In this episode, we chat with Steve Keene, Ph.D in Economics, on why using Energy as the lens to view our economic systems may provide some of the answers to both our financial, social, and environmental structures.
Key discussion topics:
- Why we cannot ignore Energy as a primary input in our Economic systems. Labor without energy is a corpse and capital without energy is a sculpture. So why do we treat energy as an immaterial input in our Neo Classical systems?
- How Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) represents a scaling tool to measure primary energy sources and how this may fit into our complex energy and economic systems.
- We breakdown a company’s life cycle and limitations of traditional analysis (DCF, IRR) and how it cannot be disconnected from evaluating company’s impact on the physical world (CO2 footprint, EROI, sustainability footprint).
- The role of concentrated vs diffused energy resources on wealth creation and how to balance in the context of negative externalities such as Green House Gases (GHG).