Abstract
The present age is characterized by a very complex economic relationship among finance, technology, social needs, etc., which can be summarized in the word “sustainability.” The sustainable consumption and production policies represent the keys to realize sustainable development. But, the analysis of the carbon footprint data points out that the present economies are still carbon-consumption production. The reduction of greenhouse gasses emissions is based on a shift from fossil to renewable and bio-based industrial raw materials, with a related reorganization of the chains of the energy and manufacturing sectors. But, this requirement implies technological choices based on a sustainable measurement of their impacts on the ecological and economical contexts. So, social and economic requirements must also be taken into account by the decision-makers. Bioeconomy can represent a possible approach to deal with the requirements of the present time. But, new needs emerge in relation to sustainability. So, sustainable policies require new indicators, in order to consider the link among economics, technologies, and social well-being. In this paper, an irreversible thermodynamic approach is developed, in order to introduce a thermoeconomic indicator, based on thermodynamic optimization methods, but also on socioeconomic and ecological evaluations. The entropy production rate is introduced in relation to the CO2emission flows from human activities, and it is related to the income index, in order to consider the economic and social equity. This approach is of interest of the researchers in the field of econophysics, thermoeconomy, economics, and bioeconomy.
Highlights
Classical economics has been developed from 1776, when Adam Smith published his famous treatment on the Wealth of Nations [1], to 1830–1875, with the aim to understand the economic and social changes, due to industrial revolution
Keynesian economic school highlighted the fundamental role of Thermodynamics for Human Oriented Sustainability production
In order to suggest a response to this problem, we develop an approach based on irreversible thermodynamics, considering the economic well-being and the pollution control as fundamental aims for human wellness (Figure 1)
Summary
Classical economics has been developed from 1776, when Adam Smith published his famous treatment on the Wealth of Nations [1], to 1830–1875, with the aim to understand the economic and social changes, due to industrial revolution. During the second decade of the twentieth century, the quantitative theory of money has highlighted the role played by the money on inflation [3]. The natural synthesis of these approaches became the neoclassical economics, which is an economic theory that excludes any crisis, because of the spontaneous corrections of prices in economy [4]. Keynesian economic school highlighted the fundamental role of Thermodynamics for Human Oriented Sustainability production. In this approach, the crisis is a “natural” component of the economic system due to inconsistency between supply and demand: in this context, social and economic policies have become fundamental in order to reduce the related unemployment [5]. The Chicago school of economics rejects the usefulness of any state intervention [6]
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