Energy Flows under Human Control

In this chapter we abandon the subject of national accounting of energy flows, and focus instead on the energetic analysis of local processes describing transfor-mations of energy flows under human control. In particular, we address the epistemological issues related to the study of general conversions of an energy input into a flow of applied power to fulfil a defined, useful task. Paramount within this local view of energy conversion is the conceptual distinction between energy and power (section 5.1). We show that the unfortunate neglect of this distinction has its historical roots in the early phase of development of the ambiguous field of energetics into the more structured field of thermodynamics, a phase marked by the avoidance of the issue of scale (section 5.2, page 97).