Volume 25: Accelerated Energy Innovations and Emerging Technologies

The Food-Energy-Water-Nexus Between Ecomodernism and Degrowth Narrative – A Welfare Economics Model Approach Holger Schlör, Stefanie Schubert

Abstract

The UN demands that the world community has to change the current unsustainable consumption and production patterns to achieve a green economy with significantly lower CO2 emissions to meet the Paris Agreement [1, 2]. For the transformation of the current unsustainable consumption and production patterns, currently two narratives are being discussed [3]: Ecomodernism and Degrowth. A dynamic 2- country Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model is used to analyze the two green economy approaches. Country A represents the Ecomodernism pathway to a green economy and country B is on a Degrowth path. To analyze these two approaches, a de-growth wedge is developed, which is based on the Harberger triangle [4-6]. The de-growth scenario can be seen as a distortion to the current market economy. The wedge measures the excess burden of welfare losses against the background of the traditional economic model represented by the Ecomodernism approach. The results of our stylized economic model for the Ecomodernism path of country A and for the Degrowth path of country B show a continuing spread of the economic development of the two countries. The results showed that especially the FEW-nexus has to deal with increasing challenges. An aggravating factor is that the cross-country FEW-Nexus has to be managed against the background of two different green economy approaches: Ecomodernism and Degrowth.

Keywords Green economy, Ecomodernism, Degrowth, General Equilibrium Model, wedge equation system