• Energy Research

Abstract The tertiary (or ‘service’) sector is commonly identified as a relatively clean part of the economy. Accordingly, sustainable development policy routinely invokes ‘tertiarization’—a shift from primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary sector—as a means of decoupling economic growth from environmental damages. However, this argument does not account for environmental impacts related to the household consumption of tertiary sector employees. Here we show using a novel analytical framework that when the household consumption of labour is treated as a necessary and endogenous input to production, the environmental impacts of all sectors converge. This shift in perspective also exacerbates existing disparities in the attribution of environmental impact from economic activity among developed and developing economies. Our findings suggest that decoupling of economic activity from environmental impacts is unlikely to be achieved by transitioning to a service-based economy alone, but rather, that reducing environmental damages from economic activity may require fundamental changes to the scale and composition of consumption across all economic sectors.

Maintaining steady growth remains the central goal of economic policy in most nations. However, as evidenced by the advent of the Anthropocene, the global economy has expanded to a point where limits to growth are appearing. Facing the end of growth requires a careful re-examination of plausible future conditions. We draw on a diverse literature to present an interdisciplinary exploration of post-growth conditions in the areas of climate change, ecological impacts, governance, and education, finding that such conditions may invalidate many prevalent assumptions regarding the future. The post-growth world, while subject to significant uncertainty and heterogeneity, will be characterized by profound hazards and discontinuities for both human and natural systems. Furthermore, we argue that an economic paradigm change will be predicated on an involuntary and unplanned cessation of growth. This implies a necessary strategic expansion of the heterodox economic discourse to formulate appropriate responses in view of likely post-growth realities.

Could declining world energy supplies result in a turn toward authoritarianism by governments around the world? Mainstream forecasts of an increase in world energy production lasting until at least mid-century are coming under sustained criticism from researchers emphasizing the dynamics of resource depletion. Energy decline is a likely near-term challenge that polities around the world will face. Energy metabolism is a constraining factor for societal complexity and economic production, as established in the anthropological and biophysical economics literature and supported by a multitude of examples of both modern and pre-modern societies. It can be argued that political systems will necessarily face significant destabilization and the potential for a reversion to more autocratic forms as a result of energy depletion. We review relevant risk factors for this shift toward authoritarianism and discuss the contrasting aspects of democratic and authoritarian governance under conditions of energy decline. We conclude with a discussion of possible responses to counter the risks of democratic failure. Overall, we find that opacity of the links between energy, the economy, and politics may hamper such responses and that a more widespread understanding of the role of energy in society will be advantageous to the survival of democratic governance.