Resource acquisition, distribution and end-use efficiencies and the growth of industrial society

Jarvis, A. J.; Jarvis, S. J.; Hewitt, C. N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-689-2015

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-689-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Social dynamics and planetary boundaries in Earth system...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-689-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

13 Oct 2015

Research article |

| 13 Oct 2015

Resource acquisition, distribution and end-use efficiencies and the growth of industrial society

A. J. Jarvis, S. J. Jarvis, and C. N. Hewitt

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Oct 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Jan 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C84: 'Review of Jarvis et al', Timothy Garrett, 03 Mar 2015
- AC C162: 'Response to Garrett', Andrew Jarvis, 20 Apr 2015
RC C153: 'minor revisions', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Apr 2015
- AC C170: 'Response to R2', Andrew Jarvis, 20 Apr 2015
RC C291: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 May 2015
- AC C339: 'Response to R3', Andrew Jarvis, 05 Jun 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Andrew Jarvis on behalf of the Authors (06 Jul 2015) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Jul 2015) by James Annan

RR by Timothy Garrett (22 Jul 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (28 Aug 2015) by James Annan

AR by Andrew Jarvis on behalf of the Authors (07 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 Sep 2015) by James Annan

AR by Andrew Jarvis on behalf of the Authors (23 Sep 2015) Manuscript

Short summary

This paper uses observations of global and national energy use to attempt to show that the growth in energy use over the last 160 years can be related to the distribution constraints imposed by the networks that link environmentally derived resources to points of end use. Having accounted for the distribution efficiency of this global-scale network, we speculate that the observed long-run return rate on energy of ~2.4%/yr requires regulated deployment of acquisition and end use efficiencies.