Biophysical and Thermodynamic Foundations of Energy Economics: Introducing the novel concept of Econobolism

This research aims to innovatively examine whether the Kleiber’s law of biophysics and Constructal law of thermodynamics hold in the context of energy economics. To this end, it combines machine learning and econometric methods including k-clustering, Fixed Effects (FE), Random Effects (RE), Generalized Least Squares (GLS), and Driscoll and Kraay (1998) standard errors (SCC). These models analyze the data of 222 countries between 1974 and 2023 to estimate the metabolism rate in the context of energy economics to introduce a novice concept, called “econobolism rate” in this study. The results of the k-clustering method accept the Constructal law of thermodynamics by indicating that countries with large economic size have more energy efficiency, compared to countries with small economic size. Moreover, the results of econometric methods accept the Kleiber’s law by showing that the estimated econobolism rates range within 81% and 85% which are, respectively, 6% and 10% greater than the metabolic rate of the Kleiber’s law, 75%. This result confirms that energy consumption is a sublinear proportion of economic size, which affirms the Kleiber’s law where energy consumption of a biological organism is a proportion of its mass. These findings incorporate biophysics and thermodynamics into energy economics by estimating the econobolic rate, which open new horizons in research on the nexus of energy consumption and economic development.