What you may have suspected for years is true: Natural resources are consistently undervalued in world markets. Nations exporting raw materials and importing finished goods always get the short end of the trade. These were recurring themes among Systems Ecologists from around the world as they met for the 5th biennial Emergy Research Conference at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Systems ecologists use the laws of thermodynamics to study ecosystems at all scales, including those that include man and his economy. Their discipline has been growing and evolving for forty years, but is not well known outside university campuses and agencies like the EPA or Corps of Engineers.
Emergy measures the total effort required to create a substance or structure, including the work of humans, machines and nature. It provides a measure of intrinsic value, one which does not necessarily line up with market values. Emergy can be used to gage the purchasing power of currencies.
Each conferee paid a registration fee equivalent to $100, adjusted by the emergy value of his home country’s currency. For instance:
- Japan: $129.70
- U.S.: $100.00
- Germany: $68.90
- Austria: $40.28
- China: $16.26
One hundred dollars exchanged into Rinminbi buys much more real value in China than in the U.S. – consistent with my casual observations as a tourist. (Free market exchange rates drop out in the purchasing power calculations, but a controlled rate such as China’s probably distorts the result.)
Emergy Measure Mirrors CPI
Dan Campbell (U.S. EPA) and Hongfang Lu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) computed the annual emergy usage of the U.S. economy from 1900 through 2004. Correlating the historical curve of emergy usage with that of the CPI, they showed that the emergy values accounted for nearly all the variance in CPI over the period – value as measured by emergy usage mirrored the value measured by the BLS market basket. Not surprisingly, the curve of emergy usage closely followed the curve of real GDP over the period. The curvature of the real GDP plot was measured and shown to be super-exponential during recent years.
China’s emergy use and GDP showed even more explosive growth in the last decade. But in China’s trade with the rest of the world, it received far less real value than it gave. Trading mostly with the US and other developed countries; it was paid in currencies commanding much lower emergy value.
Biofuels and Solar Show Marginal Yields
Several emergy analyses of biofuel production were presented, including biodiesel from organic and conventionally grown soybeans, ethanol from sugarcane, ethanol from wheat and others. The standard emergy analysis reports an Emergy Yield Ratio, calculated as:
emergy output
EYR = ——————————-
purchased emergy inputs
Free inputs from nature are not included, so processes that capture much of their emergy from nature have higher yields. Purchased emergy inputs take account of the full life cycle emergy cost of any equipment involved.
None of the biofuel analyses showed an EYR higher than 1.5:1. A few EYRs reported for solar thermal and photovoltaic systems were in the same low range.
Many systems ecologists believe that a yield of at least 4:1 is needed for any process to be useful as a primary energy source. EYRs reported in various studies of wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric and tidal power mentioned during the conference all exceeded 4:1.
Low yielding processes may be useful in the context of larger systems or strategies, but investors and planners should not expect massive development of these marginal sources.
Gold, Silver and Cyanide
Wesley Ingwesen (UF) presented his study of the world’s largest gold mine, an open pit operation in Yanachocha, Peru. Its ore is very low grade, far lower than that panned by prospectors in the gold rushes of the 19th century. Thirty tons of ore must be dug from the ground, hauled away by the Camiones Gigantes and leached with a cyanide solution to yield one ounce of dore, a mixture of gold and silver.
Peruvian law requires the land to be restored and the toxic leach water to be purified. The life cycle inventory and emergy breakdown shows that as much work is done in these efforts as in the mining/leaching process itself. Still, the mine is highly profitable, turning out 33 million ounces a year.
New Calculus Could Improve Climate Forecasting
Corrado Giannantoni (ENEA, Rome) presented a derivation of “incipient derivatives,” the word “incipient” implying “yet to be born.” Conventional calculus is inadequate for solving problems involving systems which self-design – not only ecosystems but some physical systems such as storms and the earth’s climate.
Giannoantoni developed this new class of derivatives to address a theoretical problem in systems ecology, the maximum empower principle. The new derivatives enable a solution not only to this problem but also to the “3-body problem,” a classic stumbling block in physics. When applied to weather and climate modeling, they should lead to much more successful forecasts, though not in the form of deterministic predictions.
His remarks were warmly received, especially by those who could follow his derivation (not I.) The final question during the discussion period was, “Could you please explain that in plain English?” After the question was clarified in Italian, Giannantoni graciously answered that he had worked for months composing and simplifying his paper, and could not make it any plainer.
Emergy Basis for Environmental Policy
Amaya Martinez (University Zaragoza, Spain) presented an emergy analysis of a small watershed near Zaragoza, Spain, a pilot project for a larger study to satisfy the European Water Development Framework for the region. The framework requires regional planners to project the costs of proposed water-related development in three categories, only one of which can be handled by conventional economic analysis. Martinez, Mark Brown and Javier Uche performed the pilot study, showing that emergy analysis could provide full data for the other categories. The framework requires full recovery of the environmental costs on the principle that “the polluter pays,” whether the source is industry, agriculture or households.
Elliot Campbell (University of Florida) presented a study done for the U.S. Forest Service, in support of its mandate to conserve and preserve “environmental services” and “natural capital” in its 193 million acres of forest. The agency needed a way to measure the value of their forests’ services and natural capital – their full support value to local ecosystems. Campbell and Mark Brown drew on USFS records to develop a comprehensive emergy evaluation. Taking account of emergy content, the forests proved to be nearly a hundred times more valuable than in earlier estimates, which mainly considered the dollar value of the trees as lumber.
Family Emergy Values
In a departure from common methodology, Thomas Abel (Tzu Chi University, Taiwan) analyzed the economic and social landscape of Taiwan on the basis of households. “Economy is people,” he remarked: economic decisions are actually made by people living in households, not by the abstract structures of corporations or government. Each region in the country showed a layering of household groups based on the breadwinner’s occupation, from the lowest to the highest salary, with emergy flows converging toward the upper layers. But all the country’s households were affected by decisions made in other, very wealthy households far away.
Fiduciary Responsibility Is Not Enough
Donald Adolphson (Brigham Young University) described how, in his years of teaching business administration, he realized there was something missing in the way his colleagues viewed the world. The combined efforts of a group of corporations, all operating legally and with the highest conventional business ethics, can “ethically” destroy the ecosystem which their shareholders and others depend on for their very lives. We need a deeper view of business ethics which includes responsibility to the ecosystem. The concept vivantary responsibility has been developed to fill this gap.
Supporting Family Farms in Brazil
A rural resettlement program in Brazil has persuaded thousands of city dwellers to take up farming on small plots averaging about 20 acres. The land can provide enough produce to feed a family, with a large surplus for sale. But many new settlers choose to rent their farms to large agricultural concerns instead, resulting in a lower income for them and a less sustainable use of the land.
Alexandre Souza and Enrique Ortega (St. University of Campinas, Mexico) designed a program to help farmers perform an emergy analysis of their properties, with temporary assistance from the scientists. This analysis, and the experience of performing it, will help them to see beyond their immediate cash flow concerns and plan for the most productive and sustainable use of their land.
All We Need Is Love
Two papers and much discussion centered on the antipathy between ecologists and economists. (Classical economics comes in for sharp criticism in the systems ecology literature.) Erik Gronlund (County Admin. of Jamtland, Sweden) discussed his research into economic methodology. He found considerable understanding of environmental limits and values in the literature of classical economics, from Adam Smith on- in contrast to the common tone of economic discussion today.
Chung-Hsin Juan (National Ilan University, Taiwan) discussed the issues in light of the insights of Confucius and the Buddha, suggesting that emergy models might benefit by adding a unit to represent human consciousness. He remarked that perhaps ecologists and economists should learn to love each other, noting that a colleague had set an excellent example by marrying an economist.
Revision Planned for Wiki Emergy Article
Several conferees were concerned about the treatment of Emergy in Wikipedia. The topic is presented at a rarified level of abstraction that could be baffling to a casual reader.
The first priority of the newly formed International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research (ISAER) will be to provide a simplified Wiki article to serve as an introduction to the topic. For now, a good basic introduction is available at the Emergy Systems website.
Ranching for Sustainability
Stewart Diemont (SUNY) reviewed the emergy characteristics of a group of 25 ranches in Chiapas province, Mexico, whose owners have formed the “Ranching for Sustainability Club” to promote sustainable use of rangelands. Alarmed at the degradation of soils on their lands, these ranchers abandoned the use of fire and herbicides, allowing a more natural mix of grasses and shrubs to grow on the land- a bold move given their tight operating margins. Soil quality on their ranches is steadily improving.
Diemont, Bruce Ferguson and Rigoberto Alfara performed an emergy evaluation of these ranches and a group of similar, conventionally managed properties. Emergy yield from the land is higher than the conventional ranches, while the level of costs and productivity is the same. The group has created its own milk brand and is able to market its milk at 3.5 pesos a litre, half a peso above the market price for other milk. They concentrate on the local market, selling nearly all their product within a 300 kilometres range.
Cool Under the Green Cloak
Green roofs slow the runoff of storm water, stay cooler and even provide habitat for birds, but are costly and difficult to install. Laura Shumann and David Tilley (University of Maryland) constructed an experimental green “cloak,” a dense layer of vines grown on a wire trellis above the building’s roof, with a few inches of air space in between. The trellis and plants were easier and cheaper to install, and provided many of the benefits of a complete green roof.
Needed: A Policy of the Commons
Sergio Ulgiati (U of Naples, Italy) told the conference that “Human societies, and their economic systems as well, are facing a ‘new scarcity’… not the ‘simple’ depletion of … one or more resources, but a decreasing life supporting ability of the environment as a whole….” To illustrate, he recalled the rhyme of the Lorax, probably the only one of Dr. Suess’ books ever banned (my quote):
Mister! He said with a sawdusty sneeze,
I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
And I’m asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs–
he was very upset as he shouted and puffed–
What’s that THING you’ve made out of my Truffula tuft?
The conference was organized by the Institute for Environmental Policy of the University of Florida, directed by Dr. Mark Brown. Established in 1991 by Dr. Howard Odum, CEP is dedicated to conducting research, teaching, and service that address the interface of energy, ecology, and economics and to establishing sustainable environmental policies and management frameworks.
Bob Wise is a software engineer in Merritt Island, Florida. Educated as a geographer, he attended one of the first seminars in systems ecology at UF in 1970, and has collected books on the subject over the years.
