The neoclassical mainstream theory of economic growth does not care about the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It usually considers only capital and labor as the factors that produce the wealth of modern industrial economies. If energy is taken into account as a factor of production, its economic weight, that is its output elasticity, is assigned a meager magnitude of roughly 5 percent, according to the neoclassical cost-share theorem. Because of that, neoclassical economics has the problems of the “Solow Residual”, which is the big difference between observed and computed economic growth, and of the failure to explain the economic recessions since World War 2 by the variations of the production factors. Having recalled these problems, we point out that technological constraints on factor combinations have been overlooked in the derivation of the cost-share theorem. Biophysical analyses of economic growth that disregard this theorem and mend the neoclassical deficiencies are sketched. They show that energy’s output elasticity is much larger than its cost share and elucidate the existence of bidirectional causality between energy conversion and economic growth. This helps to understand how economic crises have been triggered and overcome by supply-side and demand-side actions. Human creativity changes the state of economic systems. We discuss the challenges to it by the risks from politics and markets in conjunction with energy sources and technologies, and by the constraints that the emissions of particles and heat from entropy production impose on industrial growth in the biosphere.

中文翻译：

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经济增长和危机中的能量、熵、约束和创造力

新古典主流经济增长理论并不关心热力学第一定律和第二定律。它通常只考虑资本和劳动力作为现代工业经济的财富产生因素。根据新古典成本分摊定理，如果将能源视为一种生产要素，则其经济权重，即其产出弹性，仅占大约 5% 的微薄幅度。正因为如此，新古典经济学存在“索洛剩余”的问题，即观察到的和计算的经济增长之间的巨大差异，以及无法用生产要素的变化来解释二战以来的经济衰退。回忆起这些问题，我们指出在推导成本分摊定理时忽略了对要素组合的技术限制。对经济增长的生物物理学分析忽略了这一定理并弥补了新古典主义的缺陷。他们表明能源的产出弹性远大于其成本份额，并阐明了能源转换与经济增长之间存在双向因果关系。这有助于了解供应方和需求方的行动是如何触发和克服经济危机的。人类的创造力改变了经济系统的状态。我们讨论了政治和市场风险以及能源和技术带来的挑战，