A presentation held by prof Ernst von Weizsäcker at the seminar "Towards a circular economy" arranged by Swedish think tank Global Utmaning and Stockholm Resilience Centre at Galleri 3, Kulturhuset, Stockholm.

1. Towards a Circular Economy: Driving Forces
and Obstacles –What Are the Policy Challenges?
Stockholm, Kulturhuset, 16 April, 2012
Transforming the Global Economy Through 80%
Improvements in Resource Productivity: How to Do It
Prof. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
Co-Chairman

2. What do we mean by
Sustainable Development?

3. Sustainable development means small ecological footprints
and a high Human Development Index (HDI)
10 Ecologica
l
footprints
8 High HDI
(hectares)
6
4 The sustainability
rectangle
2
Small ecol. footprints
0 0.2 HDI
0.4 0.6 0.8 1

4. Alas, only one country currently populates
the sustainability rectangle
Cuba
Source:
Global Footprints Network

5. If 7 b people would insist having
footprints like US Americans, we
would need 5 planets Earth

6. Energy is about half of the footprints.
It is also the limiting factor for the circular
economy. And it has direct environmental
effects, notably global warming and
nuclear radiation.

7. We seem to be destabilizing Greenland. (Freshwater
coverage during Summers 1992 and 2002)
.

8. Sea level rise can take catastrophic speed!
(after Michael Tooley. Global sea-levels: floodwaters mark sudden rise. Nature 342 (6245), p 20 - 21
1989)

9. Areas in red are under water if the
Greenland ice breaks off. How about
Stockholm?
Bangladesh Florida

10. The Fukushima disaster looks like the final
blow to nuclear energy.
The Tsunami causes a nuclear desaster The radioactive cloud after 7 days
( NTV Japan) (Blog alexanderhiggins.com)

11. So far, GDP goes with CO2 intensity.

12. We have to break this correlation, i.e. creating a Kuznets
Curve of decarbonization.
„rich and
carbon free“

13. And then help poorer countries tunneling through.
„rich and
carbon free“

14. Renewable energies for decarbonization? They are fine in small sizes
but can be nasty in large quantities.
PV as large as airports (Saxony, Germany) Wind turbines,- do you want such neighbours?
Hydrodams : no end of conflicts! Endless palmoil plantations (here in Malysia)

15. Let‘s calculate: if 1b people (the rich) achieve 20%
new renewables, that‘s 1/35 of what you would need
for 7b people on earth.
Developing
countries
NIC‘s
Old industrial-
ized countries
And now imagine a 35fold increase of today‘s biofuels
plantations, wind power, hydopower, solar power. It‘s an
ecological nightmare!

16. In other words, decarbonization is
just not good enough. We should
also create a Kuznets Curve of
energy consumption!

17. GDP also goes with Domestic Material
Consumption (DMC)
The picture is from the first Decoupling report of
the Interntional Resource Panel

18. For DMC, too, we should create a Kuznets Curve.

19. … and assist developing countries to tunnel through

20. Creating the those new
Kuznets Curves, - that‘s
the agenda of
Decoupling.

21. In other words: a Green Kondratiev Cycle,
after five brown Cycles.
Biotech Energy productivity,
IT renew. Energy.
Cyclical economy
TV, aviation,
computers,
Electricity,
chemicals,cars
Steel &
railroads
Mechanization

22. I come back to the Green
Kondratiev in a moment.
But what can we do for the short-
cut for developing countries?

23. The best solution is per capita equal CO2
emission rights
It was proposed by the Indian PM Manmohan
Singh. It means the North would have to go
shopping for emission rights in the South.
But that was 5 years ago. Meanwhile India,
like China, are no longer willing to go for it,
saying they need more energy per capita than
the old industrial countries.

24. Nevertheless, some kind of „carbon
justice“ approach is needed. It would
make it profitable in developing countries
to become very energy efficient and to
turn to renewable energies.
Efficiency technology would rapidly
migrate to the South. And hundreds of
plans for new coal power plants could be
scrapped.

25. Back now to the technology task of
decoupling prosperity from energy.
Let us think bold about efficiency!

26. Imagine a bucket
of water of 10 kg
weight
How many
Kilowatt-
hours
do you need to lift
it from sea level
to the top of
Mount Everest?

27. 1 kwh
The answer is:
One quarter of a
kilowatthour!
(knowing that one watt-
second is one Joule or one
Newton-meter; ¼ kwh is
900.000 watt-seconds)

28. December, 2009 March, 2010 October, 2010
Bold efficiency thinking is at the heart of Factor Five

29. Another bold approach, also a Report to the Club of Rome, is
The Blue Economy
Building the Blue Economy
Das Buch
10 years, 100 innovations, 100 million jobs
The Blue Economy
- by Gunter Pauli. From over 2.000
innovations, he selected 100 that are
published on a weekly basis at
www.blue.economy.de

30. A factor of five in the increase of resource productivity
could pull or push most countries into sustainability!
10 Ecol. Footprints
(hectares per
8 person)
High HDI
6
4
The sustainability
rectangle
2
Small footprints
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 HDI

31. Superefficient cars
Amory Lovins’ “Hyper-car”, or
“Revolution”:
1,5 l/100km
Today’s fleet
6-12 l/100km

32. “Passive houses”: a factor of ten more heat efficient

33. LED replacing incandescent bulbs: a factor of 10
Philips 7W Master LED
Energy efficiency

34. From Portland cement to geopolymer cement
(e.g. fly ashes from coal power plants).
Energy efficiency

35. From 12 lane highways to bicycle centered cities
Atlanta
Copenhagen

36. Atlanta is 25 times larger than Barcelona, but
has a smaller population
Ich danke Geoffrey Heal für die Überlassung des Bildes

37. From endless business travel to telepresence meetings

38. From using water once to purifying (recycling) it

39. From flood irrigation to advanced drip irrigation
Water efficiency
(Source: www.driptech.com)

40. From excessive mining to the Cyclical Economy

41. Two more
dragons have to
be confronted:
The Jevons
Paradox, and
A new UNCTAD
study on illusions
of green growth

42. The Jevons Paradox is also known as rebound effect
William Stanley Jevons in his
famous book, The Coal Question
observed that England's
consumption of coal soared after
James Watt introduced his coal-
fired steam engine, which greatly
improved the efficiency of earlier
engines.

43. The rebound effect is actually a very old phenomenon!
The Neolithic Revolution: a hundredfold increase of ‚land
efficiency‘, - followed by a hundredfold increase of population!
Hunters-Gatherers
(after a cave painting) Early agriculture
http://www.kamat.com/database/content/prehistoric_theater http://history-world.org/agriculture.htm
/klk621.jpg

44. Ulrich Hoffmann demolishing green growth illusions

45. Based on Tim Jackson‘s ‚Prosperity Without Growth‘, Hofmann
sees the need for a 21-fold ‚decarbonization‘ to reach climate goals.

46. How do we deal
with the two
dragons?
The answer is twofold in terms of technology and
behaviour: efficiency and sufficiency
… and simple/ one-fold in terms of policy:
let prices do the job.

47. To understand the „power of prices“,
let us look back into the history of the
Industrial Revolution.
Labour productivity increased twentyfold
since 1850. It did so almost exactly in
parallel with gross labour „prices“ (wages).

48. Not a surprise for wage negotiators: wages and labour
productivity rose in parallel.
This is a fifty years time-window from the United States

49. On resource prices, what you usually see is the alarm about rising
prices

50. But put in a long term (200 years) perspective, resource prices
were usually falling!
Prices of industrial commodities & energy, in constant dollars
2000-2004

51. And don‘t fall for the
Peak Oil illusion!
TIME on 9th April:
New breakthroughs are
actually increasing
global supplies.
The reason: tolerance
for dirty operations is
steadily increasing!

52. What I am proposing, therefore, is a
political decision to artificially raise
energy and other resource prices in
parallel with documented efficiency
increases, so that average expenses
for energy services would remain
stable. (Some „life-line“ low prices
can be accepted for the poor.)

53. High energy prices need not hurt the economy. Japan
blossomed during the 15 years of highest energy prices!

54. One lesson from this is: pioneers need
not wait for the slow ones.
Also developing countries can benefit
from gradually increasing domestic
energy prices.

55. For the material Circular Economy,
rising energy prices would also serve
as a big push.
But additional measures are
conceivable such as slowly rising
charges on mineral extraction.

56. Who would win, who would lose?
(1. inside countries)
Winning: IT, generally high tech; crafts; science;
education; green businesses; railroads; leasing (all
the great ideas proposed by Walter Stahel!);
maintenance; culture.
Losing: air traffic; extractive industry, heavy
industry (some), development of urban sprawl,
wasteful consumers.
Some adjustments (eg revenue neutrality for
vulnerable sectors of industry) can avoid losses.

57. Who would win, who would lose?
(2. among countries)
Winning: Europe, East Asia, developing
countries poor in natural resources. That is
some 90% of the world population!
Losing: USA, Canada, Australia, Russia,
commodity exporting developing countries.

58. Red & orange: high per capita CO2 emissions, - the usual
suspects.

59. I foresee, at the horizon, an alliance of the
winners: Europe, Asia, Oceania and much of
Africa and Latin America, on
• real climate policy;
• ecological price policies;
• developing the 21st century technologies
& habits.

60. In a world of basically scarce resources (and
here I side with McKinsey‘s 2011 study),
countries and companies pioneering efficiency
(and sufficiency) will be the game winners.

61. Let me conclude:
Decoupling prosperity from carbon intensity is
doable, both in the North and the South.
North-South „carbon justice“ is indispensible.
Prices should make the transition profitable.
No need for pioneers to wait for the slow ones.