130 comments on DrumBeat: May 19, 2006
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130 comments on DrumBeat: May 19, 2006
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Only if we consider the total global energy supply and understand the volumes involved here, people can understand what is the real problem. All fossile fuel supply is tight. Also coal is depleting badly. The may be a lot of it left, but much of best coal is gone and the rest has lower EROEI - much of it lower than one, ie. it is not possible get net energy from it.
Tar sands and extra heavy are low EROEI fuels. What does this mean? If we have oil with EROEI of 20, this means that to produce 20 barrels net we much produce 21 barrels gross (1 barrel goes to the energy input needed in the production). But if we have very heavy oil, the EROEI might be just 2. To produce 20 net barrels we have produce 30 gross barrels (10 barrels as energy input). Now also the CO2 emissions are 50% higher in the latter case. Production volume will rise also 50% to get the same net output. This would be utterly destructive and in the end not feasible. You will be producing only lots of C02 but no net energy. The absolutely worst scenario.
I don't think nobody wants to try this "EROEI heroism" - a desperate push to produce more fossile fuels with heavy governments subsidies - but in the end with negative net energy gain. The Soviet Union tried just this - and collapsed. Don't think that the American leaders are so much smarter than the Soviet leaders. The Soviets didn't understand this, because it is not easy to see. How many American politicians understand the concept of decreasing EROEI?
This is because in converting coal to liquids for example (fischer tropsch for black coal, bergius process for brown coal), the energy you need comes 90% from the primary source and 10% from other sources (mainly electricity). You still need fuels for mining and transporting your primary source or your endproduct. If the spread of price between your primary source and your endproduct is wide enough, you can begin considering the process economically.
This doesn't mean it will be feasible. Clearly the process is very expensive to run not only because of energy input from other sources, but also because of costs involved in catalyst management and high maintenance costs of the plants in the first place. Then you should consider transportation costs, construction costs of the plants.
Another limitation could be the surge of, the price of the primary sources could because of mining problems and scarcity to begin with. Totoneilla and Pr Goose have already tried to draw our attention to the importance of exponantiallity in trying to understand some of the problems induced by peak-oil. I believe that the real problem lies here. EROEI serves in this case to show how spoilfull these processes are but a negative EROEI isn't in first approximation an absolute limit.
Producing synthetic fuels (os mining coal or pumping oil) at EROEI one is in essence transforming one energy form to another. That's OK in principle. But Peak Oil means also diminishng energy supply - not only diminishing supply of one energy form. The lost energy must be compensated by producing more of some other kind of energy - coal, natural gas, nuclear etc. If you can do that you can then transform it to liquid fuels. If the transformation takes more energy than it gives, you must produce still some more energy to compensate that.
This has been discussed here already earlier. If we have to compensate the energy lost by a 10% decrease in the oil supply by coal, the US coal production has to grow a lot, may be 20% - 30% (oil is more energy intensive than coal). If you have to convert coal to gasoline, it takes energy and so more coal to provide that. So increase the coal production still some more. Now the US coal production grew 1.9% in 2005.
Tar sands and extra heavy oil are like coal. You must increase the production immensely to gain the necessary net energy.
Profitability is not the issue. You can have fat government subsidies and tax deductions - the Soviet government did just that. So they got more coal with a very low EROEI. They argued just like Neuroil and thought that it didn't matter as long they got their coal. But it did matter. Producing that coal just ate away other energy resources. They tried to beat the EROEI - but it took them.
In fact the Americans could easily do with much less gasoline than they use today. People naturally think how awkward it would to live now driving considerably less - with everybody else driving like before and the social and urban structure being like today. But as soon as everybody has to drive less the necessary changes start. They start absolutely. Then everybody wants public transport - and it will come. They don't need it now, so just wait.
But everything will go smoother if there are people how know what to do. People who can tell not to panic and try to commit EROEI suicide or start new wars to get the oil, but arrange things better in the new conditions. I think here is enough to do.
I just want to make clear that I agree with most (if not all) of what you write, at least with your global conclusions.
My considerations about the EROEI parameter just tried to show that it is not always very well defined (or in fact computed differently by various authors).
- In fact some consider the energy invested as the total amount of energy requirements for a certain process, regardless of the source. In that cas you have to compute the total value of energy inputs (X BTU's in primary source, Y BTU's of electricity, Z BTU's of fuel and other energy sources) and compare this to the N BTU's of the final energy source. So EROEI would be (X+Y+Z)/N. This value can also be viewed as the ratio of energy recieved versus energy dissipated.
- Others only want to consider the energy from other sources you have to "import" in order to make your reactions work. In this setting, EROEI is (Y+Z)/N, Y,Z,N beeing as in 1.
I think both values are important. Of course we all agree that if EROEI in the second case is <1 then our process doesn't work at all, neither thermodynamically nor economically, unless you have a cheap largely available energy source (which don't have any more). I think your answer refered to EROEI in this setting.But take the example of XTL as discussed by Rober Rapier. In this case the energy for the reactions comes most predominantly from the primary source, in fact 85% in the case of coal. Only 15% of the energy requirements stem from other sources, 10% from electricity, 5% for mining and transporting coal, in the case of an in-situ fischer-tropsch plant. I this case, EROEI as computed in my second example, is largely >1 but this number is misleading as the reactions still dissipate a lot of energy because of the waste of the primary energy source. Some of this energy dissipated could be used for the generation of electricity but the waste is still huge. This accounts also for the high CO2 emissions of the process. The EROEI as computed in my first example is <1. You can however get more fuel from this process than you input.
In order for CTL and XTL to work, for some time at least, we should experience a very slow decline of oil production in the coming years. It seems that these techniques are very expensive. The construction of plants will exceed the price of a refinery. Operation requires a lot of catalyst, price of which is increasing, a lot of brain-power (price of which decreases :( ), and heavy maintainance. To bring these plant up, economy should be working fine in order for these heavy investments to be made. The environmental toll will probably be disastrous. If oil declines faster, I think we won't ever be able to bring these techniques to work.
1 + 1/20 + 1/40 ....
not 20 + 1 + 1/20 + 1/40 ....
EROI of 20 is one barrel to produce 20 barrels.
I wish my Greek philosophers knowledge was much better (an arrow does not hit a target because after each unit of time it is one half nearer the target, so the arrow never actually hits the target because of decreasing fractions keep on going to infinity) as this is the same argument put forward. In real life, I would not like to rely on a philosopher's hypothesis to protect me when an arrow is shot at me from a long bow.
However, carrying on with your thought experiment, what happens if I use an electrical generator (powered by coal) to power the pump to get the first bit of oil out of the ground, which is then used to pump more oil out of the ground.