The increase in greenhouse gases, the limits of solid landfills or water pollution are signs that show that the limits of the economic and environmental system have been exceeded”, warns the businessman and industrial engineer Joan Vila in his latest book , La fi de l'abundància (Icaria Editorial). The energy transition expert proposes going back to the 1970s, in search of efficient and frugal well-being, with fewer working hours and consumption that is not so "angry".
In the subtitle of the book he talks about sustainable growth or stable decrease. Can growth be sustainable? Is it feasible for the economy to decrease?
This is the challenge. The current growth leads us to collapse. If there is growth, it has to be small. On the other hand, degrowth has to be contained, dominated. We have to consume only what we need and what we can, with the resources we have, and forget about continuous indebtedness. The concept of growing to obtain well-being has been a model that has worked well until the 1970s, when growing the economy still had an impact on improving well-being. Since the 1980s, the model has entered a phase of inefficient welfare, with an economy that gets fat without sense, producing goods that are not needed.
And keep growing, but being more efficient and productive?
The increase in productivity will help us in the transition that we have to undertake, but if it is not monitored, this increase will lead, once again, to an increase in consumption. It happened with coal and it has happened in all energy developments, such as cars, airplanes or other industrial processes. It is the paradox of Jevons, an English economist who observed that the more efficient the steam engine was, the more coal was consumed in the country. This is the reason why the energy technology transition must be accompanied by a change in consumption models and thus avoid the rebound effect.
What role does technology have in this transition?
To follow the path of transition, I propose five disruptive technologies that provide immense growth in productivity: renewable energies; electric mobility; the heat pump and energy rehabilitation of buildings; artificial intelligence and the change from animal protein to vegetable and precision fermentation protein. All these technologies will come whether we want to or not. It will depend on us, on whether we adopt them intensely as a country or if we let them pass, on whether our wealth endures or not. If we don't do our homework, Catalonia will decrease significantly. If we do nothing, which is the path we are following, the losses will be substantial.
Can't these five technologies produce a rebound effect, as happened with the steam engine?
It's a risk. That is why they have to have containment and this containment has to be fiscal. The following reflection is not mine, but the World Bank economist Herman Daly: we have to penalize the use of raw materials and decriminalize everything that intelligence and reason are capable of developing. The CO2 rate would already be that, a penalty for the use of fossil fuels, but the use of minerals, water and all materials at source would also have to be penalized. So the industry and the economy would make an effort to do things with less raw materials.
How do these changes affect the world of work?
The energy transition will destroy jobs linked to hydrocarbons or the automotive sector and will create others, which will imply a great deal of training and adaptation. But the big mistake is to think, as up to now, that if we don't grow or grow little, jobs won't be created, that there won't be enough work for everyone. And here is the great panic of the financial system.
It is true that lower consumption will cause less work, but this will have to be distributed, creating work days of fewer hours, which will give us more free time. Distributing the work implies charging less and having less purchasing power, which is linked to lower consumption, but clashes with the current serious problem of high housing prices. The weak point of the energy transition is precisely solving the problem with access to housing, but there is no political courage.
