Matthew Kuperus Heun

• Ph. D.
• Professor at Calvin University

Achieving a good life for all within planetary boundaries is essential for sustainability. But analysing this goal is hindered by problems of definition, measurement, and the large number of potentially relevant factors. The indicator ‘years of good life’ (YoGL) is defined as the number of years a person can expect to live above absolute poverty, e...

The history of rail transport can offer valuable insights for future energy transitions due to its importance in promoting clean mobility. There is a complex interplay between the evolution of the railway network, fuel consumption, efficiency, energy service, and CO 2 emissions that requires further exploration. We developed a dataset that covers e...

Societal exergy analysis examines the flows of energy and exergy through societies, from primary (e.g. oil) to final (e.g. gasoline) to useful (e.g. propulsion) energy stages. By extending the study of energy to the useful stage, new insights into the under-represented role of energy in economic growth have been made. However, currently (a) country...

The net energy implications of the energy transition have so far been analysed at best at the final energy stage. Here we argue that expanding the analysis to the useful stage is crucial. We estimate fossil fuelsʼ useful-stage energy returns on investment (EROIs) over the period 1971–2020, globally and nationally, and disaggregate EROIs by end use....

Conventional economic growth models treat production/consumption as abstractions linked only by money flows, disregarding their connection to the physical world. Nevertheless, the existing literature suggests that energy flows can influence production and links useful exergy prices with economic growth. Useful exergy is energy measured at the stage...

Selected datasets produced using the {CLPFUDatabase} R package and the International Energy Agencies World Extended Energy Balances to calculate aggregate country-level primary, final, and useful exergy consumption, sectoral final and useful exergy consumption, aggregate primary-final, primary-useful, and final-useful exergy efficiency, and sectora...

In the coming renewables-based energy transition, global electricity consumption is expected to double by 2050, entailing widespread end-use electrification, with significant impacts on energy efficiency. We develop a long-run, worldwide societal exergy analysis focused on electricity. Our 1900–2017 electricity world database contains the energy ca...

Extracting, processing, and delivering energy requires energy itself, which reduces the net energy available to society and yields considerable socioeconomic implications. Yet, most mitigation pathways and transition models overlook net energy feedbacks, specifically related to the decline in the quality of fossil fuel deposits, as well as energy r...

Extracting, processing, and delivering energy requires energy itself, which reduces the net energy available to society and yields considerable socioeconomic implications. Yet, most mitigation pathways and transition models overlook net...

Van Antwerp, Jeremy and Matthew Kuperus Heun. 2022. A Framework for Sustainability Thinking : A Student’s Introduction to Global Sustainability Challenges ; (Springer, Cham) 275 pp. ISBN 978-3-0317-9184-0. A Framework for Sustainability Thinking : A Student’s Introduction to Global Sustainability Challenges presents basic information related to sus...

Since 1800, there have been enormous changes in mechanical technologies farmers use and in the relative contributions of human and animal muscles and machines to farm work. We develop a database from 1800 to 2012 of on-farm physical work in world agriculture from muscles and machines. We do so to analyze how on-farm physical work has contributed to...

Physical Supply Use Tables overcome some of the main limitations of the commonly used Energy Extended Input Output Analysis by describing the Energy Conversion Chain in energy terms only. In this paper, we build on recent advances in the field to construct a Multi-Regional Physical Supply Use Table framework. We use data from the International Ener...

It is the worst of times but it is the best of times because we still have a chance. Sylvia Earle As noted in Section 4.1.2, the economy is society’s metabolism. As such, the economy exhibits characteristics of a metabolism: it ingests materials and emits wastes. These characteristics of the economic metabolism are captured by the final term in Equ...

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Jane Austen Equation (1.1) and Chapters 1–6 developed a framework for sustainability thinking. This chapter is the first of four chapters to apply that framework to some areas of life where sustainability challenges are relevant and important. The areas are selected based, in part, on where en...

The truth about a city’s aspirations isn’t found in its vision. It’s found in its budget. Brent Toderian The three previous chapters described sustainability challenges related to households, transportation, and agriculture. A common element in all three sustainability challenges is how we use land. We need places for homes, to grow food, and for t...

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. Pope John Paul II Equation (1.1) (repeated below for convenience) is our conceptual framework for considering sustainability. Chapter 2 discussed planetary boundaries and the impact of human activities on those boundaries, that is, the le...

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. Charlie Munger The final two chapters of this book discuss actions that can be taken by collectives (this chapter) and individuals (Chapter 12) to live more sustainably. The purpose of the final two chapters is to provide a breadth of possible actions to stimulate creative thinking and meaningf...

A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles. Tim Cahill This chapter covers transportation and is the second of four chapters in Part II to discuss areas of life where sustainability challenges are relevant and important. Today, transportation services are provided mostly by cars, trucks, trains, boats, and planes. Energy for transportation...

People don’t spring into action just because they see smoke; they spring into action because they see others rushing in with water. Leor Hackel and Gregg Sparkman This is the second of two chapters on actions that move toward sustainable living for individuals and society. This chapter is a companion to Chapter 11, which focused on collective ways...

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round. David Lodge Equation (1.1) (repeated below for convenience) expresses human impact on the Earth as the product of population (P), affluence (A), resource intensity of the economy (R), and the impact of resources (X). Chapter 2 discussed how the Ea...

Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re having fun. Larry Niven The left-hand side of Equation (1.1) (repeated below for convenience) is environmental impacts (I). While there are natural processes that have (some) negative impacts on the environment, such as volcanic eruptions and wildfires, this book is primarily concerned with human impacts on the...

There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy. Alfred Henry Lewis (1906) Figures 5.5 and 6.1 and Table 6.1 show that households use 15.7% of U.S. energy and are responsible for 19.3% of U.S. CO2 emissions in 2018. Therefore, Chapter 7 considers the sustainability challenges of households. Likewise, the energy use (37.3%) and CO2 emissions (...

Without natural resources, life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter, and transport us. …Without abundant resources, prosperity is out of reach. Gifford Pinchot The previous chapter addressed the sustainability implications of economic affluence, the A term in the IPARX ident...

Widespread implementation of energy efficiency is a key greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measure, but rebound can “take back” energy savings. However, conceptual foundations lag behind empirical estimates of the size of rebound. We posit that development of solid analytical frameworks for rebound is hampered by the interdisciplinary nature of th...

The majority of global energy scenarios anticipate a structural break in the relationship between energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP), with several scenarios projecting absolute decoupling, where energy use falls while GDP continues to grow. However, there are few precedents for absolute decoupling, and current global trends are i...

Given the climate change emergency, reducing energy consumption, which is responsible for most greenhouse gases emissions worldwide, is a priority. However, the strong historical link between energy consumption and economic growth questions whether continued economic growth is compatible with energy conservation targets. Conventional final energy a...

Lighting provides an indispensable energy service, illumination. The field of societal exergy analysis considers light (and many other energy products) to be enablers of economic growth, and lighting contributes a non-negligible proportion of total useful exergy supplied to modern economies. In societal exergy analysis, the exergetic efficiency of...

The assessment of the prospective, economy-wide, economic and environmental impact of large-scale policy shocks is currently performed via general equilibrium models, relying on background input–output data usually characterized by a very aggregated definition of the energy conversion chain. Thus, such models are not always able to properly assess...

Unsustainable consumption of biofuels contributes to deforestation and climate change, while household air pollution from burning solid biofuels in homes results in millions of premature deaths globally every year. Honduras, like many low and medium Human Development Index countries, depends on primary solid biofuels for more than 30% of its primar...

To meet climate change mitigation objectives, international institutions have adopted targets aimed at reducing or ending growth of primary energy consumption. Simultaneously, continued economic growth is forecasted to meet human development goals. Together, declining energy consumption and rising gross domestic product (GDP) is called "absolute de...

Integrated energy-economic modelling is needed to support the development of energy and climate policies. This study asserts that it is important to consider a system dynamics modelling approach that includes dynamics, endogenous treatment of uncertainty and risks, and both aggregate economic and disaggregate technical or engineering levels of anal...

This paper investigates how a change in a region’s energy cost share (ECS), a ratio of a region’s energy expenditure as a fraction of its gross domestic product (GDP), affects the region’s social and economic development. Nations from four regions of the world, namely Australasia, Europe, North America, and the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India,...

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 investigate...

In response to the oil crises of the 1970s, energy accounting experienced a revolution and became the much broader field of energy analysis, in part by expanding along the energy conversion chain from primary and final energy to useful energy and energy services, which satisfy human needs. After evolution and specialization, the field of energy ana...

Over the past two decades reductions in the final energy consumption of the productive sectors (industry, public administration, commercial services and agriculture), have made important contributions to overall reductions in UK final energy consumption. This study investigates the drivers of the reductions in final energy consumption in the UK pro...

Development of energy policy is often informed by economic considerations via aggregate production functions (APFs). We identify a theory-to-policy process involving APFs comprised of six steps: (1) selecting a theoretical energy-economy framework; (2) formulating modeling approaches; (3) econometrically fitting an APF to historical economic and en...

Capital–labour–energy Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production functions and their estimated parameters now form a key part of energy–economy models which inform energy and emissions policy. However, the collation and guidance as to the specification and estimation choices involved with such energy-extended CES functions is disparate. T...

150 years ago, Stanley Jevons introduced the concept of energy rebound: that anticipated energy efficiency savings may be “taken back” by behavioural responses. This is an important issue today because, if energy rebound is significant, this would hamper the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies aimed at reducing energy use and associated car...

Presentation delivered at Engineering Sustainability 2015, Pittsburg PA

Accounting for direct energy as it flows through an economy is essential for developing a dynamic picture of its metabolism. In this chapter, we apply the First Law of Thermodynamics to sectors of the economy to describe flows of direct energy from the biosphere, through economies, and ultimately back to the biosphere as waste heat. Direct energy a...

We are entering a new era in which biophysical limits related to natural resource extraction rates and the biosphere's waste assimilation capacity are becoming binding constraints on mature economies. Unfortunately, the data needed for policy-makers to understand and manage economic growth in the new era are not universally available. In this chapt...

The metabolism metaphor and the material, energy, and economic value accounting framework presented in the book have a number of implications for the manner in which we understand our economies. In this chapter, we discuss several of these implications. The first set of implications is for the Energy Input-Output method itself. We recommend a physi...

Mainstream economic models, which typically exclude physical transactions between the economy and the biosphere, are incomplete: wastes, pollution, natural resource extraction, and use of ecosystem services are not included. When economic policy is informed by these incomplete models, unexpected negative outcomes can arise. In this chapter, we sugg...

In addition to materials and direct energy, accounting for embodied energy is essential to understand how the biophysical economy operates, because it provides an indication of the distribution of intra-economy energy demand created by consumption of goods and services. Furthermore, the energy embodied in manufactured capital provides, to first app...

Energy intensity, the ratio of total energy consumed during the manufacture of a product to the economic value of that product expressed in units of J/\$, is an inherently useful metric that describes the accumulation of energy consumption and economic value along the pathways traveled by products through an economy. It is a key piece of informatio...

The dynamic accounting framework presented in previous chapters naturally gives rise to a set of next steps necessary to expand systems of national accounts to encompass material and energy flows within our economies and exchanges with the biosphere. This final chapter briefly summarizes the book and highlights the need for additional data on both...

The first step in understanding the economic metabolism is to account for the flow of materials through the economy and the exchange of materials with the biosphere. In this chapter, we develop a framework for accounting material flows and accumulation within economies. We begin by considering accounting in everyday life and continue with concepts...

To quantify financial activities and interdependencies within an economy, economists account for flows of economic value among sectors of the economy. In this chapter, we utilize the prevailing subjective theory of value to develop a framework for value accounting that is consistent with the materials, energy, and embodied energy accounting framewo...

This presentation was part of the session : Short Courses Sixth International Planetary Probe Workshop Stratospheric Satellites in Thorpex

Integrated energy-economic modeling is needed to support the development of energy and carbon policies. We propose that a systems dynamic modeling approach is needed; one that includes (a) dynamics (b) endogenous treatment of uncertainty and risks, and (c) both aggregate economic and disaggregate technical or engineering levels of analysis. To supp...

Context and Transitions The World Situation and EROI South Africa and Transition Pathways

South Africa is a “canary in a coal mine” for the world’s upcoming ecological crises, especially regarding electrical energy provision for a developing modern society, because aspects of the South African situation may be repeated elsewhere when ecological limits constrain economic activity. We describe the South African context in terms of social...

Earthships are houses that use walls of recycled automobile tires packed with soil to retain a berm on three sides of the home while glazing on the sunny side (south in the Northern Hemisphere, north in the Southern Hemisphere) allows solar heat into the home's interior. This paper discusses the design and application of earthships and assesses the...

A winged balloon guidance system exploits the natural wind-field variation with the altitude available in planetary atmospheres to generate passive lateral control forces on a balloon using a tether-deployed aerodynamic surface below the balloon. Several balloon guidance system topics are discussed, including development status, physics and aerodyn...

In this paper, we describe the operation, performance, and benefits of a Balloon Guidance System (BGS) for operation at Mars. Balloon guidance systems have been under development by Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) for use in NASA's scientific balloon program. In addition, several NASA-funded studies have explored the use of BGSs for guiding scie...

Global Aerospace Corporation has developed and released to NASA an advanced balloon performance and analysis tool, called Navajo. Navajo advances the state of the art for balloon performance models and can assist NASA and commercial balloon designers, campaign and mission planners, and flight operations staff by providing higher-accuracy vertical a...

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) is developing a revolutionary system architecture for exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces from atmospheric altitudes. The work is supported by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The innovative system architecture relies upon the use of Directed Aerial Robot Explorers (DAREs), which esse...

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) is developing a revolutionary system architecture for exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces from atmospheric altitudes. The work is supported by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The innovative system architecture relies upon the use of Directed Aerial Robot Explorers (DAREs), which esse...

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) is developing a revolutionary system architecture for exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces from atmospheric altitudes. The work is supported by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The innovative system architecture relies upon the use of Directed Aerial Robot Explorers (DAREs), which esse...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing an advanced balloon performance and analysis tool, called Navajo. Navajo will advance the state of the art for balloon performance models and assist NASA and commercial balloon designers, campaign and mission planners, and flight operations staff by providing high- accuracy vertical and horizontal trajecto...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing, under NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funding, a revolutionary concept for new observing system of guided stratospheric balloon vehicles called Stratospheric Satellites. Constellations of Stratospheric Satellites will rely on advanced stratospheric balloon technology, operate at a 35-km altitu...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing, under NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts funding, a revolutionary concept for guided stratospheric balloon vehicles called Stratospheric Satellites. Constellations of Stratospheric Satellites will rely on advanced stratospheric balloon technology, operate at a 35-km altitude (at the "edge of space") for...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing revolutionary system architecture for exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces from atmospheric altitudes. The work is supported by NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. The innovative system architecture relies upon the use of Directed Aerial Robot Explorers (DARE), which essentially are long-dur...

A revolutionary concept is discussed for a global constellation and network of hundreds of stratospheric superpressure balloons that can address major scientific questions relating to Earth science. Global Aerospace Corporation is proposing this role for a new generation of stratospheric platform based on advanced balloon technology, called the Str...

A balloon trajectory control system is discussed that is under development for use on NASA's Ultra Long Duration Balloon Project. The trajectory control system exploits the natural wind field variation with altitude to generate passive lateral control forces on a balloon using a tether-deployed aerodynamic surface below the balloon. A lifting devic...

An understanding of the characteristics of trajectories of constant-altitude stratospheric platforms is important for scientific balloon flights because science observation sequences, safety planning, overflight negotiations, launch site selection, and recovery operations are affected by trajectory. Supported by NASA, Global Aerospace Corporation (...

We present a concept for global and regional constellations of low cost stratospheric satellites based on ultra long duration balloon (ULDB) and StratoSail® Trajectory Control System (TCS) technologies. Stratospheric Satellites (StratoSat™ platforms) will be moved around the globe by stratospheric winds (at the height of 35 km - above 99% of the Ea...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing a revolutionary concept for a global constellation and network of hundreds of stratospheric superpressure balloons. Global Aerospace Corporation and Princeton University are studying methods of controlling the geometry of these stratospheric balloon constellations using concepts related to and inspiration...

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) is developing revolutionary system architecture for exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces from atmospheric altitudes. The work is supported by NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The innovative system architecture relies upon the use of Directed Aerial Robot Explorers (DARE), which essentially...

Global Aerospace Corporation is developing a new trajectory and performance modeling tool for Earth and Planetary Balloons, called Navajo. This tool will advance the state of the art for balloon performance models and assist NASA and commercial balloon designers, campaign and mission planners, and flight operations staff by providing high-accuracy...

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) has been developing several key technologies that contribute to the safe and efficient flights of balloon missions. The specific balloon technologies that are discussed include Trajectory Control Systems, Trajectory Simulation and Prediction Systems, Performance Models, Advanced Power Generation Systems, and Globa...

Wind velocity data from seven high-altitude long-duration balloon flights are compared with stratospheric analyses and forecasts produced by the U.K. Meteorological Office (UKMO) and the Data Assimilation Office (DAO). The results suggest that biases in both the UKMO and DAO analyses arise from the displacement of the polar night jet to higher lati...

The performance of a xenon-filled fiberglass insulation in conjunction with a new, low thermal conductivity internal structure was studied. A full-scale prototype was constructed and tested at simulated Venus surface temperature and pressure conditions. In addition, a centrifuge test was performed to verify the ability of the structure to tolerate...

NASA has committed to developing a stratospheric superpressure balloon capable of lifting a 1.5 ton payload to 35000 m for flights of more than 100 days. This pressurized design does not use consumables (ballast) to maintain altitude at sunset. This capability should be especially suitable for hard x-ray and gamma-ray instruments. The first long du...

Aerobots are balloon-based AEROnautical RoBOTS with autonomous navigation capabilities. An aerobot mission has been proposed for exploration of the upper atmosphere through near-surface regions of Venus. The wide range of atmospheric conditions from the relatively benign upper atmosphere to the hot, high-pressure surface require thermal protection...

AM!m The Mars Geoscience Aerobot (MGA) is a proposed Mars aerobot (Aeronautical roBOT) mission featuring advanced capabilities for surface imaging and atmospheric science. The MGA consists of a superpressure balloon that is reflective on top and white on the bottom to avoid condensation of C@ frost during the night. The MGA also features a "sman" g...