Tom Wayburn and Gail Tverberg discuss ERoEI

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:03 am

The minimum ERoEI has to be a whole lot higher than 1.0. I am not sure what the right number is. I suspect it is something close to 9.0; certainly at least 5.0. The calculation leaves out way too much. In particular, it does not properly charge for energy which is generated by front-end inputs (it does not handle timing at all). It does not consider the need to generate a high enough return to support the need for government.

The idea of moving an economy to lower and lower ERoEI does not work. This is what leads to collapse.

 

First of all this is meant to be an apology for my inexcusable, childish, pathological, lousy, no good, furshlugginer posts reproduced at the end of this apology so that I never forget my 15 minutes of madness.   And I almost never get angry.  In my defense, I shall argue briefly that I was provoked.

Just the other day I realized something I had left completely out of account:  My readers may not be familiar with thought experiments and don’t know how to use them or interpret them.  Therefore, many of them might find it useful to read the brief Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

 

 

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 8:26 am

Gail,

Obviously, you have not read the material I have made available. Until you do, it is unfair, misleading, and wrong to make these kinds of comments. All of that is taken care of, even the energy costs of the technology’s share of government. The Principle of Substitution covers many of your objections. Yes, absolutely, sustainability is possible for ERoEI* = 1.0. This is the case of the Autonomous Alternative Energy District supporting itself and exporting nothing. Do you think I would make a mistake about this? Of course, I did not cover every detail; but, you can see how to handle anything that comes up by how it has been done in some other category.

 

The above explanation just about covers it, except Gail reminds me that a little more emphasis on taxes might help not hinder the case for discarding American-style so-called capitalism.  In my earlier article  “On Capitalism”, I pointed out that the movie The Trouble with Harry reminded me of capitalism.  If you remember, the trouble with Harry was that he was dead.

But, the thing that set me off, was Gail missed completely what was so ingenious about my thought experiment, namely, that it constituted a constructive proof of just whose living expenses should be included in the energy-invested term and whose should not.  Moreover, it showed how to make ERoEI truly useful as a tool to determine sustainability or not.   I am just one old man who has spent most of his life pursuing other goals; but, during the last 30 years or so, I have served the human race without concerning myself too much with the extent to which it will be appreciated or even accepted.  But, this thought experiment is the real deal.   I know it; and, you will know it too if you just let it tell you what it can.  By the way, check out the figure that indicates ERoEI decreasing toward collapse:

 

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

June 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm

I told Charlie Hall (in my talk at the Biophysical Economic conference at the University of Vermont this week) that the current average EReEI of society is too low–it is leading to collapse in the near term. If we are to prevent collapse (which I don’t really think is possible), we need to be raising the average ERoEI. The current average ERoEI of society is clearly a lot higher than 1.0, no matter how it is defined.

I don’t know where you are coming from, but it doesn’t make sense to me. As society becomes more complex (what Tainter talks about) the cost of government becomes greater both absolutely and relative to other costs. This strongly suggests that after a certain point, average ERoEI needs to be increasing to prevent collapse.

Gail doesn’t understand that the thought experiment is contrived so that the cost of government and other business costs (including interest on debt and private profit – and the energy budgets of the profiteers) go in the Energy-Invested term.  So, yes, the ERoEI can be precisely equal to 1.0 under the strange circumstance where the stakeholders know all of the other relevant numbers and, therefore, how much to take for themselves.  They are entitled to live from the work they do even if it is not very much.  People know better than to quibble about who did what.

Suppose none of the proceeds are exported and all the energy investment data is known and sums to EI’.   If the Energy Recovered is known for the entire life cycle, then ER- EI’ can be distributed to the stakeholders leaving ERoEI = 1.0 exactly and everything paid for.

Of course the Energy Recovered is used by the community where it was generated.  Is there a problem with that?   One notices that in this exercise everything of value is measured in emergy units, which in my system are electricity-like units such as emjoules or emkilowatt-hours.  This is not a personal practice.  I’ll tell you when I am doing something that only I do.

 

·                     thomaslwayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:39 pm

Charlie doesn’t understand either. It seems that many people have trouble getting their heads around this idea. I think, if you read this very short piece a couple of times, you will get it. I am not that much smarter than the rest of you. Part of the problem is that I put a number of items in the energy-invested term that are not strictly investments. In fact, normally, analysts do not debit the process for inconveniences of time and space, or the necessity to convert some portion of the energy produced to another form with a low efficiency process. They do not charge the process for environmental degradation or resource depletion.

[from http://dematerialism.net/eroeistar.htm ]

Let us suppose that a group of people representing all of the trades and professions wishes to support itself completely by relying on a single alternative, renewable energy technology for all of its energy needs. Let us suppose further that all of the natural resources necessary to do this are available within the Autonomous Alternative Energy District (AAED) [and the repositories of such natural resources can be retained at steady state from the detritus of the AAED including superannuated installations of the technology].

Nothing is imported from outside the District whereas energy and only energy is exported. If a man needs a car to drive from his home (in the District) to his job (in the District), the car is built, maintained, and fueled in the District. If his wife is sick the doctor in the District will treat her with medicine made in the District from chemicals produced there from raw materials mined there and subsequently recycled agressively. The ERoEI of the new energy technology is the total energy produced, ER, divided by the quantity ER minus the quantity EX, where EX is the energy exported; i. e., EX = ER – EI. If the District is able to export any energy at all the ERoEI ratio exceeds one and the technology is feasible – at least.

In the case of a single energy technology, the energy produced by each technology can be assigned a transformity of unity and the value of emergy is quantitatively the same as the Gibbs availability, which, at room temperature, is the Gibbs free energy. I prefer to report emergy values in units of emquads rather than quads, emjoules rather than joules, etc. Thus, the units of transformity are emquads per quad, for example. [snip]

If this doesn’t make sense to you, think harder. I mean it. This is important. If you don’t understand it, you don’t understand sustainability. There are a lot of people addressing the multitudes who don’t know what they are talking about. Don’t be one of them. I heard a lot of silly stuff in Austin at the ASPO conference. I couldn’t begin to speak as there is too much they don’t know. The finiteness of the world is just the beginning. You must close the energy balance in terms of consumption as well as production. If the AAED does not export energy, ERoEI* is at most equal to 1.0. If the District needs to import energy to keep going, ERoEI* is less than 1.0. Thus, if all of society is in the collapse phase, it is because the composite ERoEI* for all energy technologies properly matched is less than 1.0.

·                     John Christian says:

June 14, 2013 at 2:01 am

Its possible to make a lot of nice calculations around utopia like distribution of energy and resources, but I do believe Gail is more rooted in our current predicament for the finiteness we encounter in the industrial civilization. That the current set of living arrangements will hit a steep decline curve soon due to our misuse of resources. I also think she is sober in the way that she knows you can’t really turn enough people to believe in this utopia when so many of us cant even embrace simple ideas within socialism and sharing of wealth. I do believe many of us here knows whats wrong with the system and have all kinds of ideas how to improve it – but there is no chance we will be able to implement a fraction of these before a complete and utter collapse. Small pockets within society might find a better lifestyle more in pact with the limits of nature and approach some sort of equilibrium with how much you take out of it and how much you give back.

From a mathematical point of view there is also the unavoidable concept of entropy which cannot be left out in any processing of resources. Stuff rust and decay, and take a form that is very hard to recycle unless you have a fantastic device that gathers atoms and reassemble them in a clean form. The best engine for recycling today is the organic one with how soil, plants, animals interact with water and air. Any single species impact on his planet has been fine tuned over millions of years shaping synergies where the nature is somewhat self sustainable as long as no single species “take over”. Homo Sapiens (a name we don’t deserve) has basically been raping and pillaging this natural world for resources in a way that is just insanely destructive on a planetary scale. We have also bred our species completely out of proportions so no matter how much you plan to conserve, recycle and aim for renewables – continued breeding will require a substantial number of us to become part of the soil again. No doubt for us to have any chance at all to find some sort of equilibrium with the planet again we need to cut our numbers dramatically. The question is whether we do it willingly or not – realistically I cant see any other option besides the finiteness of the planet forcing the population down. That might start with an oil or energy shock or it might be because of major climate change incidents as the Arctic is thawing and releasing massive amounts of methane and CO2 to the atmosphere.

John Christian probably believes a good deal of the same things I do (or visa versa), but this is not about some utopia.  It’s a very good way to understand what should go into the energy-invested term.

Suppose I started with Houston, Texas, and made a list of all the full-time workers and other stakeholders who get 100% of their livelihoods from Energy Plant X (not forgetting the wives and children).  I might compile a list of energy either of the type produced or transformed into the type produced.  But, many of their fellow citizens spend a small part of their time (energy) serving these Plant X workers, like the dentist and the man at H & R Block.   But, that’s a hell of a tangle.  How will I ever compile a list of energy expended on behalf of Plant X much less list the pro-rata portion of the energy budget of the man who cuts the hair of the man who shines the shoes of the man who does the taxes for the Plant X worker.

Suppose, however, that energy is the only product of District A in Houston.  Everyone either works for Energy Plant X or depends upon it for a livelihood.   Everything other than energy that is produced in District A must be part of the cost of producing energy.  We know exactly what to do.  Let’s consider additional products and districts.

 

We don’t need to know exactly who belongs to each district.  We need to know how much of each product including energy is produced and we need to have a number that describes the labor density for each product.  Finally, we need the total production for the city.  We may need some further description of the economy; but the result we seek can be a rough approximation and still be good enough to determine sustainability or not.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 11, 2013 at 1:55 pm

Gail,

Please do not assume that you know what I am going to say and that, therefore, you don’t have to read it. What I have said is very different from what you seem to expect. You made an unfair criticism of ERoEI* replete with numerous incorrect statements. An ERoEI* = 1 corresponds to the Autonomous Alternative Energy District of http://dematerialism.net/eroistar.htm supplying all of its own needs and exporting nothing. In my blog at http://eroei.blogspot.com/   I indicated how each of your objections can be handled. I didn’t specifically mention that the costs of government appear in the energy-invested term; but, you should realize how that would be done by analogy with the specifics of other details I offered as examples. I thought I answered your objections previously, but I can’t find my answer on your blog. Sorry if this is a repetition.

 

Gail’s next comment is what set me off.  You cannot imagine how enraged I became.   She thought I was describing how things work.  My definitions are not different  from the standard definitions except in the more  technical aspects of the problem to which I did not expose her.   The only possibility that Gail failed to consider was that perhaps I am right and, perforce, everyone else is wrong.

 

In any case, Gail, I apologize for my outburst.  It is not likely to happen again.  The world will eventually adopt my definition of ERoEI* or one that is even more like my definition than mine is.   It doesn’t matter that someone else will take credit for it or simply say they always did it that way.   I agree with nearly everything you say.   But, they also  say that you always hurt the one you love.

 

·                     Gail Tverberg says:

 

June 13, 2013 at 1:38 pm

I am sorry but I do not have time to figure out your personal view of how things work, with definitions different from the standard ones. It is difficult enough dealing with standard definitions.

·                     Tom Wayburn says:

June 13, 2013 at 6:51 pm

Gail,

You are hopeless. You don’t want to learn anything you don’t already know and most of that is irrelevant or wrong. The rest of you know where to find me.

·                     Jan Steinman says:

June 13, 2013 at 7:42 pm

Tom, if you need to have a superior attitude, at least you can be civil!

Gail does a lot of good. Calling someone “hopeless” because they are unwilling to cater to your whims is hardly a way to make friends and influence people.

 

Jan, you are right.  I am ashamed of my outburst.  The Autonomous Alternative Energy District is one of the best ideas I ever had.  Naturally, I expected a much different reception for it.  It’s a good thing there’s no  crying in chemical engineering.

·                     Scott says:

June 13, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Jan, I think Tom sees something that he is having trouble communicating to the group and perhaps he is frustrated by that. I wish I could understand all the things he has written, I get some of it but much of it hard for most of us to grasp. I noticed we do have several doctors of science writing on the site and I hope they stay with us so I can try to understand their thesis. Sometimes scientist fail to understand the human aspect of things since they are hung up on math and facts. I would like to understand Tom’s ideas and I hope he stays with us but try to post in a way that we can understand as I have very little college.

I am trying to write so as to be more easily understood.   A lot of my difficulties come from years of writing only for myself.

·                     Thomas L Wayburn, PhD in chemical engineering says:

June 14, 2013 at 3:22 am

My definition of ERoEI* corrects all the defects of the standard definition which is what the critics of ERoEI usually complain about. But, you already know everything that you need to know. You don’t need no stinking scientific progress. I have been ahead of all you Peak Oil superstars no matter how late you jumped on the bandwagon. They tell me that I am hard to understand. What did you expect? It is always thus with true genius. I am afraid I shall have to give up on Gail Tverberg, the entertainer, who has no business addressing public policy. The rest of you know where to find me.

This is one of the worst things I ever wrote.  Perhaps it’s because I like and admire Gail so much.   Sorry Gail.  I don’t suppose you would let me take you to dinner.

[snip]

 

 

And, that’s the way it ends.  I suppose I should contact Jan Steinman whom I know from The Solution Magazine and its ancillary activities; but, I see a catering to “notability” there too and I am reasonably certain no good will come from that quarter.  They are not sincere.  I appreciate Scott’s defense of me.  I am afraid I am writing for a rather select audience.  As time goes on, it seems that fewer and fewer understand me until, I suppose,  I shall be writing for no one.  By the way, I am not sure I am a “true genius”.  But, I’m not sure I’m not.  As I said to Albert Bartlett, average intelligence is decreasing; but, the single highest intelligence, corresponding to the right-most point under the bell curve, is getting higher.  There must be many people much more intelligent than me.

Energy Returned over Energy Investedby Tom Wayburn