THE PLOWBOY PAPERS ENERGY, ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
(Page 5 of 11)
May/June 1974
By Mother Earth News
9. Energy sources which are now marginal, being supported by hidden subsidies based on fossil fuel, become less economic when the hidden subsidy is removed.
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A corollary of the previous principle of using rich energies to subsidize marginal ones is that the marginal energy sources will not be as net yielding later, since there will be no subsidy. This truth is often stated backwards in economists' concepts because there is inadequate recognition of external changes in energy quality. Often they propose that marginal energy sources will be economic later when the rich sources are gone. An energy source is not a source unless it is contributing yields, and ability of marginal sources to yield goes down as the other sources of subsidy become poorer. Figure 4 shows these relationships.
10. Increasing energy efficiency with new technology is not an energy solution, since most technological innovations are really diversions of cheap energy into hidden subsidies in the form of fancy, energy-expensive structures.
Most of our century of progress with increasing efficiencies of engines has really been spent developing mechanisms to subsidize a process with a second energy source. Many calculations of efficiency omit these energy inputs. We build better engines by putting more energy into the complex factories for manufacturing the equipment. The percentage of energy yield in terms of all the energies incoming may be less, not greater. Making energy net yielding is the only process not amenable to high energy-based technology.
11. Even in urban areas more than half of the useful work on which our society is based comes from the natural flows of sun, wind, waters, waves, etc., that act through the broad areas of seas and landscapes without money payment. An economy, to compete and survive, must maximize its use of these energies, not destroying their enormous free subsidies. The necessity of environmental inputs is often not realized until they are displaced.
When an area first grows, it may add some new energy sources in fuels and electric power, but when it gets to about 50 percent of the area developed it begins to destroy and diminish as much necessary life-support work that was free and unnoticed as it adds. At this point, further growth may produce a poor ability in economic competition because the area now has higher energy drains. For example, areas that grow too dense with urban developments may pave over the areas that formerly accepted and reprocessed waste waters. As a consequence, special tertiary waste treatments become necessary and monetary and energy drains are diverted from useful works to works that were formerly supplied free.
12. Environmental technology which duplicates the work available from the ecological sector is an economic handicap.
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