The relationship between money and energy

Richard Douthwaite

Feasta, Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability

Dublin

If there was no energy, nothing could be supplied in exchange for money.

Energy therefore gives money its value

Gold was, in fact, an energy-based currency.

Whether it still is is another matter. Over the past four decades, the median yearly ratio

between an ounce of spot gold and a barrel of oil has been 13.4 barrels. The ratio's most

extreme years were 1988, when the multiple averaged 29.4, and 2005, when it bottomed at

8.9 barrels.

Last Thursday, May 5th, the ratio was

13.76

If you put more money into circulation than is warranted by energy production, the price of the energy will rise to restore the relationship

between energy and the things that money can buy.

Essentially, then, energy is the real money, something we monetary theorists need to

keep in mind

How Ireland's oil import bill grew 2000-2009

"In Europe we are facing this financial crisis. The amount of increase in the oil import bill in Europe is equal to government budget deficit

of Greece plus Portugal put together.

"If the economic recovery starts to happen we can see difficulty in [...] two three years' time.

This in turn may mean strangling economic recovery efforts because higher oil prices

means putting pressure on the trade balance and through that economic recovery efforts

can be well strangled.”

Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, in an Australian radio interview on April 23rd 2011

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3198227.htm

How fossil fuel output is predicted to fall

What does a rapidly-declining energy supply mean for the money supply?

1. The supply of money has to fall if it is to maintain its value. The alternative is an inflation.

2. No-one will wish to borrow as their incomes will be shrinking. As a result, the debt-based money-creation system will break down. New non-debt ways of injecting money into the economy will have to be found.

3. Having the state inject all the new money into an economy would concentrate a lot of power into the government's hands. We need a more broadly-based method. Money should be created by, or on behalf of, its users. This could be in proportion to the trade each is doing as is done in Feasta's Liquidity Network proposal .

What does a rapidly-declining energy supply mean for the money supply?

4. As a supply of energy will be easy to convert into a supply of money, energy producers will become the money creators. They will be, directly or indirectly, the new banks, with, quite literally, the power to decide what gets done.

5. It therefore matters where the energy is created, and by whom.

6. Communities should attempt to meet all their energy needs from their own resources as, otherwise, they will find that an increasing proportion of everything they produce has to be used to buy in their energy requirements. The local energy supply can be the basis of as local currency and a local bank.

What does a rapidly-declining energy supply mean for the money supply?

7. If people won't borrow, new ways of financing need to be found. These are likely to be based on a share of total income rather than a share of the profits.

8. Asset values will fall to preserve their relationship with income.

9. When the implications of oil peak are thought through, paper assets- claims on other people's incomes - will be dumped. This could collapse the global banking system.