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In my opinion economic growth is mostly fueled and sustained by population growth. And population growth depends on various societal, industrial and scientific advancements that often also coincide with EROI improvements.

Would our society look so different if 90% of our energy needs would be produced by nuclear? Would energy be cheaper?

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https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

Even if we use 100% free renewable energy with theoretically maximally efficient engines, at some point we will boil the oceans from just waste heat, as long as exponential growth in energy use continues.

Real GDP per habitant is fueled by energy usage (except for a short period in the 70s where it was fueled by increased efficiencies, at least in France).

A quick search turns up energy per capita has been 300-350m btu pa since 1970 [2] while inflation adjusted per capita GDP tripled in that period [1].

One can argue over the definition of real gdp vs inflation adjusted gdp but the 3x increase imo vs constant energy use seems quite convincing to me.

Imo economic growth decoupled from energy use and it no longer holds.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDUSA

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/10/176801719/two-...

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