Comment 41926

By zippo (registered) | Posted June 13, 2010 at 10:19:50

"In the future, we're going to have to start learning how to increase the productivity of human-powered work, a long-neglected innovation path."

Lets consider "the numbers" on that...

The most effective way we know to capture human muscle power is by riding a bicycle. A trained endurance cyclist (national competition level, but not "rare" elite athlete) can produce a sustained (8 hour) power output on a bike of about 150 watts, or to put it another way 6.6 hours of pedaling to produce one kilowatt hour (KWh) of energy. Maybe we can use this as benchmark of what might be possible on a large scale?

At the soon to be minimum wage in Ontario of $10 per hour that human produced KWh would cost $66. At more affordable "slave wage" rates, (unskilled industrial wage in China or India) of about $0.12 per hour it would cost about $0.79

To produce a KWh of electrical energy by burning coal costs, at the present time about $0.04

What I take from this is that even at slave wage rates substitution of human power is unlikely until forced by fossil fuel scarcity. Given that the supply-price relationship for fossil fuels is highly inflexible in the short to medium term price signals will not be sent in sufficient time to allow this substitution to be gradual. I.E. it will be in the form of a "crash" rather than a "transition".

It seems to me that for the foreseeable (decades...a century) future "productivity" as defined in your equation will be decreasing, not increasing, due to the overwhelming influence of the energy component of the equation.

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