Structural change for a post-growth economy: The relationships between energy use, labour productivity and economic growth

To avoid environmental breakdown, high-income countries need to transition to a post-growth economy that can deliver wellbeing within planetary boundaries, independent of GDP growth. The post-growth literature recognises that such a transition will require structural change in the sectoral composition of economic output and demand. But the literature is lacking a systematic analysis of the structural change that is desired and how we can achieve it. In my thesis I address the gap by answering the question how structural change can contribute to the transition to a post-growth economy, focusing on the contribution it can make to reducing final energy demand and to reducing labour productivity growth. I answer the question by combining two research streams. The first stream uses novel estimates of embodied energy and labour productivity of sectors in the UK and Germany to identify labour-intensive service sectors and test the assumption that they can reduce energy use and labour productivity growth. Building on the results I develop a systematic framework for identifying structural change goals for a post-growth economy. The framework splits the economy into 4 sector groups with similar characteristics and structural change goals. The second stream adds new insights to the literature on structural change drivers with a novel decomposition analysis of final energy demand in the UK. I demonstrate that structural change has only made a relatively small contribution to energy demand reductions and has largely been driven by offshoring. Combining the two streams I assess historical structural change against the goals for a post-growth economy. I find that it has partially been in the right direction. But, to move to a post-growth economy, more attention needs to be paid to the drivers and consequences of structural change, as the historical drivers are intertwined with growth in GDP, labour productivity, incomes and offshoring

The economic and energy impacts of a UK export shock: comparing alternative modelling approaches

Achieving the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set out in the UK Climate Change Act will require a significant transformation in the UK's energy system. At the same time, the government is pursuing a new UK Industrial Strategy, which aims to improve labour productivity, create high-quality jobs and boost exports across the UK. The economic and the energy systems in the UK are tightly linked and so policies adopted in one area will produce spillover effects to the other. To achieve the objectives set out in the two strategies it is therefore vital to understand how the policies in the energy system will affect economic development and vice versa. This study seeks to contribute to this by investigating how an increase in exports (a key pillar in the UK Industrial Strategy) could impact energy- and industrial policy. We address this question by systematically comparing the results of two types of energy-economy models of the UK, a computable general equilibrium model and a macroeconometric model. In terms of the implications of a successful export promotion strategy, the models agree that there is likely to be a beneficial impact on the economy, but an adverse impact on CO2 emissions and energy intensity. This reveals the extent of any policy adjustment that would be required to maintain a given level of emissions and serves to emphasise the need to complement UK industrial policies with appropriate action on energy use and carbon emissions to meet statutory carbon targets set by the Climate Change Act (2008). Our second main conclusion is that there are advantages to having a diverse mix, or portfolio, of energy-economy models with each having comparative advantages depending on: prevailing circumstances (including the state of the economy); the time-period of interest and the nature of the policy question being addressed

Untangling the drivers of energy reduction in the UK productive sectors: Efficiency or offshoring?

The UK has been one of the few countries that has successfully decoupled final energy consumption from economic growth over the past 15 years. This study investigates the drivers of final energy consumption in the UK productive sectors between 1997 and 2013 using a decomposition analysis that incorporates two novel features. Firstly, it investigates to what extent changes in thermodynamic efficiency have contributed to overall changes in sectoral energy intensities. Secondly, it analyses how much of the structural change in the UK economy is driven by the offshoring of energy-intensive production overseas. The results show that energy intensity reductions are the strongest factor reducing energy consumption. However, only a third of the energy savings from energy intensity reductions can be attributed to reductions in thermodynamic efficiency with re- ductions in the exergy intensity of production making up the reminder. In addition the majority of energy savings from structural change are a result of offshoring, which constitutes the second biggest factor reducing energy consumption. In recent years the contributions of all decomposition factors have been declining with very little change in energy consumption after 2009. This suggests that a return to the strong reductions in energy consumption observed between 2001 and 2009 in the UK productive sectors should not be taken for granted. Given that further reductions in UK final energy consumption are needed to achieve global targets for climate change mitigation, additional policy interventions are needed. Such policies should adopt a holistic approach, taking into account all sectors in the UK economy as well as the relationship between the structural change in the UK and in the global supply chains delivering the goods and service for consumption and investment in the UK

Modular, Intelligent Flight Test Instrumentation for DLR's New Ultralight Coaxial Research Helicopter

The newest addition to DLR's fleet of research aircraft is the ultralight helicopter CoAX 2D by German manufacturer edm aerotec GmbH. This helicopter type is characterized by its rotor system, consisting of two identical, coaxially arranged two-blade rotors. It is equipped with a flight test system that records measurements in both the non-rotating system (e.g., orientation, position, and control forces) and the rotating systems (e.g., mast and blade loads). The first project making use of the new helicopter is named Modular, Intelligent Data Acquisition and Processing, a collaboration between Safran Data Systems GmbH, Vectoflow GmbH, edm aerotech GmbH and the German Aerospace Center. Within this project, the existing flight test system was expanded by a modular data recorder equipped with the newly developed onboard processing module, which is based on the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 embedded computing module. Furthermore, additional lightweight, 3D-printed multi-hole probes were installed on the stabilizers. Another air data probe was installed on a nose boom to measure the flow field in front of the helicopter. The paper begins with the description of the new research helicopter and the research project. It continues with the characteristics of the helicopter and its rotor system, before describing the developed hardware (recorder, processing module, sensors) and software (application programming interface, data processing) in detail. It concludes with an outlook to the applications, the aerodynamic analysis, the planned flight test campaigns, and future projects going to make use of the new research helicopter

Drop impact on a sticky porous surface with gas discharge - Supplementary material

This collection contains the raw data (Microsoft Excel xlsx-format) for the plots as well as the computational finite-element model (Comsol Multiphysics mph-format and model description in html) for the following publication: Weimar, L., Hu, L., Baier, T., & Hardt, S. (2022). Drop impact on a sticky porous surface with gas discharge: transformation of drops into bubbles. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 953, A6. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2022.921

Hidden profile discussion coding : tracing synergy in group decisions

Group interaction can empower groups to outperform even their best members; unfortunately, such strong synergy is rare. The prototypical decision situation where synergy through interaction is possible is called a hidden profile (HP). The two main characteristics of these situations are that (1) each group member has new, unshared information that the other group members do not have, and (2) integrating this unshared information implies a different, better decision alternative than each member’s information alone. The hidden profile coding scheme is designed to code the initially shared and unshared information that is mentioned during the group discussion. The hidden profile coding scheme therefore aims to directly observe group decision processes that potentially lead to synergy

Microfluidic isotachophoresis in constant-current mode with Alexa Fluor 647 carboxylic acid

Microfluidic isotachophoresis (ITP) is an electrophoretic technique that can be used to concentrate analytes, thereby facilitating and accelerating their detection. The fluorescence images show the isotachophoretic transport of Alexa fluor 647 carboxylic acid (AF 647) with a constant current of 5 µA. Constant-current ITP has the main effect that the velocity at which the sample migrates through the microchannel is constant over time. By choosing sample concentrations between 0 and 10 ng/L, the signal-to-noise ratio is varied. Only at higher concentrations can the sample be detected without further image processing. The data were obtained to test the capability of a newly developed image processing method that allows the detection of samples even at low concentrations without any additional instrumentation effort. The fluorescence images were obtained with a Nikon Eclipse Ti microscope and an Andor iXon+ 897 EMCCD camera. A 10x S-Fluor objective (NA = 0.5, Nikon) and a 639 nm laser were used. The exposure time was set to 20 ms and the frame rate to 46 fps. More information on the experimental procedure can be found in the paper that will be linked below.1

Breakup dynamics of capillary bridges on hydrophobic stripes

The breakup dynamics of a capillary bridge on a hydrophobic stripe between two hydrophilic stripes is studied experimentally and numerically. The capillary bridge is formed from an evaporating water droplet wetting three neighboring stripes of a chemically patterned surface. The simulations are based on the Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method implemented in Free Surface 3D (FS3D). In order to construct physically realistic initial data for the VOF simulation, Surface Evolver is employed to calculate an initial configuration consistent with experiments. Numerical instabilities at the contact line are reduced by a novel adaptation of the Navier-slip boundary condition. By considering the breakup process in phase space, the breakup dynamics can be evaluated without the uncertainty in determining the precise breakup time. It is found that within an intermediate inviscid regime, the breakup dynamics follows a $t\^2/3$-scaling, indicating that the breakup process is dominated by the balance of inertial and capillary forces. For smaller bridge widths, the breakup velocity reaches a plateau, which is due to viscous forces becoming more important. In the final stage of breakup, the capillary bridge forms a liquid thread that breaks up consistent with the Rayleigh-Plateau instability. The critical wavelength is identical to the distance between the tips of two liquid cones between which the thread is arranged. The existence of satellite droplets in a regular pattern indicates that the primary breakup process is followed by self-similar secondary breakups

Breakup Dynamics of Capillary Bridges on Hydrophobic Stripes: Research data

This repository provides research data for the experiments and numerical simulations reported in the article M. Hartmann, M. Fricke, L. Weimar, D. Gründing, T. Marić, D. Bothe, S. Hardt: Breakup dynamics of Capillary Bridges on Hydrophobic Stripes, International Journal of Multiphase Flow, DOI:10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseflow.2021.103582, 202