Are modern economies following a sustainable energy consumption path?

RECALDE, MARINA YESICA; GUZOWSKI, CARINA; ZILIO, MARIANA INES

Energy for sustainable development

Pergamon-Elsevier Science LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2014 vol. 19 p. 151 - 161

0973-0826

In the frame of an enhanced environmental discussion regarding the existence and convenience of energy decoupling or dematerialization, this paper studiesthe past trends of global primary energy resources in relation to monetary and demographic variables in a top-down framework. This paper aims at contributing to the litera- ture on dematerialization and energy sustainability from a dynamic perspective, with the purpose of shedding light on some questions, such as the real existence of an intergenerational energy dematerialization. To this purpose we use the phase diagrams of energy intensity and the product generational dematerialization (PGD) indi- cator for the period 1970?2011 for the global economy, the OECD and Latin American and Caribbean regions, China and India.