260263 VO Physics and economics of resource consumption (2006S)

ECTS: 5
The consumption of energy and materials has to be reduced rapidly to the supply of renewable sources, if the natural basis of human life is to be preserved.
The physics of the potential to lower the energy and material consumption is described, which is necessary to generate one and the same energy and material services, as well as the physics of the possibilities to produce the necessary energy and materials with renewable sources (e.g. solar energy or biomass). Energy services are for instance room temperature (in 0C), or transportation (in P/km or t/km).
Moreover a survey is given of the economic and legal measures, which are required to exhaust these potentials.