Energy and Economic Growth: Why we need a new pathway to prosperity

Drawing on the presenter’s recent book, this presentation reports on insights for a transition to a sustainable low carbon energy future that can be drawn from a study of the role of energy technologies in historical waves of industrial change. Drawing on evolutionary economics and ecological economics, this study examines the role that access to new sources of (fossil fuel) energy and economy-wide energy efficiency improvements have played in these historical waves, which have driven surges of economic growth. This has lessons for the scale of changes in technologies, institutions, business strategies and user practices that will be needed for a low carbon energy transition, and for recent debates on green growth vs post growth perspectives, implying the need for new economic thinking.

The lecture will be followed by a networking reception.

Biography

Prof Tim Foxon is Professor of Sustainability Transitions at SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit), University of Sussex. His research explores the technological and social factors relating to the innovation of new energy technologies, the co-evolution of technologies and institutions for a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy, and relations and interdependencies between energy use and economic growth. He is a member of the Centre for Research on Energy Demand Solutions, Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand, the UK Energy Research Centre and of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. His book on Energy and Economic Growth: Why we need a new pathway to prosperity has recently been published by Routledge.