The secret formula for "reality math" used in SEA...
10/4/13 JLH


The real secret to estimating your TRUE material impact on the earth
... any
$ spent goes ONLY to PEOPLE

ONLY PEOPLE TAKE MONEY... Nature doesn't, Technology doesn't.  So every dollar spent is converted to human consumption, DIRECTLY paying for the work people do for us but far down the service and supply chains, very hidden from view and untraceable. That's the resource use WE HAVEN'T BEEN COUNTING.  The more visible consumption we pay for is purchased as commodities,  for which someone always has receipts.   That resource use we see is what WE HAVE BEEN COUNTING. 

So we want to count them both, BOTH the visible energy use AND  the hidden energy use paid for with the work of delivering any purchase

PAY THE
OIL MAN $$$$

=>

 

The Oil Man spends or invests the money

the Energy consumed by
the Oil Man
= EMAN

Combines the $'s you paid, and the average energy the economy uses per $GDP(1), reduced by the fraction normally hidden and untraced ε(2).  

= $*E/$GDP*ε

total
ENERGY USE

<=

==   EMAN + EOIL

     

YOU GET
OIL TO BURN

<=

= Barrels*E/BARREL

Energy for the OIL = EOIL

 

you burn the oil he delivers,
(for ease, we assume he gets it from nature for free)

     

1) What makes this really work is how dollars spent in the economy become so VERY widely distributed to every type of income group, and people who mostly have the same range of high and low intensity kinds of energy consumption.  So having "about the same average" energy consumption in reality is both realistic and necessary to assume, having for the moment no better way to check.  

2) ε - the fraction of hidden energy use in GDP was initially estimated at 90%  -  See Systems Energy Assessment Figure 1 & Table 3, col. 8.   In Figure 1 the size and energy intensity of the various US economic sectors is graphed, using data from the input/output table for the US economy used for reference. 

The fraction of hidden energy in the economy was roughly scaled by adding up the energy uses of the sectors for services that seemed likely to be omitted by efforts to add up traceable producer energy use using standard methods, such as LCA or GHG scope 2 or 3 assessments.   It's because SEA is a new combined method for including the hidden energy uses other assessment scopes omit, that it is called a Scope 4 assessment.


 



We'll also pay fees for depletion, as well as for pollutionso we might as well learn to count and get the numbers right today.

For CO2 pollution taxes it would be natural to set the tax near a realistic cost for CO2 sequestration, like buried bio-char.  Serious estimates are that would result in a 10%-20% increase in the cost of everything on earth, though!!   It's based on world annual GDP, CO2 and estimates of the price of bio-char from expert sources, information at a conference and an SSPP article “Using Charcoal to Fix the price of carbon emissions”.    It seems the kind economic hit needed to adjust to sustainability we'll need to do, more than once...

jlh