Astrid Kander

North versus South: Energy transition and energy intensity in Europe over 200 years

This article examines energy consumption in Sweden, Holland, Italy and Spain over 200 years, including both traditional and modern energy carriers. The analysis is based on totally new series of energy consumption including traditional carriers along with modern sources. Our main purposes are a closer examination of the process of the energy transition in Europe and a revision of the prevailing idea of there being, over the long run, an inverted U-curve in energy intensity. Changes in energy consumption are decomposed into effects from population growth, economic growth and energy intensity. The results on energy intensity challenge the previous suggestions of most scholars. An inverted U-curve does not exist whenever we include traditional sources of energy in our analysis.

The Role of Energy in the Industrial Revolution and Modern Economic Growth

The expansion in the supply of energy services over the last couple of centuries has reduced the apparent importance of energy in economic growth despite energy being an essential production input. We demonstrate this by developing a simple extension of the Solow growth model, which we use to investigate 200 years of Swedish data. We find that the elasticity of substitution between a capital-labor aggregate and energy is less than unity, which implies that when energy services are scarce they strongly constrain output growth resulting in a Malthusian steady-state. When energy services are abundant the economy exhibits the behavior of the “modern growth regime” with the Solow model as a limiting case. The expansion of energy services is found to be a major factor in explaining the industrial revolution and economic growth in Sweden, especially before the second half of the 20th century. In the latter period, labor-augmenting technological change becomes the dominant factor driving growth.

Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries

Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. Power to the People offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.

Energy consumption, pollutant emissions and growth in the long run: Sweden through 200 years

This article examines the evolution of energy use and pollution emissions in Sweden over the past two centuries – a much longer period than has been investigated in the large literature on the envi ...

Energy availability from livestock and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1815–1913: a new comparison

This article explores the proposition that a reason for high agricultural productivity in the early nineteenth century was relatively high energy availability from draught animals. The article is based on the collection of extensive new data indicating different trends in draught power availability and the efficiency of its use in different countries of Europe. This article shows that the proposition does not hold, and demonstrates that, although towards the end of the nineteenth century England had relatively high numbers of draught animals per agricultural worker, it also had low number of workers and animals per hectare, indicating the high efficiency of muscle power, rather than an abundance of such power. The higher efficiency was related to a specialization on less labour-intensive farming and a preference for horses over oxen.

Energy availability from livestock and agricultural productivity in Europe, c.1800-1913: a new comparison

This article explores the proposition that a reason for high agricultural productivity in the early nineteenth century was relatively high energy availability from draught animals. The article is based on the collection of extensive new data indicating different trends in draught power availability and the efficiency of its use in different countries of Europe. This article shows that the proposition does not hold, and demonstrates that, although towards the end of the nineteenth century England had relatively high numbers of draught animals per agricultural worker, it also had low number of workers and animals per hectare, indicating the high efficiency of muscle power, rather than an abundance of such power. The higher efficiency was related to a specialization on less labour-intensive farming and a preference for horses over oxen.

Is it Simply Getting Worse? Agriculture and Swedish Greenhouse Gas Emissions Over 200 Years

This paper challenges the idea that emissions of greenhouse gases simply increase over time with income. It adopts a 200-year perspective and includes the important flows of greenhouse gases related to agriculture, not just the CO2 from fossil fuels. The result is that the pattern of Swedish total greenhouse gas emissions over time resembles an N. In contrast, when only emissions from fossil fuels are counted, the pattern over time resembles an inverted U. Among the most important factors generating emissions in agriculture, forest management was especially important, but in addition, draining of wetlands for agriculture played a substantial role. I I t is useful to know the historical development of pollution in order to understand its current and future development. It is important to adopt a sufficiently long-term perspective, one century into the future and two centuries into the past, to understand the interplay between developmental and environmental processes, especially for pollutants like greenhouse gases that have a long lifespan in the atmosphere. 2 Historical emissions of greenhouse gases are also of interest when it comes to the responsibility of individual countries in reducing emissions. 3 If countries’ responsibilities for past global warming were to be taken into account in present climate-change negotiations, historical emissions would have political implications. Sources that were more influential in the past may not be so influential today, and vice versa. In addition, it may be the case that we get a biased picture of the historical development if we base our understanding simply on the development of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels. It is widely believed that emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels always increase with increasing income, although emissions have fallen in Sweden and a few other European countries in the last few decades.This paper shows that, in fact, taking account of the historical development of all relevant greenhouse gases changes this picture profoundly. Agriculture, including forestry, has gone through substantial changes over the last 200 years, and has played an important role in greenhouse gas emissions. These changes are depicted and their effects estimated in this paper. The pattern that emerges is not a simple increase of greenhouse gas emissions over time, but one revealing that emissions have increased in some periods and decreased in others. Maximal emissions occurred not in the twentieth century, but

Innovation trends and industrial renewal in Finland and Sweden 1970-2013

ABSTRACT We examine trends in innovation output for two highly ranked innovative countries: Finland and Sweden (1970–2013). Our novel dataset, collected using the LBIO (literature-based innovation output) method, suggests that the innovation trends are positive for both countries, despite an extended downturn in the 1980s. The findings cast some doubt on the proposition that the current stagnation of many developed countries is due to a lack of innovation and investment opportunities. Our data show that Finland catches up to, and passes, Sweden in innovation output in the 1990s. In per capita terms, Finland stays ahead throughout the period. We find that the strong Finnish performance is largely driven by innovation increase in just a handfull of sectors, but is not restricted to few companies. Both countries saw a rise in innovation during the dot-com era and the structural changes that followed. Since 2000 however, Sweden has outperformed Finland in terms of total innovations, especially in machinery and ICT, while the Finnish rate of innovation has stabilised. We suggest that these patterns may be explained by different paths of industrial renewal.

Energy availability from livestock and agricultural productivity in Europe, 1815-1913: a new comparison: ENERGY AVAILABILITY FROM LIVESTOCK

This article explores the proposition that a reason for high agricultural productivity in the early nineteenth century was relatively high energy availability from draught animals. The article is based on the collection of extensive new data indicating different trends in draught power availability and the efficiency of its use in different countries of Europe. This article shows that the proposition does not hold, and demonstrates that, although towards the end of the nineteenth century England had relatively high numbers of draught animals per agricultural worker, it also had low number of workers and animals per hectare, indicating the high efficiency of muscle power, rather than an abundance of such power. The higher efficiency was related to a specialization on less labour-intensive farming and a preference for horses over oxen.