Robert Ayres (scientist)

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Robert Underwood Ayres
Chalmers Institute of Technology
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Robert Underwood Ayres (June 29, 1932 – October 23, 2023) was an American-born physicist and economist. His career focused on the application of physical ideas, especially the laws of thermodynamics, to economics; a long-standing pioneering interest in material flows and transformations (industrial ecology or industrial metabolism)—a concept which he originated.[1] His most recent work challenged the widely held economic theory of growth.

Life and career

Robert Underwood Ayres was born in

Chalmers Institute of Technology
Gothenburg (Sweden). He was also an Institute Scholar at IIASA.

Ayres remained a life-long active researcher. He wrote or co-authored 20 books, edited or coedited another dozen books, wrote or co-authored more than 200 journal articles and book chapters not to mention many unpublished reports, on subjects ranging from environmental effects of

Industrial Ecology. He contributed to futures studies, technological forecasting, transportation and energy studies, material flow studies (`dematerialization'), environmental technology, environmental economics, thermodynamics and economics, and the theory of economic growth.[3]

Here taken from one of his recent papers are two paragraphs that provide a flavor of his recent work:

Mainstream economics today is based to a large extent on bad ideas. Economic concepts, from foundational issues like markets, supply and demand and “free trade”, to money and finance, lack any systematic awareness of the physical process of production or the implications of the Laws of Thermodynamics for those processes. A corollary, almost worthy of being a separate bad idea on its own, is that energy doesn’t matter (much) because the cost share of energy in the economy is so small that it can be ignored e.g. {Denison, 1984 #6184}. The so-called “production functions” used by all schools of economic thought that build growth models omit any necessary role for energy, as if output could be produced by labor and capital alone—or as if energy is merely a form of man-made capital that can be produced (as opposed to extracted) by labor and capital.

The essential truth missing from economic education today is that energy is the stuff of the universe, that all matter is also a form of energy, and that the economic system is essentially a system for extracting, processing and transforming energy as resources into energy embodied in products and services. This is a thermodynamic process, as the Rumanian economist Georgescu-Roegen said half a century ago (Georgescu-Roegen 1971). The economic process is subject to both the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of mass/energy; nothing can be created or destroyed) and the second law of thermodynamics (increasing entropy; all transformation processes are irreversible). The “first law” implies that the notion of “consumption” as applied to products is misleading: material transformation processes unavoidably generate large quantities of material wastes or residuals {Ayres, 1969 #284;{Ayres, 1989 #424}. Some of those wastes are merely inconvenient but others are harmful or toxic. The second law says that energy becomes less useful (exergy is destroyed) by every action.[citation needed]

There is much more to be said along these lines. Key publications reflecting these (and some other) important ideas are given in the bibliography below.

Robert Ayres died in France on October 23, 2023, at the age of 91.[4]

Publications

  • Subsequently published (June 1999), "The Second Law, The Fourth Law, Recycling and Limits to Growth", Ecological Economics, 29 (3): 473–483,
    doi:10.1016/S0921-8009(98)00098-6
  • Subsequently published (March 2003), "Energy, Power and Work in the US Economy, 1900-1998", Energy, 28 (3): 219–273,
    doi:10.1016/S0360-5442(02)00089-0

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-13-701544-3
  2. ISBN 9780837911038. Retrieved 2013-08-19 – via Google Books
    .
  3. ^ "insead - faculty & research - Robert U. Ayres". Insead.edu. 2002-01-01. Retrieved 2013-08-19.
  4. ^ "In Memory of Robert Underwood Ayres (1932–2023)". IIASA Connect. 31 October 2023. Retrieved 6 November 2023.

External links

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