At the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference, held in Shanghai from October 20 to 22, a keynote address focused on the need for a "Precision Economy" — doing more with fewer resources — as a guiding principle for the global energy transition.
Speaking at the October 22 forum on "Embodied Intelligence and Future Industries," Lars Tvede, a well-known Nordic financial investor and author of "The Economic Cycle," argued that the world must adopt a mindset of extracting greater output from diminishing inputs.
Tvede used agricultural land as an illustration: before the 1980s, global agricultural land expanded by roughly 30%, causing widespread damage to nature, but since then it has been broadly flat and slightly declining, while agricultural land per capita has fallen by about half.
"This is the precision economy — producing more products with fewer resources," he said, noting that in places such as the Netherlands and Denmark, agricultural land could be reduced by a further 80%.
The industrial sector shows the same pattern: since the 1990s, U.S. GDP has continued to grow exponentially, yet consumption of metals such as gold, steel, copper, aluminum and nickel has stopped rising in tandem. "More and more GDP is being generated with less energy," he noted.
He warned, however, that the current energy transition faces a reverse problem: "Sometimes we are not doing more with fewer resources; sometimes we may be doing less with more resources."
Renewables take up more space, consume more raw materials and are not entirely renewable, he said.
Take copper as an example: over the past several thousand years, humanity has mined about 700 million tons of copper, yet achieving net zero by 2050 could require twice that amount — "something that is not achievable within 25 years," he said.
Tvede stressed the need to distinguish between "research" and "development" and to shift the emphasis appropriately toward research.
He used a rocket as a metaphor: on a journey to a distant planet, a faster rocket overtakes yours from outside the window — "sometimes we are overtaken by latecomers, which is why we need to develop precise technologies."
He expressed high hopes for small modular nuclear power and nuclear fusion, noting that China "is doing some great projects" in this area and that relevant projects are expected to become operational around 2030.
Tvede acknowledged that the precision economy is not a one-step answer but a way of thinking that must run through the entire process of research and development — only then can humanity, in an era of ever-rising energy demand, embark on a truly sustainable path of transition.
Comments