Energy, Economic Growth and Pollution Network [planning meeting]

Description

This meeting aims to investigate the possibilities, and formulate plans, for a major project on the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in Europe from the pre-industrial period to the present. This entails comparative work by scholars in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, providing a major body of quantitative data on the development of energy use and GDP, as well as analyses of the changes in consumption at a sectoral level of the economy. It is also hoped that this will facilitate analysis of the development of pollution trends related to energy use over time. This project is in the development stage and it is hoped that it could provide a major resource for scholars working on the interfaces between energy use, environmental change, health indicators, and economic growth.

As well as logistical planning, the meeting will focus its intellectual content around papers on 'Three Industrial Revolutions', conceived as the transition from an organic economy to fossil fuels; the development of oil- and electricity-based economies; and the contemporary development of bio- and information technology. The discussions will examine how significant qualitative changes in the nature of economic development were for growth and to what degree these depended in the introduction of new energy sources (or 'energy carriers'.)
Convener:

Dr Paul Warde, Pembroke College, Cambridge