Energy constrains to increasing complexity in the biosphere

Gengyuan Liu; Zhifeng Yang; Biagio F Giannetti; Marco Casazza; Feni Agostinho; Jiamin Pan; Ningyu Yan; Yan Hao; Lixiao Zhang; Cecilia M V B Almeida; Francesco Gonella; Sergio Ulgiati; Mark T Brown

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100169

Energy constrains to increasing complexity in the biosphere

Innovation (Camb). 2021 Sep 27;2(4):100169. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100169. eCollection 2021 Nov 28.

Authors

Gengyuan Liu^{1

2}, Zhifeng Yang^{1

3}, Biagio F Giannetti^{1

4}, Marco Casazza⁵, Feni Agostinho^{1

4}, Jiamin Pan¹, Ningyu Yan¹, Yan Hao¹, Lixiao Zhang^{1

2}, Cecilia M V B Almeida⁴, Francesco Gonella⁶, Sergio Ulgiati^{1

2

5}, Mark T Brown^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
² Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing 100875, China.
³ Institute of Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
⁴ Laboratory of Production and Environment (LaProMA), Paulista University (UNIP), Sao Paulo 04026-002, Brazil.
⁵ Department of Sciences and Technologies, University of Naples 'Parthenope', Centro Direzionale, Isola C4, 80143 Naples, Italy.
⁶ Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, 30170 Venezia Mestre, Italy.
⁷ Center for Environmental Policy, Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

Abstract

Thirty years ago, the systems ecologist Howard T. Odum introduced the concept of transformity, which is a thermodynamic measure of quality within the trial and error evolutionary dynamics of ecosystems, namely an indicator of rank in the hierarchical system structure of the biosphere. Based on a global database of individual processes and whole economies, this paper extends, refines, and updates Odum's idea, demonstrating the strength of the postulated relation. In particular, an inverse linear logarithmic relationship is shown to hold between resource quantity (exergy) and quality (emergy), which is the result of an overall energetic efficiency characteristic of energy transformation processes of the biosphere. This relation extends from natural renewable energy sources to human information (including global internet data flows) and know-how embedded in national economies, thus identifying a consistent theory of hierarchical organization of the biosphere grounded in energetics and ultimately setting constraints to illusions of unlimited growth.

Keywords: complexity; energetic efficiency; hierarchical structure; self-organizing system.