[TomWayburn]

I wrote: Energy isn't just one thing out of many. Energy is everything. I hope I am forgiven this figure of speech, because no matter how important we think energy is, it is probably more important than that.

You answered: You make grandiose statements that simply aren't true

That is what I thought was argumentative. I said it was a figure of speech.

In ERoEI practice, we do not charge the process for the energy from Nature which is the third meaning of free energy. If we did, I agree we could not hope to get as much out as went in. The reason it was called renewable in the first place is that we expect the Sun to rise again tomorrow and for many days into the future.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomWayburn', '
')In ERoEI practice, we do not charge the process for the energy from Nature which is the third meaning of free energy.

[Subjectivist]

I have seen one problem with EROEI calculations that has never been addressed. This problem makes comparing estimates from different people or organizations impossible.

The one problem is, nobody has set up a standard of what gets counted as in and out leaving the variables entirely at the discretion of the person/organization doing the calculations.

That is not sound science, it is opinion dressed up with a lot of numbers and arithmetic manipulations of that set of numbers. GIGO, Garbage In=Garbage Out. Until you define all the inputs you can never have a rational justification for the estimated output.

[TomWayburn]

Subjectivist,

Yes,; that is precisely the problem I intend to solve at first by simply listing what should be included. Simple but difficult and subject to mistakes. The second way requires the operator to think harder:

Let us indulge ourselves in a little thought experiment: Suppose a very special community occupies a portion of the Earth's surface where repositories of every element needed for the manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and moth-balling of an alternative energy installation. In addition, it has whatever additional repositories are needed to feed, clothe, shelter, keep healthy, preserve from drudgery, entertain, and elevate spiritually. These are finite repositories although most of them are extremely large. Out of each repository a reasonably sized storehouse is kept at steady state, making up for such deficiencies of recycling as are bound to occur by drawing from the surrounding repository sufficiently slowly that the repositories will not reach the analogy to Peak Oil for some agreed upon length of time in excess of 1000 years certainly and maybe much longer under NO GROWTH.
The people of the community possess all of the expertise necessary to keep the energy flowing and to manage precisely whatever else is needed to support the people who manage the energy technology, although they needn't be specialists.
The sun shines on the community and the junk heat radiates to deep space. Other than this nothing crosses the boundary of the community (thought of now as a region) except possibly energy that is exported free of charge to the neighboring regions. If ERoEI is greater than 1.0, there is some net energy available for export. (The reason it is free of charge in this thought experiment is that I don't want to be concerned with anything coming back.)
The entire community produces energy and nothing but energy; therefore, everything consumed and everything produced (except the net energy) within the community is overhead for producing energy and belongs in the energy-invested term. In this figment of our imaginations, we have no control over what the members of the community produce and consume.

Now, here comes the punch line: If we should run into an engineering study in which an ERoEI is computed by a methodology that can be applied to our thought experiment, we may take the results of the study seriously. If the methodology is lacking in any important respect, it is probably not trustworthy.

I'll give an example of an omission of a component of sustainability that can be left out with only a slight concern. Suppose the analyst does not include the energy costs of restoring the plant site to its pristine natural beauty in case the plant is shut down or moved for one reason or another. The operators of the plant can apologize for this in a number of ways. In any case, we might open up a category of near-sustainability. Of course, we wouldn't put up with the mess frackers leave behind for two minutes let alone two years.

[TomWayburn]

Subjectivist:

Your problem is solved, is it not? Use photovoltaic energy as an example of a candidate for renewable energy. Just set up the partly isolated Autonomous Alternative Energy District with sunlight entering and infrared radiation to deep space leaving. The life cycle energy of the equipment, environmental protection energy costs, recycle system energy costs, living expenses of energy workers, and indirect energy expense tallied with support of free-loaders taken to be part of net energy. You will have to think to be sure you have included everything especially living expenses of community. Just make a list that intends to cover everything. Knowing what the object is will nearly get you there. The AAED has one product, namely, net energy, even if quantity is infinitesimal.

Test of system under investigation to determine if ERoEI* is a measure of sustainability: Will the same methodology fit the AAED thought experiment? You don't have to consider what others have done. You will know if the system under investigation is renewable or not.

[AdamB]

Where energy modeling goes wrong.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.

[AdamB]

May I congratulate Gail for being an actuary, herself associated with the energy modelers of TOD that called global peak oil in 2008 (oops!), claiming that others don't understand economics, is downright riotous.

Gail "high oil prices are bad" versus "low oil prices are bad" is itself an interesting question into her transactional psychology on this topic. She has demonstrated she knows nothing about oil ( I once corrected her edited discovery charts at TOD, but telling her the truth didn't work), she has no experience with economics other than saying so, she is as random in her causation/correlation claims as Short was, but..it is those OTHER folks who don't understand economics.

Fascinated by the duplicitous nature of folks who claim to be researchers, yet seem to know nothing about how research, or science, works.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', 'M')ay I congratulate Gail for being an actuary, herself associated with the energy modelers of TOD that called global peak oil in 2008 (oops!), claiming that others don't understand economics, is downright riotous.

Gail "high oil prices are bad" versus "low oil prices are bad" is itself an interesting question into her transactional psychology on this topic. She has demonstrated she knows nothing about oil ( I once corrected her edited discovery charts at TOD, but telling her the truth didn't work), she has no experience with economics other than saying so, she is as random in her causation/correlation claims as Short was, but..it is those OTHER folks who don't understand economics.

Fascinated by the duplicitous nature of folks who claim to be researchers, yet seem to know nothing about how research, or science, works.

[StarvingLion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', 'M')ay I congratulate Gail for being an actuary, herself associated with the energy modelers of TOD that called global peak oil in 2008 (oops!), claiming that others don't understand economics, is downright riotous.

Gail "high oil prices are bad" versus "low oil prices are bad" is itself an interesting question into her transactional psychology on this topic. She has demonstrated she knows nothing about oil ( I once corrected her edited discovery charts at TOD, but telling her the truth didn't work), she has no experience with economics other than saying so, she is as random in her causation/correlation claims as Short was, but..it is those OTHER folks who don't understand economics.

Fascinated by the duplicitous nature of folks who claim to be researchers, yet seem to know nothing about how research, or science, works.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('StarvingLion', '
')Here is my Head Scientist:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Brenner-13

He says *****EVERYTHING***** TPTB taught me about Physics and History in K-12 and university is a GIGANTIC FRAUD....EVERYTHING!!!

He says Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Feynmann, Darwin are 100% FRAUDS. He says TITANIC, MOON LANDINGS, 9/11, ISS, etc are 100% HOAXES.

His latest words:

"I have shown in many recent posts how “reason” as a faculty and “logic” as a discipline have been erased from what we call hard sciences like physics and mechanics, ...."

'I have argued that Newtonian physics is - as Leibniz perfectly well understood - a cult, it is, in Leibniz’ words, “physical theology” and the above Mark quote combined with hundreds of comments posted by “nuclear physicist” Torsten Hehl here on Quora proves that: he tells us in no uncertain terms, that the “physics of projectile trajectories” as taught in schools is nonsense “flat earth physics” intended for toddlers only because they don’t understand better, but once you are accepted into the “cult training camp” called university, you will be taught the right stuff."

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('StarvingLion', '
')Here is my Head Scientist:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Michael-Brenner-13

He says *****EVERYTHING***** TPTB taught me about Physics and History in K-12 and university is a GIGANTIC FRAUD....EVERYTHING!!!

He says Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Feynmann, Darwin are 100% FRAUDS. He says TITANIC, MOON LANDINGS, 9/11, ISS, etc are 100% HOAXES.

His latest words:

"I have shown in many recent posts how “reason” as a faculty and “logic” as a discipline have been erased from what we call hard sciences like physics and mechanics, ...."

'I have argued that Newtonian physics is - as Leibniz perfectly well understood - a cult, it is, in Leibniz’ words, “physical theology” and the above Mark quote combined with hundreds of comments posted by “nuclear physicist” Torsten Hehl here on Quora proves that: he tells us in no uncertain terms, that the “physics of projectile trajectories” as taught in schools is nonsense “flat earth physics” intended for toddlers only because they don’t understand better, but once you are accepted into the “cult training camp” called university, you will be taught the right stuff."

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Shell uses plastic waste to produce resin feedstocks

Shell says that it has successfully made “high-end” chemicals using a liquid feedstock made from plastic waste using a pyrolysis process that is considered a breakthrough for hard-to-recycle plastics. The initiative advances Shell’s ambition to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemical plants by 2025.

Atlanta-based Nexus Fuels LLC recently supplied its first cargo of pyrolysis liquid to Shell’s chemical plant in Norco, LA, where it was made into chemicals that are the raw materials for everyday items. Shell Chemicals manufactures ethylene, propylene, and butadiene at the site.

According to a Nexus Fuels company spokesperson, “Our process uses HDPE, LDPE, PP, and PS. Our sources for material are primarily post-industrial and post-retail. At present, we are not taking post-consumer due to high contamination levels.”

he Nexus process is operational at a commercial scale and scalable—50-tonnes/day at the plant in Atlanta, GA. Nexus claims five times better EROEI (energy returned over energy invested) and 25% more liquid per tonne of waste with less char. It is less than one-quarter the cost per tonne compared with other pyrolysis systems.

“This [move] makes sense for the environment and our business,” said Thomas Casparie, Executive Vice President of Shell’s global chemicals business. “We want to take waste plastics that are tough to recycle by traditional methods and turn them back into chemicals – creating a circle. These chemicals will meet our customers’ growing demands for high quality and sustainable products.”

Shell is working with multiple companies who collect and transform plastic waste in order to scale this solution to industrial and profitable quantities across its chemical plants in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Shell is a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW). This not-for-profit organization is bringing together top minds from across the plastics value chain (chemicals and plastics manufacturers, consumer goods companies, retailers, converters and waste management companies) and partnering with the financial community, governments and civil society. The AEPW has committed $1.5 billion over the next five years to help end plastic waste in the environment.

Shell is also working with its retail, business fuels and lubricants customers to help reduce, reuse and recycle plastic packaging.

Pyrolysis is a chemical recycling process of heating plastic waste without oxygen, such that it breaks down the longer chain polymers into shorter chain materials. These products can then be further processed into chemical feedstocks or fuels. Pyrolysis can be more effective than the traditional mechanical recycling process of melting as it does not degrade the quality of the final plastic and requires less intensive sorting of the initial waste.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Carrots and sticks: why energy prices won't fall for a long time | MoneyWeek

Energy is going to be more expensive for a long time before it gets both cleaner and cheaper.

We often write here about the global economy being at an inflection point. Many of the great trends that have shaped the last few decades are coming to an end. The age of cheap labour is ending as politics restricts easy migration and the world’s population ages. The easy growth, productivity gains and deflationary impulses from the integration of China into our economic systems are all fading. At the same time companies and countries are changing the way they think about supply chains (just in case rather than just in time). All this is disruptive and inflationary in itself. But there is one more factor to add into the mix – the price of energy is rising and going to keep rising. This matters.

In 2013, in his book Life After Growth, Tim Morgan noted that the real economy is at heart nothing but an energy equation. Without a steady supply of cheap energy (to provide everything from our fuel to our chemicals and fertiliser) there is nothing to drive long-term growth. What matters then is how much energy costs to produce.

There was a time when we didn’t need to worry about this much: when we could use “rudimentary wellhead equipment to access billions of barrels of energy in the sands of Arabia”, we got “at least 100 units of energy for each unit invested in the infrastructure” (the energy return on energy invested – EROEI – was 100:1). It didn’t last long. In 1990, the global energy EROEI was about 37:1. When Morgan was writing it was 14:1. Today there is much debate on EROEI – you will find endless papers online claiming that fossil-fuel numbers are lower than once thought (once refining and transport are taken into account) and that renewable numbers are higher than they first look (it depends on the life of each project, for example).

But however you cut it, one thing that is coming out of the COP26 meetings in Glasgow is a promise that energy is going to be more expensive for a long time before it gets both cleaner and cheaper.

Carrot and stick will both play a role. The global financial sector seems set on defunding the fossil-fuel industry and we should expect to see rising carbon prices layered on top of the supply crunch that may cause. We should also probably expect to pay higher taxes to finance the subsidies government will keep offering to low-carbon energy production. As renewables scale up, notes Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal, we should expect the end price of electricity to rise too – the intermittency of solar and wind means we must invest more in spare-capacity storage and grid upgrades. Other problems will come in the sharp rise in demand for the metals renewables need – lithium, cobalt and nickel in particular – and in the waste created by replacement cycles for solar panels and turbine blades. None of this is insurmountable. But it is disruptive (and the more serious anyone is about net zero, the more disruptive it is) and it is almost certainly quite inflationary. We might (in many decades) end up with a clean energy system. But getting there is going to be an inflationary journey into “the unknown and the unpredictable”.

This might all seem a bit long-term, but it should add to the list of things making investors feel a little uneasy about valuations. Market corrections are impossible to forecast. But it really does feel like our next one is a tad overdue.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')OL, limits to growth is the reason for wealth inequality.
Yeah, that's the ticket!

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'I')n a nutshell, when resources are limited there is increased competition for resources.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')nequality comes about when growth is slow and steady, not when there is scarcity and competition.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'W')hat is missing from your picture is what happens when a period of growth inevitably comes to an end.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', ' ')To be a capitalist you must at heart be ungenerous, after all you are asking people to work for less than their worth so that you can mine the difference.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')re you saying that growth is over? If so when do you think it ended?