Mar Rubio | Public University of Navarre (original) (raw)
Papers by Mar Rubio
We examine energy and CO2 intensities (energy use / GDP and CO2 emissions / GDP) in Sweden and Sp... more We examine energy and CO2 intensities (energy use / GDP and CO2 emissions / GDP) in Sweden and Spain during the last two hundred years. The first aim is to establish reliable and comparable time-series. We include all energy that involves some human effort in its capture. ...
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2005
"In the interpretation of the process of economic modernisation of the last two centuries, i... more "In the interpretation of the process of economic modernisation of the last two centuries, it is widely accepted that the productivity gains achieved through the development of new energy carriers (from wood to coal, and later to petroleum and electricity) play an important role. From this viewpoint, the Industrial Revolution has been interpreted as the “process that allowed the exploitation at great scale of new energy sources by means of inanimate converters” (Cipolla, 1994) and it has been argued that coal – and later oil – was “a strategic item in the rise and diffusion of the industrial civilisation” (Wrigley, 1962). It is within this context that it has also been claimed that “economic history makes it evident that the industrial standing of any country may be gauged, with a fair degree of accuracy, from its development of mechanical power” (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1931). Of the 32 countries that constitute Latin America and the Caribbean at present, we have historical national accounts for a handful of them. In the absence of comparable macroeconomic indicators for most of the Latin American economies beyond the 1930s, this paper presents an estimate of the apparent consumption per head of coal and petroleum for 25 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for the year 1925. This allows us to rank the Latin American countries and observe the relative distance to each other. We use energy consumption as an indicator of economic modernisation. By 1925 most Latin American countries were importers of coal and petroleum products, mostly from the UK, the US and Germany; Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia also provided oil within the region. We use both the foreign trade statistics from the Latin American economies and that of their principal trade partners, plus data on home production of coal and petroleum for constructing our estimates. Ours is not the first attempt to construct the apparent consumption of energy in Latin America in historical terms. Three other studies present historical series of energy consumption in Latin America. These are the one by Raul Prebisch (CEPAL, 1951), a second attempt by CEPAL (1956) and finally Darmstadter et al (1971). Yet our endeavour goes far beyond the number of countries included in those studies for the early part of the twentieth century: Prebish gives data for 4 countries, CEPAL only includes data for 7 countries before 1930 and Darmstadter offers window estimates for 1925 and 1929 for 11 countries. In addition in our paper, the year 1925 is used as a test year in order to analyse the weakness and advantages of the alternative sources; we contrast their reliability, in order to build up a robust methodology to be applied (backward and forward in time) in future research for the estimation the apparent consumption of fossil fuels from 1870 to 1945. As a result, the paper contributes to several literatures. On the one hand, it offers a contrast of the foreign trade statistics of the Latin American countries with those of the advanced economies (UK, USA and Germany), showing that the former are far more reliable than previously thought by the literature. On the other hand, it contributes to environmental and energy history studies by doubling the number of countries for which energy consumption estimates was previously available in Latin America. Finally, it contributes to the wider economic history debate in Latin America providing the basis for a comparative analysis of modernisation performance beyond the few countries for which historical national accounts are available."
The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important relationships of modern ... more The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important relationships of modern economic growth. Machines need energy to produce all the goods we enjoy; energy without machinery is useless. However, the great majority of the economic models do not take into account the elasticities of substitution (or complementaries) between these two main variables. Actually, energy is absent in many growth models and discussions on diverging economic development paths. We approach this relevant issue from a new perspective: energy and capital relations during 100 years. We use the latest estimations of capital stock (machinery and equipment) and energy consumption for Latin America and compare them with those of Western Europe. The energy capital ratio (how much energy is used per unit of capital) could be a predictor of economic growth, thus providing some answers about the timing and causes of the different modernisation patterns of these regions and showing us some answers about the long run relationship between energy consumption and capital accumulation.
Este artículo explora los procesos de aprendizaje y de transferencia tecnológica que situaron a E... more Este artículo explora los procesos de aprendizaje y de transferencia tecnológica que situaron a España entre los firstcomers de la energía nuclear a finales de los años sesenta. Se trata de un ejemplo de industria naciente que, bajo la protección del Estado y la acción de los consorcios empresariales y de las multinacionales norteamericanas, fue capaz de replicar un reto tecnológico complejo. Analizamos cómo se fue creando un ecosistema empresarial en el que fue clave el liderazgo de algunos ingenieros y la cooperación y competencia entre industrias, ingenierías y consultoras. La historia empresarial de las centrales nucleares de Zorita y Garoña ejemplifica un modelo de learning by doing que, a través de los contratos 'llave en mano', permitieron un rápido crecimiento del sector, convenciendo al gobierno de la dictadura y a los promotores eléctricos de que era posible llevar a cabo uno de los programas nucleares más ambiciosos de la Europa occidental.This article explores th...
The singularity of the energy transition in Latin America, 1900-1950: Schurr revisited 1
The data set provides the raw data we used in our research: energy use by primary energy source i... more The data set provides the raw data we used in our research: energy use by primary energy source in United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Germany and France, from 1800 to 2009, expressed in petajoules (the data do not cover the first decades of the period for some countries); the calculation process, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index; and the outputs we obtained: the Energy Mix Concentration Index in the mentioned countries for the period covered. Our starting point are the historical databases developed by a number of energy researchers, that is, United Kingdom (Fouquet, 2014), Italy (Malanima, 2006), Netherlands (Gales et al., 2007), Portugal (Henriques, 2011), Spain (Rubio, 2005), Sweden (Kander, 2002) and Germany and France (Kander et al., 2014, where all the data, but the United Kingdom's, have been collected - an alternative set of data is included for England and Wales by Warde (2007)-). The basic data set on energy consumption is available at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~histecon/energyhistory/energydata.html
The changes in the composition of the energy basket in the long run lead to energy transitions. P... more The changes in the composition of the energy basket in the long run lead to energy transitions. Primary energy substitution models allow addressing these phenomena. However, the diversification paths of the energy mix of different countries in a long term compared perspective have not been studied yet. This paper proposes an indicator, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the Energy Mix Concentration Index (EMCI), to quantify the degree of diversification of the primary energy basket of eight European countries over the last two centuries. The results reveal that early comers, which are large energy consumers, required a huge concentration of their energy basket in the 19th century; however, the observed countries had converged to similar levels of diversification of their energy mixes from the second half of the 20th century, and more crucially after the oil crises. For some countries, today’s degree of diversification is the largest in their energy histories, but it is not the...
Water Resources and Economics, 2021
Ecological Economics, 2017
From the invention of the steam engine to the present, water has represented a significant input ... more From the invention of the steam engine to the present, water has represented a significant input to the energy system, although this has been mostly ignored in the literature. In Spain, the most arid country in Europe, studies about water footprint typically just consider domestic, agricultural and industrial water uses, but water requirements for the electricity sector are omitted despite our dependence on thermal power. It has been demonstrated that for each available cooling technology, nuclear needs and consumption of water tend to be larger per MWh generated. We calculate a first approximation to the Spanish nuclear water footprint from 1969 to 2015. Our results show that while water consumed by Spanish nuclear power plants are around 3 m per capita/year, water withdrawals per capita/year are around 70 m. Moreover, our analysis allows extracting conclusions focusing on a River Basins approach. What is the water impact of our nuclear power plants? Will water limit our energy future? These are some of the issues at stake.
1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financia... more 1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financiación exterior 13 1.3 La inversión extranjera desde el IEME, 1939-1973 17 2 Confiscando divisas, el caso de la CHADE (1937-1960) 29 2.1 El impacto de la Guerra Civil sobre la cartera de la CHADE 32 2.2 Disolución fiscal de la CHADE y liquidación del paquete español 37 3 Los entresijos de la apertura al capital exterior, 1939-1962 45 3.1 Soltando los grilletes al capital extranjero, 1959-1964 47 3.2 Las presiones del capital internacional 57 3.3 El penúltimo eslabón: la Orden de 15 de marzo de 1962 61 3.4 El misterio del Fondo de Retorno de Cargas Interiores del Estado 66 4 ¿Cómo financiamos el desarrollismo industrial? El recurso masivo al crédito exterior 73 4.1 Las dificultades de la posguerra y el crédito exterior 80 4.2
1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financia... more 1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financiación exterior 13 1.3 La inversión extranjera desde el IEME, 1939-1973 17 2 Confiscando divisas, el caso de la CHADE (1937-1960) 29 2.1 El impacto de la Guerra Civil sobre la cartera de la CHADE 32 2.2 Disolución fiscal de la CHADE y liquidación del paquete español 37 3 Los entresijos de la apertura al capital exterior, 1939-1962 45 3.1 Soltando los grilletes al capital extranjero, 1959-1964 47 3.2 Las presiones del capital internacional 57 3.3 El penúltimo eslabón: la Orden de 15 de marzo de 1962 61 3.4 El misterio del Fondo de Retorno de Cargas Interiores del Estado 66 4 ¿Cómo financiamos el desarrollismo industrial? El recurso masivo al crédito exterior 73 4.1 Las dificultades de la posguerra y el crédito exterior 80 4.2
Ecological Economics, 2022
This dataset contains the annual modern energy consumption (the sum of coal, oil, gas, and primar... more This dataset contains the annual modern energy consumption (the sum of coal, oil, gas, and primary electricity) of 20 Latin American countries from 1856 to year 2010. It has been built from pre-existing compilations by energy historians which have been linked to internationally available statistics after 1970. Data are expressed in terajules (TJ). This energy database is the one used by Levia and Rubio-Varas (2020)(https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8670).
We examine energy and CO2 intensities (energy use / GDP and CO2 emissions / GDP) in Sweden and Sp... more We examine energy and CO2 intensities (energy use / GDP and CO2 emissions / GDP) in Sweden and Spain during the last two hundred years. The first aim is to establish reliable and comparable time-series. We include all energy that involves some human effort in its capture. ...
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2005
"In the interpretation of the process of economic modernisation of the last two centuries, i... more "In the interpretation of the process of economic modernisation of the last two centuries, it is widely accepted that the productivity gains achieved through the development of new energy carriers (from wood to coal, and later to petroleum and electricity) play an important role. From this viewpoint, the Industrial Revolution has been interpreted as the “process that allowed the exploitation at great scale of new energy sources by means of inanimate converters” (Cipolla, 1994) and it has been argued that coal – and later oil – was “a strategic item in the rise and diffusion of the industrial civilisation” (Wrigley, 1962). It is within this context that it has also been claimed that “economic history makes it evident that the industrial standing of any country may be gauged, with a fair degree of accuracy, from its development of mechanical power” (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1931). Of the 32 countries that constitute Latin America and the Caribbean at present, we have historical national accounts for a handful of them. In the absence of comparable macroeconomic indicators for most of the Latin American economies beyond the 1930s, this paper presents an estimate of the apparent consumption per head of coal and petroleum for 25 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean for the year 1925. This allows us to rank the Latin American countries and observe the relative distance to each other. We use energy consumption as an indicator of economic modernisation. By 1925 most Latin American countries were importers of coal and petroleum products, mostly from the UK, the US and Germany; Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia also provided oil within the region. We use both the foreign trade statistics from the Latin American economies and that of their principal trade partners, plus data on home production of coal and petroleum for constructing our estimates. Ours is not the first attempt to construct the apparent consumption of energy in Latin America in historical terms. Three other studies present historical series of energy consumption in Latin America. These are the one by Raul Prebisch (CEPAL, 1951), a second attempt by CEPAL (1956) and finally Darmstadter et al (1971). Yet our endeavour goes far beyond the number of countries included in those studies for the early part of the twentieth century: Prebish gives data for 4 countries, CEPAL only includes data for 7 countries before 1930 and Darmstadter offers window estimates for 1925 and 1929 for 11 countries. In addition in our paper, the year 1925 is used as a test year in order to analyse the weakness and advantages of the alternative sources; we contrast their reliability, in order to build up a robust methodology to be applied (backward and forward in time) in future research for the estimation the apparent consumption of fossil fuels from 1870 to 1945. As a result, the paper contributes to several literatures. On the one hand, it offers a contrast of the foreign trade statistics of the Latin American countries with those of the advanced economies (UK, USA and Germany), showing that the former are far more reliable than previously thought by the literature. On the other hand, it contributes to environmental and energy history studies by doubling the number of countries for which energy consumption estimates was previously available in Latin America. Finally, it contributes to the wider economic history debate in Latin America providing the basis for a comparative analysis of modernisation performance beyond the few countries for which historical national accounts are available."
The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important relationships of modern ... more The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important relationships of modern economic growth. Machines need energy to produce all the goods we enjoy; energy without machinery is useless. However, the great majority of the economic models do not take into account the elasticities of substitution (or complementaries) between these two main variables. Actually, energy is absent in many growth models and discussions on diverging economic development paths. We approach this relevant issue from a new perspective: energy and capital relations during 100 years. We use the latest estimations of capital stock (machinery and equipment) and energy consumption for Latin America and compare them with those of Western Europe. The energy capital ratio (how much energy is used per unit of capital) could be a predictor of economic growth, thus providing some answers about the timing and causes of the different modernisation patterns of these regions and showing us some answers about the long run relationship between energy consumption and capital accumulation.
Este artículo explora los procesos de aprendizaje y de transferencia tecnológica que situaron a E... more Este artículo explora los procesos de aprendizaje y de transferencia tecnológica que situaron a España entre los firstcomers de la energía nuclear a finales de los años sesenta. Se trata de un ejemplo de industria naciente que, bajo la protección del Estado y la acción de los consorcios empresariales y de las multinacionales norteamericanas, fue capaz de replicar un reto tecnológico complejo. Analizamos cómo se fue creando un ecosistema empresarial en el que fue clave el liderazgo de algunos ingenieros y la cooperación y competencia entre industrias, ingenierías y consultoras. La historia empresarial de las centrales nucleares de Zorita y Garoña ejemplifica un modelo de learning by doing que, a través de los contratos 'llave en mano', permitieron un rápido crecimiento del sector, convenciendo al gobierno de la dictadura y a los promotores eléctricos de que era posible llevar a cabo uno de los programas nucleares más ambiciosos de la Europa occidental.This article explores th...
The singularity of the energy transition in Latin America, 1900-1950: Schurr revisited 1
The data set provides the raw data we used in our research: energy use by primary energy source i... more The data set provides the raw data we used in our research: energy use by primary energy source in United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Germany and France, from 1800 to 2009, expressed in petajoules (the data do not cover the first decades of the period for some countries); the calculation process, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration index; and the outputs we obtained: the Energy Mix Concentration Index in the mentioned countries for the period covered. Our starting point are the historical databases developed by a number of energy researchers, that is, United Kingdom (Fouquet, 2014), Italy (Malanima, 2006), Netherlands (Gales et al., 2007), Portugal (Henriques, 2011), Spain (Rubio, 2005), Sweden (Kander, 2002) and Germany and France (Kander et al., 2014, where all the data, but the United Kingdom's, have been collected - an alternative set of data is included for England and Wales by Warde (2007)-). The basic data set on energy consumption is available at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~histecon/energyhistory/energydata.html
The changes in the composition of the energy basket in the long run lead to energy transitions. P... more The changes in the composition of the energy basket in the long run lead to energy transitions. Primary energy substitution models allow addressing these phenomena. However, the diversification paths of the energy mix of different countries in a long term compared perspective have not been studied yet. This paper proposes an indicator, based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the Energy Mix Concentration Index (EMCI), to quantify the degree of diversification of the primary energy basket of eight European countries over the last two centuries. The results reveal that early comers, which are large energy consumers, required a huge concentration of their energy basket in the 19th century; however, the observed countries had converged to similar levels of diversification of their energy mixes from the second half of the 20th century, and more crucially after the oil crises. For some countries, today’s degree of diversification is the largest in their energy histories, but it is not the...
Water Resources and Economics, 2021
Ecological Economics, 2017
From the invention of the steam engine to the present, water has represented a significant input ... more From the invention of the steam engine to the present, water has represented a significant input to the energy system, although this has been mostly ignored in the literature. In Spain, the most arid country in Europe, studies about water footprint typically just consider domestic, agricultural and industrial water uses, but water requirements for the electricity sector are omitted despite our dependence on thermal power. It has been demonstrated that for each available cooling technology, nuclear needs and consumption of water tend to be larger per MWh generated. We calculate a first approximation to the Spanish nuclear water footprint from 1969 to 2015. Our results show that while water consumed by Spanish nuclear power plants are around 3 m per capita/year, water withdrawals per capita/year are around 70 m. Moreover, our analysis allows extracting conclusions focusing on a River Basins approach. What is the water impact of our nuclear power plants? Will water limit our energy future? These are some of the issues at stake.
1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financia... more 1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financiación exterior 13 1.3 La inversión extranjera desde el IEME, 1939-1973 17 2 Confiscando divisas, el caso de la CHADE (1937-1960) 29 2.1 El impacto de la Guerra Civil sobre la cartera de la CHADE 32 2.2 Disolución fiscal de la CHADE y liquidación del paquete español 37 3 Los entresijos de la apertura al capital exterior, 1939-1962 45 3.1 Soltando los grilletes al capital extranjero, 1959-1964 47 3.2 Las presiones del capital internacional 57 3.3 El penúltimo eslabón: la Orden de 15 de marzo de 1962 61 3.4 El misterio del Fondo de Retorno de Cargas Interiores del Estado 66 4 ¿Cómo financiamos el desarrollismo industrial? El recurso masivo al crédito exterior 73 4.1 Las dificultades de la posguerra y el crédito exterior 80 4.2
1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financia... more 1.1 El IEME como archivo para la historia empresarial 12 1.2 El IEME como factótum de la financiación exterior 13 1.3 La inversión extranjera desde el IEME, 1939-1973 17 2 Confiscando divisas, el caso de la CHADE (1937-1960) 29 2.1 El impacto de la Guerra Civil sobre la cartera de la CHADE 32 2.2 Disolución fiscal de la CHADE y liquidación del paquete español 37 3 Los entresijos de la apertura al capital exterior, 1939-1962 45 3.1 Soltando los grilletes al capital extranjero, 1959-1964 47 3.2 Las presiones del capital internacional 57 3.3 El penúltimo eslabón: la Orden de 15 de marzo de 1962 61 3.4 El misterio del Fondo de Retorno de Cargas Interiores del Estado 66 4 ¿Cómo financiamos el desarrollismo industrial? El recurso masivo al crédito exterior 73 4.1 Las dificultades de la posguerra y el crédito exterior 80 4.2
Ecological Economics, 2022
This dataset contains the annual modern energy consumption (the sum of coal, oil, gas, and primar... more This dataset contains the annual modern energy consumption (the sum of coal, oil, gas, and primary electricity) of 20 Latin American countries from 1856 to year 2010. It has been built from pre-existing compilations by energy historians which have been linked to internationally available statistics after 1970. Data are expressed in terajules (TJ). This energy database is the one used by Levia and Rubio-Varas (2020)(https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8670).
Panels: History of Nuclear Energy and Society I: Nuclear Power, International Organizations and A... more Panels:
History of Nuclear Energy and Society I: Nuclear Power, International Organizations and Anti-nuclear Movements in a Comparative and Transnational Perspective
and:
History of Nuclear Power and Society II: How to Research Societal Perceptions of and Engagement with Nuclear Energy in a Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspective
On this innaugeral episode of the HoNESt Podcast, we introduce this fantastic new research projec... more On this innaugeral episode of the HoNESt Podcast, we introduce this fantastic new research project and some core members of the team. Topics include: the goal of the project, how it came together, the methods and approaches that will be used, and the whys and hows of the complex relationship between nuclear energy and society. Guests include: Mar Rubio (Universitad publica de Navarra), Karl-Erik Michelsen (Lappenrantta University), Jan-Henrik Meyer (University of Copenhagen), John Whitton (University of Central Lancashire), Josep Niubo (Universitad Pompeu Fabra), Robert Bud (Science Museum), and Wilfried Konrad (Dialogik). To learn more and follow the progress of the project, go to www.honest2020.eu .
Access the podcast at: https://soundcloud.com/honest-podcast/honest-an-innovative-approach-to-nuclear-energy-and-society
engagement nuclear europe sociology history HoNESt research
Release date:
9 December 2015