Chapter 4
Economy, energy, entropy
Currently energy is the basis of every economic activity. In order to understand the meaning of the interrelationship between economy and energy we need to clarify what the word energy means. To do so, we need to turn to physics. (30:1)

Thermodynamics teaches us that energy can't be created or destroyed but only transformed from one state to another. Let's consider, for example, the engine of a car. The energy contained in the petrol is equal to the labor performed by the engine of a car plus the energy present in the waste products. Everything in existence is made up of energy. The appearance, the state, the movement of any existing thing are in reality only one of the diverse transformations and concentrations of energy: for example a person, an object, a car, a flower or a piece of fruit. When a house is built or a flower is born, that happens thanks to the energy captured somewhere (workers, materials, crane, fertilizer, farmers, ploughs) and when the house is destroyed or the flower dies, the energy contained in them doesn't disappear. It goes back into the environment. The molecules we breathe are the same ones which were once breathed by Jesus. (30:2)

If we only considered just this one principle called the "first law of thermodynamics", there would not be any problems of any kind, and we could continue to use energy without ever exhausting it. But this is not so. For example if we burn a piece of coal, the energy used is transformed into heat, carbon dioxide and other gases that are dispersed into the atmosphere. Therefore, that energy has not been lost, but we can't burn the same piece of coal again to obtain the same result. (30:3)

The scientific explanation of this phenomenon is found in the second law of thermodynamics according to which each time energy is transformed from one state to another, it is necessary to pay a price, represented by a loss in the quantity of energy which remains available. In fact, in the example mentioned above, this is verified by the impossibility to obtain other equal heat from the already burnt coal. According to thermodynamics principles this price is called entropy, which in simple words is the measure of the quantity of energy that cannot be converted into labor. (30:4)

Water falling from a dam, if it is channeled into canals to produce electricity or to rotate a mill wheel, won't be able to perform labor once it reaches the bottom of the valley. The energy given to that water was used to produce power or to rotate the mill wheel. (30:5)

Every time a certain quantity of energy is depleted, it is no longer available and is called "dispersed energy". A rise of entropy, then, means a decrease of available energy. (30:6)

In summary: the first law of thermodynamics says that the total quantity of energy and of matter is fixed and it cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed; the second law of thermodynamics says that energy and matter can be transformed only in one direction, from an available state to a non available state or better still from a usable state to a non usable state. (30:7)

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