Daly provides a number of examples in growth economics in which he argues abstraction has led to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness as formulated by Alfred North Whitehead [1861–1947]. Norgaard contributed insights that are particularly relevant to exhaustible resources summarising that ‘‘a global view [on sustainability]
must incorporate knowledge from the natural sciences and information generally beyond that provided by markets to avoid being myopic”. We address these concerns by reformulating the role of energy in economic growth theory to reflect the structural role that it plays in economic output.