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EROEI: A Useful Measure or a Distraction?
EROEI = Usable Acquired Energy / Energy Expended
It seems so simple. If the amount of energy produced relative to the amount of energy utilized in producing that energy tends to decline, at some point as the ratio approaches 1.0 (or perhaps even becomes a fraction less than 1.0) there is little if any return on the energy invested and society will collapse. But is this concept really workable and useful?
There are many issues related to how this ratio (sometimes abbreviated as EROI) is calculated. This affects both the numerator and the denominator of the ratio. The first problem is that this equation is usually interpreted as being the useful acquired energy divided by the useful energy expended.
Energy expended is usually limited to something you would miss if it became unavailable. This means you do not count the energy from the sun that is used to make energy since sunshine is not a scarce resource. Thus solar insolation in the creation of biofuels via photosynthesis is not included. In some cases the decision to include or not include may be controversial. If you utilize natural gas that would otherwise be flared or not even extracted, should that energy be included in this calculation? This becomes very important when evaluating Canadian Tar Sands.
Similarly in the numerator, what constitutes “useful energy”? Is it useful if it is not at the location where it is to be used? Is it useful if it is produced at a time when it is unable to be utilized? Waste energy produced, e.g. heat, is not included even though it is available to be utilized as either economics or natural evolution of engineering progresses. A good example of this is the progress towards using flare gas as an energy source for oil and gas operations.
This is one of the reasons that for every source of energy, there are many different calculations of the EROEI.
Energy Quality
In some cases, EROEI calculations ignore factors that determine the quality of an energy source and in other cases elaborate steps are taken to convert to units of equivalent quality. Converting all energy inputs to common energy units using only heat equivalents assumes implicitly that a joule of oil is of the same quality as a joule of coal or a joule of electricity. Since this is clearly not the case, some estimates of EROEI account for differences of energy quality within EROI analysis when this is possible. This means adjusting the thermal equivalents to economic value taking into account attributes unique to each fuel such as scarcity, capacity to do useful work, energy density, distance to place of intended use, amenability to storage, safety, flexibility of use, negative impacts on the environment and so on. One of the most important of these is the preference for liquid fuels and the flexibility of electricity when the quantity able to be provided is responsive to levels of demand. So without a quality adjustment, two sources with the same EROEI might appear to be equally attractive or the one with the higher EROEI might be considered more attractive than one with a lower EROEI but one might result in a liquid fuel such as gasoline and the other in something else such as intermittent electricity. The quality adjustment is intended to convert apples and oranges into something comparable but involves adjustments that might be considered subjective.
System Boundaries
Both energy produced and energy required to produce the output present challenges with respect to how far in the value added chain one looks. The more obvious problem relates to the energy in the denominator but there are similar issues that apply to the numerator. This can be thought of as a number of different levels in the value added chain such as:
- Direct inputs at the source of where the energy is produced
- Inputs at various stages of upgrading the energy utilized into a form that is usable which is similar to the energy quality issue that applies to the numerator.
- Energy inputs required to produce the equipment used in the production of the energy at the source and everywhere along the way in improving the quality of the output including the distribution network.
- Energy required to maintain the labor force from transportation costs to housing and food.
All of these tend to reduce the EROEI. The adjustments to the numerator can be considered the quality adjustments. Obviously no two researchers are going to come up with the same estimates of the EROEI.
Here is one approach suggested by Murphy et al in their article “Order from Chaos: A preliminary Protocol for Determining the EROI of Fuels” which may be one of the most accepted if not the most accepted resource for those who find merit in this approach.
Table 1. Two-dimensional framework for EROI analysis. The system boundaries, which determine the energy produced from a process (i.e., the numerator of an EROI calculation) are across the top, while the boundaries that determine the energy inputs (i.e., the denominator of an EROI calculation) are listed down the left. The shaded cells represent those with boundaries that favor economic input-output analysis while the other cells favor process-based analysis.
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The subscripts are really simply a reference to the cell identification. Notice the author recommends calculations include direct and indirect energy and material inputs but be limited to extraction (Cell Row 2 Column 1 with the abbreviation stnd for standard). I certainly do not agree with this choice as I think it is too limited a boundary, but if any such choice were adopted it would make the comparison of EROEI estimates a lot more comparable. To some considerable extent I believe it is commonly used but not always. So one has to be careful to understand how EROEI calculations have been made.
Present Value
EROEI is problematical if it does not take into account the time sequence of inputs versus outputs. Many energy inputs occur prior to production and during the reclamation phase. The energy outputs in many cases follow a decline curve but not always as a coal mine works differently than an oil or gas well. To convert to present value one has to decide on a discount rate. That is always challenging and would likely make estimates from different sources incompatible.
Factor Prices
In many cases, there is some leeway in substituting energy sources in the denominator and these substitutions are based on many considerations one of which is the relative price of the alternative energy sources. But prices and relative prices vary over time. So this can lead to a lack of stability of EROEI calculations.
Relationship to Net Energy Gain
EROEI and Net Energy Gain are two formulas that look at the math in a slightly different way. Net energy gain describes the amounts, while EROEI measures the ratio of the amounts. You can convert from one to the other by considering that:
Net Energy Gain = Energy Produced – Energy Used.
EROEI = Net Energy Gain/ Energy Used + 1
For example given a process with energy produced being 10 units, expending 2 units of energy yields a net energy gain of 8 units with an EROEI of 5. Although equivalent to EROEI, it seems that EROEI has more appeal and appears more often in the literature.
Typical current EROEI values
The following table comes from two sources as indicated. It is illustrative of the differences and sometimes similarities in the values of EROEI calculated by various authors. Although it is not always shown in this table, in some cases you can see trends over time.
Here is another set of estimates from the open source document “EROI of different fuels and the implications for society” Charles A.S. Hall, Jessica G. Lambert, Stephen B. Balogh some of which are reflected in the above table since those who work using EROEI or EROI are a small somewhat close-knit group.
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EROEI Trends
Even if the absolute value of EROEI is difficult to calculate in a non-controversial way the trend in the values over time as certain energy sources deplete and others experience improved ratios due to innovation may indeed be very useful. The following are also taken from EROI of different fuels and the implications for societyCharles A.S. Hall, Jessica G. Lambert, Stephen B. Balogh
Time series analyses of oil and gas production within the US including several relevant “oil related” historical events. Each analysis demonstrates a pattern of general increase then decline in EROI with an additional impact of increased exploration/drilling.
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Gagnon et al. (2009) estimated the EROI for global publicly traded oil and gas. Their analysis found that EROI had declined by nearly 50% in the last decade and a half. New technology and production methods (deep water and horizontal drilling) are maintaining production but appear insufficient to counter the decline in EROI of conventional oil and gas.
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Canada oil and gas and oil, gas and tar sand values by Freise (2011) and Poisson and Hall (in press).
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Time series data on EROI for oil and gas for Norway, Mexico and the Daqing oil field in China based on several papers published in the 2011 special issue of the journal Sustainability and works in progress.
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Two independent estimates of EROI for Canadian petroleum production: oil and gas (blue line, from Freise, 2011) and oil, gas and tar sands combined (red line, from Poisson and Hall, in press).
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Two published studies on the EROI of dry (not associated with oil) natural gas: Sell et al. (2011) examined tight natural gas deposits in western Pennsylvania in the US, and Freise (2011) analyzed all convention natural gas wells in western Canada.
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EROI for US and Chinese coal production derived from Cleveland (1992), Balogh et al. (unpublished data) and Hu et al. (2013).
EROEI Compared to Traditional Economic Analysis
Profit has traditionally been the standard for assessing technologies. If you can make a profit producing an energy source, it has a place in the market. Some feel that EROEI is only a partial measure of potential profitability and is redundant to traditional methods. In many ways the adjustments that are or can be made to the EROEI in its calculation are attempts at including the factors that would be included in a standard analysis of the competitiveness of a given energy source.
So one is then inclined to come to the conclusion that EROEI has its most utility in terms of:
- Screening energy sources
- Monitoring energy sources over time.
The case of corn ethanol illustrates the above. On an EROEI basis, corn ethanol would appear to be a losing proposition as essentially all the EROEI estimates of ethanol production from corn in the U.S. cluster around 1.0. From an energy production perspective it is a wash.
One can identify many negatives. It uses land that could be used to produce food and it uses water often from non-renewable sources such as aquifers with limited recharge.
There are some pluses. The oxygenation argument for ethanol seems to have been debunked but there may be some merit to the argument that ethanol allows refineries to produce gasoline with an octane rating of 87 (which appears to be the minimum allowed for regular grade gasoline at most altitudes) more economically by producing 83 octane gasoline and blending it up to 87 with ethanol. But I am not sure if this is based on refinery economics or tax credits for use of ethanol. Ethanol has created a thriving farming sector and corn processing sector during a period of time when job creation has been difficult.
So it seems that the EROEI has played no role in the decision to expand corn ethanol production and continue to produce it at high levels. At one time there may have been a national security issue as corn ethanol reduced imports of crude oil from unstable sources but that argument is declining in significance as shale oil and gas and Canadian production of hydrocarbon products has increased. It is now difficult to reduce corn ethanol production without causing a lot of economic disruption.
At the other extreme, coal has the highest EROEI. In theory the environmental negatives of coal could be incorporated into the EROEI calculation. But that does not seem to be what has happened. So decisions on attempting to switch away from coal have also been totally unrelated to its high calculated EROEI.
Renewables especially those associated with solar tend to have low values of EROEI and suffer from the reality that the infrastructure required to produce solar energy utilizes higher EROEI energy sources.
I am forced to conclude that EROEI is not at this point in time a very useful measure for either an entrepreneur or public policy. However, EROEI may have more merit than Club of Rome and other NeoMalthusian approaches since it is based on the change in practical availability of energy resources rather than a concept that finiteness means that per capita availability must decline as population increases.
Relationship to GDP
Extracting from Hall et al. the ratio of energy costs to GDP tend to vary within a range of 5% to 10% with the lower end correlated with economic expansion and the higher end related to deficiencies in aggregate demand due to diversion of purchasing power into energy and with rapid increases in this ratio creating shocks to the system. I have not verified that relationship but it makes sense intuitively but that still does not provide a link from either EROEI to GDP or EROEI trends to GDP growth.
I may simply not have come across a study on this or such a study may not exist. And yet that is the key question. To what extent does the EROEI values or the trend help us predict economic growth, standard of living, or other economic measures?
Intuitively one would expect that low or declining EROEI is negative for the economy. But what is intuitively obvious may not turn out to be confirmed by the data. We know that the ratio of GDP growth to energy use has been declining for various reasons including improved energy efficiency but probably more importantly the growth of service sectors where energy intensity tends to be low.
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So it could well be that the declining contribution of energy to GDP may be occurring more rapidly than the rate of decline of EROEI. Again I do not know if that relationship has been studied and reported. I have as yet not found such a study but I have not made an exhaustive search. So at this point I see this question as remaining at least for me unanswered. That would appear to be a key question to be answered if we are to place a lot of value on EROEI current values and trend.
I suspect that EROEI is less useful than the proponents believe but it is not something to be ignored. I am not an energy expert but I have a background in hard rock mining and this reminds me of the issue of declining ore grades and increasing stripping ratios. In theory those two factors should lead to a real rise in metal prices but they have not. Technology for extracting copper as an example has advanced more rapidly than copper resource quality has declined plus the miniaturization of electronic devices has reduced the amount of copper required per unit of GDP.
We may have the same situation with respect to energy resources.
23 Comments on "EROEI: A Useful Measure or a Distraction?"
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 3:45 pm
I always like any further enlightenment of the EROI subject. Of course this author is influenced from the “Lobby of Plenty” or “lobby of technological exceptionalism”. These statements see decoupling of GDP and energy and substituation of conventional and unconventional energy sources. This statement in the conclusion leads me to believe this:
“So it could well be that the declining contribution of energy to GDP may be occurring more rapidly than the rate of decline of EROEI”.
Or here int the “about” the periodical he is writing in which shows they are from the pseudo-science field of economics which has lead humans down the road to limits of growth and overshoot of our carrying capacity. The author obviously holds the Club of Rome report in contempt:
Global Economic Intersection (Econintersect) focuses on the economic effects on finance, investing, social interactions, and politics / public policy. It features original economic commentary, debate, and economic analysis of economic indicators.
“I am forced to conclude that EROEI is not at this point in time a very useful measure for either an entrepreneur or public policy. However, EROEI may have more merit than Club of Rome and other NeoMalthusian approaches since it is based on the change in practical availability of energy resources rather than a concept that finiteness means that per capita availability must decline as population increases.”
In my mind EROI must be looked at from a systematic view now that we are in a complex interconnected global economic system faced with the predicament of diminishing returns in the state of being at the limits of growth. Furthermore, we are in an “Energy Trap” because of the just described systematic condition of our global support system with declining energy quality. The brittle state of the mechanics of our global support system, the low level of resilience of the GSS, and the very low sustainability of the GSS in relation to our all-important local support system must be recognized. EROI must take into account the essential view of energy contribution and energy dynamics to all economic activity in this system thus a systemic risk to the GSS affecting the LSS. There are some energy vectors more important than others in this case. Comparative advantage locally is important. If you have no other choices locally what good is the standard clinical EROI for example with solar in remote Africa with no grid compared to coal. If an energy vector has a systematic impact on the system as a whole then its EROI has special significance. This state is precisely what Peak Oil in all its subtleties is. We are in a new normal in all areas of our global system. EROI significance between fuels is important yet, its significance becomes critical if you add in the systematic quality of particular energy vectors. So, if oil EROI is declining at a relatively higher rate than other energy vectors this is a much more critical condition then say the same situation with coal or gas. It also means IMHO that oil needs to be produced even with a low EROI relative to other energy vectors. All other activity is affected systematically from oil use. It can create a global contagion that can bring the system to a standstill. Since oil is a global commodity with long and complicated distribution lines subject to the limits of the supporting grid and infrastructure, a shutdown of the global economy from an oil shortage could overwhelm the system in its efforts to reboot. The longer the system is down or in a state of a crisis the more dangerous the situation becomes until finally a drop to a much lower state of equilibrium results in a significant loss of potential economic activity and infrastructure.
rockman on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 3:50 pm
“I suspect that EROEI is less useful than the proponents believe but it is not something to be ignored. I am not an energy expert”. With respect to oil NG development not ignored by who? Certainly ignored by the folks making the decision about what does and doesn’t get drilled. A simple example: the current oil boom from the shakes. Regardless of what anyone thinks these projects have positive value for the companies developing those plays. It doesn’t matter what EROEI we use…just call it X. So we are drilling Y number of shale wells today. If the price of oil were to drop to $50/bbl I doubt anyone would expect us to keep drilling Y wells. Maybe almost none. Yet the EROEI is still X.
Not just theoretical: when NG prices were heading over $10/mcf back in ’08 the EROEI of those projects was A. And then NG prices crashed. The folks making drilling decisions didn’t care (or even know) the EROEI was still A: the rig count dropped 75% because the economics didn’t support most of the wells even if the EROEI was still good.
The lack of acceptable rate of return will kill any drilling project long before the EROEI gets very low. Even taking into account the embedded energy in drilling ops the energy input is much smaller then many assume. There have been countless wells drilled and completed that had positive EROEI’s yet were money losers.
Nony on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 4:39 pm
I agree that EROI is not so useful. It seems more like something that people like to hoot about. What matters is $$.
jimmy on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 6:17 pm
what Rock’s trying to say is for oil industry it’s not about EROEI it’s about MONEY.
Jerry McManus on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 7:28 pm
Granted, EROEI may not be of interest when deciding to drill wells or spend money on individual projects.
It is, however, vitally important to societies deciding how to organize their living arrangements, their transportation systems, their agriculture systems, their electrical systems, their distribution systems and…, well, you get the idea.
I think Jay Hanson of dieoff.org fame had the best analogy. If you have a scooter that can get you 50 miles on a tank of gas, but the nearest gas station is 50 miles away, then you are not going to bother driving the scooter. The only thing you can do with it is get to the gas station and back, which is not really all that useful.
So to with industrial civilization. If it takes all the energy we have just to get more fossil fuels out of the ground, then at some point all the money in the world won’t help, because everything else we would like to do with that energy has just been shut down.
Just how far away that day is can be debated, but I have seen compelling arguments that once you cross a certain threshold it can arrive very quickly indeed.
rockman on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 7:35 pm
Nony – I think most would agree that EROEI is a part of the dynamics but not a determining factor. But we’ve played with the theoretical a lot. Taken with a big grain of salt and various caveats the EROEI of oil/NG drilling can’t go much below 5 to 8 before the economics kill the project. Even with some wild ass assumptions I haven’t come up with one model that would allow a new well to deliver 3X as much energy used to drill it and still be an economical investment.
rockman on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 7:52 pm
Jerry – “If it takes all the energy we have just to get more fossil fuels out of the ground, then at some point all the money in the world won’t help”. And that’s the point I was trying to make and missed the mark perhaps. The world won’t have the oil/NG it needs even if we can produce about 3 to 5 times as much energy as it takes to drill it. IOW even if you have all the money in the world you aren’t going to drill wells with positive EROEI’s unless they are above 5 or so. Drilling limits are reached long before you reach an EROEI of 1.
As far as “…vitally important to societies deciding…”. Society doesn’t make those decisions for the oil patch…we do. And those decisions will always be based upon ROR.
Meld on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 8:02 pm
Personally I’d take the opposite view that EROEI is far far more important than $$. Dollars are a figment of the imagination, eroei is an actual measurable thing. You could print up a few trillion dollars and build yourself loads of nuclear power plants, but I think you’d find that eventually after your currency had collapsed from inflation that keeping those power plants running would be an impossibility.
sunweb on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 8:56 pm
From: Scientific American Volume 308, Issue 4
Will Fossil Fuels Be Able to Maintain Economic Growth? A Q&A with Charles Hall
What happens when the EROI gets too low? What’s achievable at different EROIs?
If you’ve got an EROI of 1.1:1, you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it. If you’ve got 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it. At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it. We looked at the minimum EROI you need to drive a truck, and you need at least 3:1 at the wellhead. Now, if you want to put anything in the truck, like grain, you need to have an EROI of 5:1. And that includes the depreciation for the truck. But if you want to include the depreciation for the truck driver and the oil worker and the farmer, then you’ve got to support the families. And then you need an EROI of 7:1. And if you want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1. And if you want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.
Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free; it simply creates denial for short-term fun or profit.
shortonoil on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 9:11 pm
Starting an article like this one on a Saturday morning provides enough incentive to make one go find another cup of coffee! When the author starts the article with a comment like:
“If the amount of energy produced relative to the amount of energy utilized in producing that energy tends to decline, at some point as the ratio approaches 1.0 (or perhaps even becomes a fraction less than 1.0) there is little if any return on the energy invested and society will collapse. But is this concept really workable and useful”
you know its gong to be a rough hoe! First of all, if he is talking about using a fossil fuel like petroleum to provide the energy for its own production the comment is nonsensical (unless we have another economist who feels the Second Law can be altered to their liking). The Second Law tells us in no uncertain terms that some of the system’s energy must be given up as waste heat for the process to go forward (otherwise you would have a perpetual motion machine). All of the system’s energy can not be returned, so an ERoEI of 1:1 is theoretically impossible. For example, 35.7 deg API crude must give up at least 29% of its energy during the process. So the best you can get is an ERoEI of 1.41:1.
The article deteriorates from there. He confuses terminology, he makes up terms, and he obviously doesn’t understand the difference between work, and energy. Energy is a fundamental property of matter, work is the result of a process (work is not a property). The conversion of energy into work ALWAYS results in losses (2’nd Law).
If you feel a little confused, your not alone. Wonder how the coffee pot is doing?
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
Nony on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 9:36 pm
The EROI of iron ore extraction is zero. Lump of Fe2O3 generates no energy (in fact, you end up investing even more into it later to refine it). Yet the iron still has value and mining it is economical.
It’s possible to imagine some future with ultra low cost energy (from fusion or gas or whatever), where we mined oil just as a feedstock for chemicals. Hence a sub-one EROI would be justified. I really doubt it. And currently our economy depends on what we get out of oil. But it’s at least conceptually possible. Another case where a sub-one EROI might be justified is in a world where we’ve essentially run out of oil and just use it for military jet aircraft and generate it by Fischer Tropsch (pretty sucky world, but conceiveable…look at the Germans in WW2.) And even if we never get to this ridiculous point, it is possible that we sort of “slide along the scale”. I think this is what the fellow’s point about disconnection of GDP and EROI might mean.
Gigging him for work versus energy seems pedantic. Also there should be a Godwin’s type rule of Internet discussion that applies to the first person to bring up the Second Law. 😉
nemteck on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 9:41 pm
shortonoil. You should have read the article more carefully before making this claim. The heat loss due to work (entropy, 2nd law of thermodynamics)of all kinds of activities is included in the EROI.
Jerry McManus on Sat, 22nd Feb 2014 10:00 pm
@rockman
Point well taken, but I feel like we may be talking past each other. I was not suggesting that “society” is telling the oil patch what to do. I am suggesting that societies in general decide whether to organize themselves around fossil fuels, or not.
Yes, I know, not likely that we are going to put that genie back in the bottle. But imagine for a moment a world where people everywhere have decided not to use your product because they feel the costs to the environment, and to future generations, are far too high.
You wouldn’t be able to give the stuff away.
Nony on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 12:12 am
Does anyone even calculate EROI for an exploration or production decision? NPV, IRR, the accounting impact, synergy, upside, risk/reward, how it looks to the shareholders or even corporate politics…sure. But EROI? Would think if you ever presented that, they would look at you like you were a Martian.
DC on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 12:24 am
Money can be manipulated in myriad ways. Reality is somewhat less forgiving. Reality will do whatever is has to do, unlike money, which always follows the path of least resistance. We can conjure trillions out of thin air,and then arbitrarily use that money for whatever purpose we deem fit-even if said activities are harmful or destructive-or not. We can whip a trillion dollars into existence and use it to build guns and bombs, or alternately, use it to build schools and housing. Then, afterwards we can even decide which actively is more ‘profitable’. If killing people and stealing there oil with the conjured money is deemed more ‘profitable’, according to previously arbitrarily set measures, and building schools is not-then war wins!
All makes perfect sense when you think about it….
energyskeptic on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 2:35 am
I didn’t spend much time on EROEI in “Peak Soil: Why Cellulosic and other Biofuels are Not Sustainable and a Threat to America’s National Security” because focusing only on that distracted everyone from the very serious ecological consequences of depleting aquifers, eroding topsoil to grow biofuel plants, eutrophication of lakes and oceans from fertilizer runoff, and so on. The positive EROEI for corn ethanol papers were NOT peer-reviewed and kept the boundaries very narrow and funded by the National Corn Growers Association. I think EROEI is very important, but you get nowhere with Business as Usual Techno-optimists who can forever find objections to expanding the boundaries.
We’re so indoctrinated to see the world through economic and political blinders that we have a hard time getting past the electronic bits of data that we call money to facilitate transactions. M. King Hubbert thought energy ought to BE the currency, but I guess it’s not practical to walk around with slugs of uranium or oil drums to buy clothing at the North Face…
Makati1 on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 2:46 am
Did anyone actually read sunweb’s comment? It shows that no fuel that produces less than 7-8 EROEI will be practical/used. It may take time to work the decline through the system, but eventually, you can’t override natural laws. To properly use a fuel you need a product and you need the infrastructure for all of the components in the mix, including people. Everyone of those millions of points use energy. Everyone.
That is why I say that the internet is going down someday not too far away. The monster is too big to be efficient (millions of people and servers needed to keep it going) and too energy intensive to exist when food and shelter become more important than the i-pad or cell phone.
rollin on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 3:23 am
EROEI is just another accounting tool, like any other net energy calculator. It does not matter if the energy we use is gotten for free (infinite EROEI) has a negative net energy (EROEI less than one).
The fact is that we are using world reserves of solar energy that was produced far in the past. These are finite and will run out or it will become so difficult to obtain them that they might as well be on Mars.
Until we start using current energy, we are like the fox that cannot find prey to eat. It continues to exist by burning it’s reserves (fat then muscle and organ tissue). Unless prey shows up the end is always the inevitable death.
Unless society starts using current energy and gets off world reserve energy, sooner or later society will starve. Then all that “progress” goes away and some individuals may survive by using current energy input, but without all the frills of society and civilization.
So EROEI is merely a measure (when properly measured) of how fast or slow we are starving modern civilization. The direction is still the same. The results are all similar unless current energy is the major source of energy.
Meld on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 8:16 am
@ rolling – Well I have found EROEI is an invaluable tool in teaching people about the energy difference between fossil fuels and most renewables. The majority of renewables just can’t hack it. It’s best to look at the renewables we were using before petroleum and coal such as grain mills, waterwheels and maybe introduce a few others like passive solar oven cooking, when thinking of the future. These are technologies that are known to work and were at the height of the technical level we could use without fossil fuels.
Lets face it when it comes down to it electricity is the least important technology for keeping people alive, so really it should be the first thing to go.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 12:13 pm
@Meld –
“The majority of renewables just can’t hack it. It’s best to look at the renewables we were using before petroleum and coal such as grain mills, waterwheels and maybe introduce a few others like passive solar oven cooking, when thinking of the future. These are technologies that are known to work and were at the height of the technical level we could use without fossil fuels.”
Meld I agree. I bought into the possibility of a renewable based society 10 years ago but now I see the fallacy of this just as I see the fallacy of the possibility of a BAU society with fossil fuels long term. I do like the idea of more widespread use of renewables in residential and industrial applications to power low draw appliances and lighting. We need to increase our sustainability and backup abilities in times of crisis that are ahead. I have a small solar system here. It will not run everything in my 12’X40’ oak log cabin but it runs the lights and small appliances. I have a generator to kick in the well pump as needed to pressurize the system. I have lots of diesel. If the electricity or diesel is not available for very long then I fear all is lost. I still have the abilities with a spring nearby and purification equipment to get water. My point is renewables are a great compliment to our fossil fuel system. We need to have them side by side with the grid. Large appliances are generally not needed. A/C may be needed in dangerous heat waves but not like we use A/C today. Electric heat is a grid function if you do not have gas heat. I have wood heat. Not everyone can have wood heat. Washers and dryers work can be done in other ways. Lights are important! I see the whole house renewable systems as pricy for a society going broke. It is fine if you want to go the route of a whole house system individually and have the $. I am just saying from a societal view point of more resilience with a combo system is a good idea.
@Meld
“Lets face it when it comes down to it electricity is the least important technology for keeping people alive, so really it should be the first thing to go.”
IMHO Meld, if the electricity goes off it is game over. It is the most central element to all other system in society. If you mean not important for short term survival I agree. My electricity can go off here and I have the prep backup to get me through many months of crisis. What happens after many months of crisis and society has lost the ability to produce food in an economic way to deliver it to the end user. We see the economics of food today with the starving kids on TV. There is enough food in the world now but the economics are not adequate. Food in Kansas is not the same as Chicago dinner tables. Electricity is essential for all complex productive processes and distribution. We are done if the widespread grid functions cease. Intermittent grid activity may be adjusted to. I am not even sure from a systematic point of view this will work. It may work for the PTB that have the command and control to organize their survival i.e. military, high ranking government, critical production organizations, and the rich.
shortonoil on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 2:50 pm
“shortonoil. You should have read the article more carefully before making this claim. The heat loss due to work (entropy, 2nd law of thermodynamics)of all kinds of activities is included in the EROI.”
The author is claiming an ERoEI of 1:1 is possible. An ERoEI of 1:1 would only be possible if one were operating a “perpetual motion machine”.
We don’t have any of those in this country. Goldman Sachs sold all of them to the Chinese wrapped up in Mortgage Backed Security paper.
shortonoil on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 3:21 pm
“Gigging him for work versus energy seems pedantic.”
The differentiation between “work” and “energy” is hardly a pedantic topic. Thermodynamics is a hundred and fifty year old concisely structured mathematical science. Such exclusions commonly lead to absurd conclusions, as seen by economists, and amateurs who attempt to apply physical laws that they don’t fully understand. Nor, are they willing to exert the effort to gain the shills sets needed to accurately utilize them.
rollin on Sun, 23rd Feb 2014 3:23 pm
Davy has it right, except for some near primitive societies or extremely poor ones, everything is run on electricity. I was surprised myself how dependent we have become on electricity.
Of course you can survive without electricity, if the society is already set up to do so. Otherwise nothing works in a very short time.
The worst case scenario is EMP pulses destroy the power system, the best case is a slow depletion of fossil fuels allowing conversion, replacement, efficiency gains and elimination of unnecessary energy uses. Of course the middle ground is wide open and anything can happen, especially if the anti-renewables (solar, wind) league has it’s way. They probably are pro-fossil, pro-BAU deep down and can’t stand going from oxygen burning to electric world.