Assistant Director, Research Scientist
Dr. Carey W King performs interdisciplinary research related to how energy systems evolve and interact within the economy and environment. His research goals center on rigorous interpretations of the past to determine future energy pathways that require tradeoffs for achieving desired outcomes of growth, equity, and ecological sustainability. He reaches these goals by bridging the gaps between economic and biophysical (or ecological) worldviews of economic growth and structural change.
Carey is a Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Director at the Energy Institute. He also has appointments within the McCombs School of Business and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He is the author of the book The Economic Superorganism and has published technical articles in academic journals such as Ecological Economics, Environmental Science and Technology, Environmental Research Letters, Nature Geoscience, Energy Policy, Sustainability, and Ecology and Society. His ideas and commentary have been featured in news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, MarketPlace, American Scientist magazine, The Hill, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, and Austin American-Statesman. Dr. King holds a B.S. with high honors and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Texas at Austin.
Read Energy Institute news stories related to Carey King and his work.
Contact Carey King: careyking@energy.utexas.edu • @CareyWKing • www.careyking.com
Books
King, Carey W. The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy, Springer, 2021.
Book interviews and podcasts: Marketplace, Macro N Cheese, Energy Transition Show, Steve Keen & Friends (Jan. 2023, Sept. 2023), USAEE podcast (“The Economy as a Superorganism”: Dec. 2020), Power Hungry podcast, You Don’t Have To Yell (May 2022, December 2022), Financial Insights podcast (November 2020, November 2021), Planet Critical (2021), Energy Central& William Blair (investment bank, 2025)
Book Reviews: Advisor Perspectives (Dick Vodra), Reslience.org/Mud City Press) (Frank Kaminsky), & Economics From the Top Down (Blair Fix)
Highlighted Publications
Arias, K; King, Carey W., Delannoy, L.; Manfroni, M.; Grasselli, M. R.; Sgouridis, S.; Lefèvre, J.; Pollitt, H.; Streeck, J.; Feix, T.; Heun, M. K.; Capellán-Pérez, I.; Domingos, T.; Vogel, J.; Arto, I.; and Kerschner, C. (in review) “Modeling The Macroeconomic Dynamics of a Low-Carbon Energy Transition: Where Integrated Assessment Models Fall Short”. Pre-print is available.
King, Carey W. “Answering Questions of Geoeconomics requires the Basics of Energy”, IAEE Energy Forum, 2nd Quarter, 2025 (online link).
Jarvis, Andrew and King, Carey W. Economy‑wide rebound and the returns on investment in energy efficiency, Energy Efficiency, Volume 17, Article 60, 2024 (online link).
Daniel, Lea J., King, Carey W., Tuttle, David P., and Paxton, William A, Computational Tool for Analysis of Vehicle-to-Home as Home Backup Solution During Power Outages, Energy Reports, Volume 11, June 2024, p. 1472-1486 (online link). Access the open source code used for this paper on GitHub.
Delannoy, Louis ... King, Carey et al. Emerging Consensus on Net Energy Paves the Way for Improved Integrated Assessment Modeling, Energy and Environmental Science, 2024 (online link).
Xavier, Alexandre C., Scanlon, Bridget R., King, Carey W. , and Alves, Aline I. New Improved Brazilian Daily Weather Gridded Data (1961-2020), International Journal of Climatology, 42 (16), 8390-8404, 2022 (article online). Supplemental file explains how to download and interpret the data in NetCDF format.
King, Carey W. Interdependence of Growth, Structure, Size and Resource Consumption During an Economic Growth Cycle, Biophysical Economics and Sustainability, volume 7, Article number: 1, 2022 (article online).
King, Carey W., Rhodes, Joshua D., Zarnikau, Jay, et al. (2021) The Timeline and Events of the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts, a report of the Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin, online pdf and website link.
Beal, Colin M. and King, Carey W., The zero-emissions cost of energy: a policy concept, Progress in Energy, 3 (2), 023001, 2021 online link.
King, Carey W., An Integrated Biophysical and Economic Modeling Framework for Long-Term Sustainability Analysis: the HARMONEY Model, Ecological Economics, 169, March 2020, 106464, online link.
King, Carey W. Information Theory to Assess Relations Between Energy and Structure of the U.S. Economy Over Time. Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, 2016, 1 (2), 10. doi: 10.1007/s41247-016-0011-y. See journal page for article, and view paper free online.
King, C. W. and Hall, C. A. S. Relating financial and energy return on investment. Sustainability, 3 (10) 2011, 1810-1832; doi:10.3390/su3101810. Abstract here.
King, C. W. Energy intensity ratios as net energy measures of United States energy production and expenditures. Environmental Research Letters 5, 2010 044006 doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/5/4/044006. Abstract here.
King, Carey W., Webber, Michael E., and Duncan, Ian J. The Water Needs for LDV Transportation in the United States. Energy Policy. 2010, 38 (2), 1157-1167, DOI: 101016/j.enpol.2009.11.004. Abstract here.
King, Carey W. and Webber, Michael E. Water Intensity of Transportation. Environmental Science and Technology. 2008, 42 (21), 7866-7872; (Policy Analysis) DOI: 10.1021/es800367m. Abstract here and online link.