Are you ready for the Energy Revolution and EnerMoney? To use energy as money!
It was in 1940 when King Hubbert (the originator of the concept of Peak Oil) wrote for the first time in a virtually unknown publication “Man-hours and Distribution. Income expressed in energy units”, that started the proposition on the shift of money paradigm.
In 1968 it was the turn of Bukminster Fuller in his booklet "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth". But the first real public debate took place in the famous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
The basic idea is the fact that energy is a physical and immutable entity in some way present in every transformation and production process. It is a factor that determines the final price of products. A kWh is a measurable quantity that is not subject to inflation, especially with the increasing energy hunger in the world. Each item we purchase is ‘condensed’ energy – a certain quantity of kWhs.
And so: can we recognise the wisdom of Hubbert and others and issue bonds, for the purpose of energy transactions (ecological conversion) and subscribed to by individual citizens? (Not by banks or cartels of companies!).
Energy Bonds would be used to construct local renewable energy systems (public company / based on European Common Goods model) and energy efficiency. Interest and capital would return in the form of carbon credits, an alternative form of currency with circulation guaranteed by the production of renewable energy.
Renewable energies have a constant or increasing Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) in contrast to fossil fuels that nowadays show a decreasing EROEI.
In practice, how can we do this? The State or an authorised cooperative (http://www.gestcooper.it/pdf/riforma%20societ%C3%A0/il%20prestito%20obbligazionario%20nelle%20cooperative.PDF) would accept investments from citizens and issue bonds that will be repaid in Kwh. A person invests in euro and receives running energy credit in Kwh.
This "EnerMoney" has the same valid value all over the world, guaranteed by a physical asset, guaranteed by production facilities, without debt, "payable to bearer on demand" and a parallel currency to the less stable $, Euro (or lira or drachma).
It would be a currency free from inflation, and with real stable value equal to the thermodynamic work!
It is useful as an investment for our money too as its returns are improved quality of living through reduced carbon intensity, energy security and better air quality!
Even the average citizen knows that a kWh has a more stable value and growth potential than the existing paper money. It’s value increases with increasing energy efficiency. A kilowatt hour bond can be used to pay heating, electricity bill, oil for a car, transport, and once it is legalised, it can trade for other fixed assets, so it could also be used to buy bread or a kilo of tomatoes!
Each product or commodity created by man has its own inherent energy content, to date measured by the price divided by the cost per unit of energy, less profit.
Energy money bonds not only allow citizens to invest their savings in a guaranteed asset class (people don’t invest in waste paper, but in real assets and production), it would not create debt for the State (to pay off with new debt or by printing money that creates inflation) and it would be an incredible driving force for the most strategic industry of the future!
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