Following the ‘golden thread’ Exploring the energy dependency of economies and human well-being Lina Isabel Brand Correa Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Sustainability Research Institute School of Earth and Environment February 2018 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own, except where work which has formed part of jointly-authored publications has been included. The contribution of the candidate and the other authors to this work has been explicitly indicated below. The candidate confirms that appropriate credit has been given within the thesis where reference has been made to the work of others. The work in Chapter 2 of the thesis has appeared in the following publication: Brand-Correa, L. I., Brockway, P. E., Copeland, C., Foxon, T., Owen, A., & Taylor, P. (2017). Developing an Input-Output Based Method to Estimate a National-Level Energy Return on Investment (EROI). Energies, 10(4), 534. http://doi.org/10.3390/en10040534 The research was led by Lina I. Brand Correa, and conceived by Lina I. Brand Correa, Timothy J. Foxon, Paul E. Brockway, Peter G. Taylor and Claire L. Copeland. Lina I. Brand Correa identified Input-Output as an appropriate method to apply in the research. The design of the research was undertaken by Lina I. Brand Correa and Anne Owen, with significant contributions from Paul E. Brockway; Anne Owen and Paul Brockway provided the data; Lina I. Brand Correa, Paul Brockway and Anne Owen analysed the data; Lina I. Brand Correa wrote the paper with contributions from all the authors; Timothy J. Foxon, Peter G. Taylor and Claire L. Copeland provided conceptual and analytical feedback throughout the duration of the research. The work in Chapter 3 of the thesis has appeared in the following publication: Brand-Correa, L. I., & Steinberger, J. K. (2017). A framework for decoupling human need satisfaction from energy use. Ecological Economics, 141, 43–52. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.05.019 The research was conceived, designed and undertaken by Lina I. Brand Correa, with conceptual and analytical feedback throughout the duration of the research from Julia K. Steinberger. Lina I. Brand Correa wrote the paper with comments and contributions from Julia K. Steinberger. The work in Chapter 4 of the thesis has appeared in the following publication: Brand-Correa, L. I., Julia Martin-Ortega and Julia K. Steinberger. (2018). Human Scale Energy Services: Untangling a ‘golden thread’. Energy Research and Social Science, 38, 178- 187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.008 The research was conceived and designed by Lina I. Brand Correa, with conceptual and analytical feedback throughout the duration of the research from Julia Martin-Ortega iii and Julia K. Steinberger. Lina I. Brand Correa undertook the empirical work and analysed the data. Lina I. Brand Correa wrote the paper with comments and contributions from all authors. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Lina Isabel Brand Correa to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2018 The University of Leeds and Lina Isabel Brand Correa iv Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors Julia Steinberger, Tim Foxon and Julia Martin-Ortega. Many thanks to Julia M.O. for agreeing to step in as a supervisor at a difficult time, and from there onwards providing invaluable qualitative expertise, a very helpful (impartial) third pair of eyes, and of course always enjoyable tea breaks and chats! I am equally thankful to Tim Foxon for his continued support (even if physically distant), for proving key overarching inputs to the whole thesis, and for being such a lovely person. I am deeply grateful to Julia Steinberger for being a wonderful supervisor: critical, rigorous, fair and constructive; but also for being such a generous mentor and tutor; and for always being there despite difficult circumstances. This PhD would not have been possible without the funding from Colciencias (convocatoria 646 – Doctorados en el Exterior). But even more importantly, this research would not have been attainable without the people who were involved in the different parts of the research. I would like to sincerely acknowledge the fruitful and continued collaboration with Anne Owen, Paul Brockway and Lukas Hardt. Furthermore, I have no words to express my heartfelt gratitude to the people who came to the pilot workshop, the workshop participants, and Andres Salazar and Héctor Lugo. Your generosity in sharing your time with me made the workshops happen. I would also like to further thank Paul Brockway, for being open to inviting me to the exergy-economics network all those years ago - who knew that would lead to me applying for the PhD in SRI. Similarly, thank you for pointing out running group – who knew where that would lead! I am very grateful for your continued encouragement and our routine catch-ups. Furthermore, I would like to thank Elke Pirgmaier, Will Lamb, Jonathan Bush, Lucie Middlemiss, Mónica Guillén-Royo, Milena Buchs, David Wingate and Giulio Mattioli, for being colleagues who I look up to and for the stimulating chats we had. I am also grateful to the LiLi project, for enabling me to meet many other admirable people. Huge thanks to my colleagues, now good friends, Rachel Huxley, Tom Smith, Imogen Rattle, Marco & Paola Sakai, Pepa Ambrosio-Albalá, Kate Scott, Kate Massarella, Caroline Ward, Nathan Wood and Lukas Hardt, for all the lunches we shared in the common room and the “sustainability summit”, and all the other shared times outside the office. The PhD would have certainly not been as bearable without you – it was great to feel part of a collective. Speaking of good friends, I would like to give Will Goulart a big Latin-American thank you hug; I feel very fortunate to have met you on my first day in SRI. v I am especially grateful to my parents for their unquestionable love and support. To my dad for being my role model and a critical sounding board; and to my mum for blindingly believing in me, in whatever I have ever set out to do. I want to thank my niece and nephew, for making me want to prove to them that academia can be a “real job”; and my sister, brother and the rest of my family (close, extended and “in-law”) for being such an unconditional source of support. Last but not least, I would like to thank Lizzie for her support and care, but more importantly for reminding me that there is life outside the PhD, and encouraging me to adventure through it with her. P.S. Enormous thank you to the people who were outside at the picket lines, in the snow, as I finished and handed in this thesis. vi Abstract Climate change –one of the greatest threats to modern civilisation- has been largely driven by an exponential growth in world energy use in the last couple of centuries. However, societies and economies are dependent on energy use to maintain themselves and change. Thus, in this thesis I compare energy to a ‘golden thread’, which weaves through climate change, economic growth and human well-being. In this context, the challenge I set out to explore in this thesis was to find alternatives for decoupling societal and economic progress from environmentally harmful levels of energy use. In order to open the possibility space for decoupling the energy dependency of the economy from climate change, I used the holistic theoretical framework of surplus energy and developed a novel methodology for calculating Energy Return On Investment (EROI) at the national level. Similarly, in order to open the possibility space for decoupling the energy dependency of society (human well-being) from climate change, I developed an original theoretical framework, integrating the concepts of energy services and human needs, and tested it using an innovative methodology. I found that a national-level EROI can contribute to accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels, by providing evidence at a scale relevant for policymakers. Additionally, I found that the energy services and human needs framework, as well as the methodology to test it, provide a way to prioritise and explore alternatives of energy service delivery. I consider that both of these contributions point towards the possibility of having climate compatible energy dependent societies and economies, as long as there is a fundamental change in the framings, understanding, priorities and methodologies used to find and assess such possibility. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... v Abstract ............................................................................................................... vii Table of Contents ................................................................................................. ix List of Tables ...................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xv Abbreviations .................................................................................................... xvii Chapter 1 Introduction: Energy as the ‘Golden Thread’ ..................................... 19 1.1 Energy dependency of