How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:31 pm Post subject: EROEI is Worthless
EROEI is worthless. There are many technologies which will allow you to get EROEI in the thousands or millions... They're just not cheap in terms of what you have to pay people.
Energy is not the limiting commodity, its human capital. You have to pay people to work; Not oilfields, nuclear power plants, or the sun.
{Moderators Note:}
This thread was split from the following original:
EROEI is worthless. There are many technologies which will allow you to get EROEI in the thousands or millions... They're just not cheap in terms of what you have to pay people.
Energy is not the limiting commodity, its human capital. You have to pay people to work; Not oilfields, nuclear power plants, or the sun.
Please don't feed the trolls! _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
(Indeed, there is another term called ERoEI which stands for Energy Returned on Energy Invested, which is ER / EI, which is just another way of saying EPR.
When I use EROEI, I mean Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Exactly the same as EPR. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
EROEI cannot be negative. Some people refer to a negative EROEI. They need to put their minds in gear. The lowest value EROEI can be is 0. This is when you get no energy returned for your energy input.
The usual question is whether EROEI is less than or equal to or greater than 1. If EROEI is less then 1, then you are getting out less energy than you are putting in. IF EROEI is greater than 1, then you are getting more energy out than what you put in. EROEI equal to 1 means you get out exactly what you put in.
EROEI is a useful statistic but is does not tell the whole story by any means. Here is a simple example to illustrate the limitations of using EROEI to evaluate a process.
Suppose you use use 100 joules of electrical energy to produce 10 joules equivalent of gasoline. EROEI = 0.1 (Bad). However, if the 100 joules of electrical energy costs 1 money unit and 10 joules of gasoline can be sold for 50 money units then the bad EROEI is irrelevant. The fact is that a jug of gasoline often has much greater utility than electricity.
The oil sands plants do not use a lot of oil to produce oil. They use a lot of natural gas to produce oil. Even if they have an EROEI less than one the utility of the oil products may justify the transformation.
The fact is that the EROEI of the natural processes that created all our oil is much less than 1. Only a very small percentage of the energy of the sun hitting the earth became stored in the form of oil. However, all that sunshine over the millions of years was free.
Obviously, the place where EROEI is unambiguous as a tool for evaluation is when energy of one form is used to create energy in the same form. If it takes ten gallons of gasoline to produce 5 gallons of gasoline, then you are being unwise to say the least.
EROEI is a useful statistic but is does not tell the whole story by any means. Here is a simple example to illustrate the limitations of using EROEI to evaluate a process.
Suppose you use use 100 joules of electrical energy to produce 10 joules equivalent of gasoline. EROEI = 0.1 (Bad). However, if the 100 joules of electrical energy costs 1 money unit and 10 joules of gasoline can be sold for 50 money units then the bad EROEI is irrelevant. The fact is that a jug of gasoline often has much greater utility than electricity.
The oil sands plants do not use a lot of oil to produce oil. They use a lot of natural gas to produce oil. Even if they have an EROEI less than one the utility of the oil products may justify the transformation.
Nonetheless, the EROEI will be less than the EROEI of 30 to 1 for oil, which is the point. As long as it is less than oil, the argument becomes moot as far a tar sands being equal to oil in any way. That was the point I was making in my thread. The EROEI will be less than conventional oil, thus more expensive. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Oh whatever. I'm not trolling. I see flowers growing in a row, and call it, and then you call me a troll; Oh the irony.
Try something a little bit more mature than 'Don't feed the trolls!' when you find fault with my statements just because you disagree with them and can't refute them. This sort of nonsense is awfully trite.
If EROEI was the only thing that mattered, CANDU reactors would be killing coal for electricity production, solar concentrators would be profitable, and oil would be an afterthought at best. Energy isn't the vital commodity: Its labor.
Oh whatever. I'm not trolling. I see flowers growing in a row, and call it, and then you call me a troll; Oh the irony.
Try something a little bit more mature than 'Don't feed the trolls!' when you find fault with my statements just because you disagree with them and can't refute them. This sort of nonsense is awfully trite.
If EROEI was the only thing that mattered, CANDU reactors would be killing coal for electricity production, solar concentrators would be profitable, and oil would be an afterthought at best. Energy isn't the vital commodity: Its labor.
Ok, name a technology that produces energy that has a return to 1000 to 1 or a million to 1. And if you had read and understood my thread, you would have seen that any EROEI less than oil would be more expensive, which was the point. I never made any reference that EROEI was the only thing that mattered.
As to "Don't feed the trolls!" that is site policy for dealing with nonsense and off topic posts. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
It did not occur to me that I was disagreeing with anything you wrote.
However, your reply to my post got me thinking. One of the problems with EROEI is that its calculation is often not well defined. You claim that the EROEI of oil has in past been 30 to 1. Obviously you are ignoring the energy input of the sun. I suspect that if you include the hundreds of millions of years of energy falling on the earth to create the oil, then the energy returned on energy invested is almost zero.
I am not suggesting that including the sun's energy input is a useful thing to do. I am simply pointing out that it is being ignored and one should be mindful that it is being ignored. The point being that whenever an EROEI calculation is done one should know what is being included and what is being excluded. This is basically the same point that you make so well in your writing about externalized costs.
Anyway, as I said at the beginning, I was unaware that I was arguing against anything you had written. Certainly, the oil sands are not a source of cheap oil or energy.
Oops. I had a quick look at what you wrote again.
Quote:
The EROEI will be less than conventional oil, thus more expensive.
This is actually not a valid argument. EROEI does not by itself tell you what will be more expensive. If one could devise a simple means to use free solar energy to get oil from the oil sands one could have a very profitable operation with a very low EROEI. However, no one has a means to do this transformation so your conclusion is still correct even if your argument is not.
Ok, name a technology that produces energy that has a return to 1000 to 1 or a million to 1. And if you had read and understood my thread, you would have seen that any EROEI less than oil would be more expensive, which was the point. I never made any reference that EROEI was the only thing that mattered.
It is difficult to find EROEI numbers from energy companies. Most of them use EPR. (Energy Payback Ratio)
Hydro power with a resevoir has an EPR of 205.
Hydro power with a running river has an EPR of 267.
Nuclear has an EPR of 16
Biomass Forestry Waste has an EPR of 27
Wind has an EPR of 39
Solar has an EPR of 9
It makes no difference as long as you use the same criteria from the day the first barrel was pumped to now. Then it was 100 to 1. Now it is 30 to 1. The returns are diminishing and will continue to diminish. The cost of producing a barrel of oil will go up as a result, along with the price rise from supply/demand. You disagree with this?
Why are people choosing to attack EROEI? Whether I agree with your arguments or not changes nothing. I reiterate:
Quote:
So, as we slide down the Hubbert’s Curve, not only will the rate of production decrease, but the cost of that production will increase. In other words, the net energy available to industrial societies will be reduced year by year at an ever increasing cost. And this does not take into account subsidies and externalized costs in the form of environmental degradation or deferred debt.
The price of oil is going to go up due to two factors at play. You think not?
If not, then why the debate? Was the point of the thread missed? _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
The price of oil is going to go up due to two factors at play. You think not?
If not, then why the debate? Was the point of the thread missed?
We all know the price of oil is going up and that it is getting tougher to find and that it is taking more energy to lift oil than it used to. Did you think this insight of yours is a major new discovery? You are preaching to the choir here.
The price of oil is going to go up due to two factors at play. You think not?
If not, then why the debate? Was the point of the thread missed?
We all know the price of oil is going up and that it is getting tougher to find and that it is taking more energy to lift oil than it used to. Did you think this insight of yours is a major new discovery? You are preaching to the choir here.
And what, pray tell, does this snub do to add to the discussion? Not all of the readers here are aware of these correlations. And some are quite new to the concept of peak oil. I have seen little discussion of both factors together. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
If one could devise a simple means to use free solar energy to get oil from the oil sands one could have a very profitable operation with a very low EROEI. However, no one has a means to do this transformation...
One idea for doing this is to launch mirrors into orbit (along the lines of the Znamya 2 and 2.5, which were launched by Russia in 1993 and 1998, respectively). These could be used to focus solar energy onto the oil sands. Parabolic mirrors would be even better.
http://www.space-frontier.org/Events/Znamya/
EROEI is a subjective not an objective measure, as nero has astutely pointed out many times. Look at the tar sands. Is the gasoline the president of Suncor uses to get to work included in the energy input? How about the gasoline the president uses to entertain clients? How about the gasoline the president's doctor uses to get to the hospital to do the president's bypass operation? There is no objective criteria for where to draw the line.
All times are GMT - 6 Hours Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4Next
Page 1 of 4
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
