They cite some efficiency improvements:
1. The switch from coal to oil gives a BTU to GNP boost (not good news for a future switch from oil back to coal).
2. The switch from coal or oil to electricity gives a BTU to GNP boost (great news for wind, nuke, solar PV).

But the main differences are explained away by looking at embodied energy in goods, which economists don't care to track, and household uses of energy, which don't impact GNP as much as industrial/commercial energy use.

So it is part hopeful (the future is electric!) and part not (GNP will decline with lower energy). But it would be very nice to have updated papers. I wish there was a 2007 version of the book!

You can see it for yourself in the EIA's data on energy intensity of the economy. The amount of energy required to produce a dollar of GDP fell only 20% from 1949 to 1980, but has fallen by about 45% since then -- nearly triple the previous rate.

You think that might have something to do with the offshoring of US industry?

Thanks! Good links. I had meant to read that paper by Ayres. He does not quote Hall, Cleveland, Odum, or Constanza in any of his references. It seems he discovered the relationship independently. He found the link between quality and GNp but does not have the two other correction factors that they discovered: product mix and household use. I need to read the longer paper. Thanks again!

I never meant to imply, that higher wealth means decreasing energy use. I meant to imply that higher wealth probably implies a lower ratio of energy use to wealth (or income). I also meant that a strategy we should be using to change things, is not to try to end economic growth, but rather to steer it towards less resource intensive things. I think the relevant examples are not so much the super-rich, but people not too far from the median in their societies, and how does their energy (or insert favorite other resource) use scale as their income increases. If we can steer them away from say hummers, speedboats, racing-cars, etc. and towards less energy consuming lifestyles, it could start to make a big difference. That is the sort of directional change we need to start making. Trying to sell zero growth will be nearly impossible, but growth with change of lifestyle emphasis might be doable.

would you hypothesize then that if everyone was worth 100 million that energy use would go down?

Resources per dollar and total resources are different measures.

also there is the ripple effect of all that money down the line. $200,000 on spa services has a hell of an energy multiplier.

Yes, obviously; however, if the original product's cost is 50% for production of raw materials and 50% for social costs (labour, advertising, etc.), then there's a great deal more money being spent directly on highly resource-intensive activities (production of raw materials) than if it's a 5/95 split.

I think you may be getting carried away with the large numbers involved. Consider spending $200,000 on "spa services" - massages, saunas, mudpacks, trainers, etc. Certainly some of that money will be spent on resources (to heat the rooms and saunas, to drive the trainers and masseuses to work, to build the spas in the first place), but only a little - maybe 5%.

Now consider spending that $200,000 on 10 new cars and a year's gas for each. Enormous amounts of that money go directly to pay for production of new resources (steel, aluminum, plastic, rubber, oil, etc.), although some will be social costs (like wages). Is it not obvious that the cars would be a much more resource-intensive purchase than the spa services?

If it's not obvious, well, it's still apparently true nonetheless - the EIA cites expanding service sector as one of the reasons for decreasing energy intensiveness in modern economies.

Once all the roads and houses and offices and airports are built and most folks own a car and a flat screen and population growth wanes and recycling takes hold then the amount of energy required per unit time to replace and maintain these items must be substantially lower than during the initial construction and stuff accumulation phase.

The idea of achieving a state of economic maturity in which we strive to provide ourselves with a constant material standard of living with the most efficient possible use of resources is a good one. Personally, however, I do not see much sign that we are converging toward such maturity. In the U.S., at least, the tendency is toward bigger houses, bigger higher performing automobiles, a larger variety and sophistication of electronic toys, more automobile miles, jet plane miles etc. Furthermore, there is the minor problem that if a true state of economic maintenance were achieved the stock market would go belly up.

Also, as you point out there are many billions of people living in relative poverty today, and if we are unwilling to give up any wealth, then no reason exists why they should desire a standard of living less than what we have, thus guaranteeing continued pressure on the earth's resources for many decades to come.

Trusting that private finance capitalism is going to evolve toward some natural endpoint of stable self-sufficiency strikes me a highly questionable strategy. I make no categorical statements about what standard of living can be achieved in a post fossil fuel economy, but if we hope to create a sustainable economic system which can support the entire population of the earth in reasonable comfort, then we must create economic institutions that can tolerate constant or even contracting output if necessary, rather than ones which create suffering and misery the minute growth start to slow down.

Once all the roads and houses and offices and airports are built and most folks own a car and a flat screen and population growth wanes and recycling takes hold then the amount of energy required per unit time to replace and maintain these items must be substantially lower than during the initial construction and stuff accumulation phase.

There would be a race between reaching the relative end of stuff accumulation and the increasingly throw-away quality of the stuff we are accumulating. Another case of receding horizons?