This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

The world is awash in data like never before, which is a good thing for global development — there are increasing returns to both more information, and better linkages across information types and sources. Indeed, the plight of the world’s poorest has improved considerably in many ways recently, partly because there is plentiful data available to inform evidence-based policymaking. Despite considerable progress, though, it seems likely that a lot of the value associated with plentiful data is related to the ability to ask better questions, rather than the ability to make better prescriptions. …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

There is a profound shift taking place in the way the world produces and consumes energy — from sources with high power densities and high carbon intensities, toward low power densities and low carbon intensities. In order to achieve such a transition fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change, a simultaneous reduction of existing fossil fuel assets and buildout of clean energy assets is needed. However, clean energy technologies still depend on natural resource extraction (technologies like wind turbines and solar panels are less energy dense than fossil fuels, so they actually need even more physical materials per unit energy than fossil fuels). …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

The incredible crop yields made possible by modern, intensive agriculture have literally made it possible to feed the world. Fossil fuels, which are used to power mechanized cultivation and as feedstocks for fertilizers and pesticides, are central to intensive agriculture. Indeed, comparisons of historical energy returns to farming (the ratio of food energy harvested versus the energy needed to produce those harvests) clearly indicate two distinct eras: one dominated by food energy inputs for human and animal labor, and another dominated by fossil fuel inputs. …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

Every June, BP releases its annual benchmark publication, the Statistical Review of World Energy, which details trends in energy production and consumption over the course of the previous year. Since the report is backward-looking, this year’s does not include data reflecting the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns. Interested readers can see summaries of past Statistical Reviews for comparison.

This Statistical Review comes with two interesting bits of metrology. First, BP reports energy consumption in units of exajoules, a standard metric unit. For the past 68 years, BP used million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe), the amount of energy in one million metric tons of crude oil (about 24 exajoules, for those keeping track). While mtoe is a fine unit to measure primary energy production, crude oil does not have any end uses itself, so exajoules is a better measure of how much energy actually gets used. Second, whereas BP used to assume a fixed thermal efficiency for fossil power stations to calculate the power generated by non-fossil resources, that value will now rise each year. Burning fossil primary energy to do something generates a huge amount of waste heat, so a conversion is needed to equate non-fossil fuel outputs into primary energy inputs. The new methodology reflects the fact that the global fleet of fossil power stations is becoming ever-more efficient as natural gas combined cycle power stations, which have much lower heat rates than coal-fired power stations, continue to displace coal units. …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

The global economy has faced a series of dramatic shocks related to the COVID-19 outbreak. While high-income countries have thrown money at their health systems and economies to dampen the hardship, many other countries lack the resources to do so. Emerging markets — a loose term that includes countries like Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan, and Turkey — have been hit especially hard.

When comparing groups of countries, this author usually prefers measures of income. That is partly because it tells something real about well-being there — well-being is fundamentally about solving problems, and income growth over time creates wealth, which makes solving problems easier. It is also partly because other descriptions are not very useful. Designations of first-, second-, and third-world identify a country’s relationship to the Cold War great powers, and the developed-developing distinction implies superiority. One term that gets used frequently in financial circles is “emerging markets.” There is no formal definition for what constitutes an emerging market, but it suggests an economic immaturity, a tendency for booms and busts, and a volatile reputation by creditors. Eric Lonergan defines the term as countries where inflation rises noticeably when money is created (inflation has remained persistently low for decades in Western countries, despite enormous money printing operations). …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

Poverty and development are intimately related, and COVID-19 provides an example of that connection as it continues to spread throughout the world. Combating poverty typically involves short-term, programmatic interventions, while promoting development usually consists of long-term, macro policies. These were long considered two separate fields, but in truth they are becoming ever-more intertwined.

Whereas the obvious solution to large migration flows was once a refugee camp, today’s poverty dynamics are such that the average refugee spends 17 years away from home, and 59% of refugees live in urban areas rather than established camps. At the same time, many of today’s poor countries are on track to achieve significant increases in living standards in coming decades, but rapid growth can leave some behind. The humanitarian and development communities have been working together more frequently to address these new realities. Examples of bridging the divide include Jordan’s “special economic zones,” as well as assistance to West African countries to fight Ebola from the World Bank, an organization historically removed from humanitarian efforts. …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

The COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically changed daily life around the world. The global economy has ground to a halt as governments and individuals take unprecedented social distancing measures to “flatten the curve.” Everything humans do affects the natural environment in some way, and coronavirus-related changes to daily life present an interesting contrast to before the virus. …

This article was originally published on Sustaining Capabilities.

Cooling enables many things that are taken for granted in modern life, including keeping indoor spaces comfortable, and preserving food and medicine. Refrigeration works by boiling a refrigerant to remove heat from a space and condensing it to dump the heat outside, a cycle which needs a high rate of energy. Cooling requires a power density of around 28 W/m² of floor space for residential buildings and up to 190 W/m² for cold storage (for comparison, modern solar panels convert radiation into electricity at only 5–20 W/m² of panel area). …