Definitions and Concepts
Definitions and Concepts
This chapter defines some important concepts that are used in the book and which are relevant to energy in the economic context. It first considers energy consumption in the economic sense; here energy is defined as the capacity to perform work, useful for human beings, thanks to changes in the structure of matter or its position in space. The use of energy by humans has an opportunity cost, meaning that the time and resources allocated to using this energy could have been used differently. In the economic sense, energy consumption entails both private and social costs. The chapter proceeds by discussing primary sources of energy as opposed to secondary energy carriers; power; thermodynamic efficiency and energy productivity; the determinants of energy productivity; energy intensity; macro-, meso-, and micro-innovations; development blocks; market widening and market suction; energy expansion and energy saving; and dematerialization of growth.
Keywords: energy, energy consumption, power, thermodynamic efficiency, energy productivity, energy intensity, development blocks, market widening, market suction, energy expansion
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
