Doing more with less: Improving the environment through green engineering

Environment

Volumn 48, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 22-37

  Grubler, Arnulf ^a  

^a INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS   (Austria)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COST CONTROL; ENGINEERING; ENVIRONMENT; ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION; POLLUTION; PRODUCTIVITY; REVIEW; SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; TECHNOLOGY;

EID: 33144458600     PISSN: 00139157     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3200/ENVT.48.2.22-37     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. For examples, see R. M. Solow, Growth Theory and After (Nobel Prize Lecture, 1987), http://nobel-prize.org/economics/laureates/1987/solow-lecture. html;
2. E. Denison, Trends in American Economic Growth, 1929-1982. (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1985);
3. and N. Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, "Science, Technology and the Western Miracle," Scientific American 263, no. 5 (1990): 18-25.
4. P. Gray, "The Paradox of Technological Development," in J. H. Ausubel and H. E. Sladovich, eds., Technology and Environment (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 1989), 192-204.
5. N. Nakićenović et al., Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Cambridge, UK: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Cambridge University Press, 2000).
6. W. D. Nordhaus, Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not (New Haven, CT: Cowles Foundation Paper No. 957, 1998).
7. S. Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
8. J. H. Ausubel and A. Grubler, "Working Less and Living Longer: Long-term Trends in Working Time and Time Budgets," Technological Forecasting and Social Change 50, no. 3 (1995): 195-213.
9. R. Noetstaller, "Patterns of Mineral Demand and Supply-Global and Regional Perspectives," Berg- und Hüttenmännische Monatshefte (Mountain- and Metallurgical Monthly) 147 no. 12, (2002): 402;
10. and F.-W. Wellmer and M. Wagner, "Rohstofftrends am Beginn des 3. Jahrtausends" (Raw Material Trends at the Beginning of the Third Millennium), Erzmetall (Ore Metal) 53 (2000): 569.
11. W. B. Arthur, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
12. H. J. Herzog, "What Future for Carbon Capturt and Sequestration?" Environmental Science & Technology 35, no. 7 (2001): 148A-53A.
13. I. K. Wernick, "Consuming Materials: The American Way," Technological Forecasting and Social Change 53,no. 1 (1996): 111-122.
14. A. Grubler, "Transitions in Energy Use," Encyclopedia of Energy Vol. 6 (2004): 163-77.
15. To show the analogy between this expression and I=PAT, the term (GDP) can be broken down into population x income per head/population. For more information on the I=PAT identity, please see P. R. Ehrlich and J. P. Holdren, review of The Closing Circle, by Barry Commoner, Environment 14, no. 3 (April 1972): 23-4, 36-9.
16. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2001 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
17. Carbon emissions from automobiles are proportional to gasoline use. Hence we use this as a metric for our decompositional analysis where gasoline use is the product of: passengers x vehicles/passengers x miles driven/vehicle x gasoline use/mile x SUV adjustment factor The vehicles/passenger variable is the inverse of the automobile load factor that has decreased from approximately 2 passengers per vehicle in the late 1960s to 1.6 in 1995. More recent data are trend extrapolations. The SUV adjustment factor accounts for structural changes in the U.S. automobile fleet toward more SUVs and pick-up trucks. Their effect is smaller than the difference in fuel consumption would suggest, because their shorter driving distances, as compared to traditional passenger cars, moderate their characteristically poor gas mile-age rating. For this multiplicative identity, component growth rates are additive and thus help to explain their relative contribution to total gasoline use and emissions growth as shown in Figure 5. It is necessary to assume that components are independent from each other, which is a statistical assumption justified only for the purposes of our simplified analysis. In reality, important variable interdependencies exist. For instance, more fuel-efficient cars reduce operating costs and also allow driving over longer distances: an effect frequently referred to as consumer "take-back." For more information on the performance of SUVs, see S. Plotkin, "Is Bigger Better? Moving Toward a Dispassionate View of SUVs," Environment 46, no. 9 (November 2004): 8-31.
18. American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AAMA), Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures, (Detroit, MI: AAMA 1996);
19. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Air Pollutant Emission Trends 1900-1994, EPA-454/R-95-11 (Washington DC, 1995);
20. M. Ross, R. Goodwin, R. Watkins, M. Q. Wang, and T. Wenzel, Real-World Emissions from Model Year 1993, 2000, and 2010 Passenger Cars, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory LBL-37977 (Berkeley, CA, 1995).
21. EPA, ibid.
22. M. Ross, R. Goodwin, R. Watkins, M. Q. Wang, and T. Wenzel, note 15 above.
23. EPA, note 15 above.
24. For a review, see L. Argote and D. Epple, "Learning Curves in Manufacturing," Science, 23 January 1990, 920-4.
25. A successful example can be found at the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, http://public.itrs.net/.