The International Energy Agencyhas published its Global Energy and CO2 Status Report 2018, rating energy efficiency as the greatest source of abatement in the energy sector. Disappointingly, and for the third consecutive year, the rate of improvement in efficiency has slowed. That puts the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario further from reach. The report is available online here. Forthcoming |