32 comments on A tourist observation - or the yellowing of England
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I think "EROEI" is a red herring in our current world. Regardless of the EROEI "cost," the behaviour of the companies extracting the coal is constrained by one simple equation: revenues - costs = profit. As laudable as EROEI might be, and perhaps it should be the *only* criteria for engaging in any activity, today's framework simply does not support this approach.
When one refers to cost, one is forced to accept the economic definition. Thus, regardless of EROEI, if a company can produce coal (or anything else) that delivers an economic profit it will do so.
I guess my question was, despite the lack of coal production in the UK, as clearly shown by BobCousins and his best mate Google, is this clearly a function of UK Peak Coal, or is it indicative of the pressures on coal from the expanding exploitation of gas for electricity generation since the 70's? Much like the fall of Communism seems to have produced a "Twin Peaks" in Russia.
Clearly up to 1990 the lion's share of generation was from (imported) coal, and it is only since 1990 that this is being replaced with gas.
You seem to be struggling with a chicken and egg question. But the data clearly shows that expensive and declining coal production came first, and then came cheap gas. There is really no way to see that cheap gas has temporarily stifled coal production, and that if you took away gas we would increase coal production again. Coal production will be where we left it - limited and expensive. If we had to use only coal, we would import it.
Given that North Sea production (UK + Norway) production will be WAY down (1/3 of today ?). this has serious balance of paymenst and just sourcing problems.
Some from Russia, most from LNG.
The US will have some economic competition for LNG. The UK is closer to many sources of LNG than the US, so lower transportation costs.
Direct importation of electricity from France seems likely.
all in all, not pretty.
If I were the French state electricity company, I would start ASAP on a 4 reactor complex as close to England as I could site it.
The lag time for wind is VERY short, as little as 12 months from financial decision to production for expanding an existing wind farm, and 30 motnhs for a "green field" development elsewhere.
The UK should change licensing procedures and make a serious commitment to wind.
The lag time for conservation is also very short and this MUST be encouraged.
The Swiss now contract for a several nuclear plants worth of power from France every night and on weekends, thus saving their hydroelectric water for peak demand.
Increase cross-Channel DC ties dramatically and buy as much excess power from the French as possible, as soon as possible, to preserve your remaining natural gas.
The French can build nuclear plants faster than you can. Start on your own but sign 15 or so year contracts for new nuclear power from France, starting about 2012 or 2013. By the time these contracts expire, France will need these reactors to replace thir own retiring reactors and the UK will "have enough" of their own reactors.
EROEI is of course not the same as cost. But as lower EROEI means bigger inputs (inputs that contain energy) relative to output, it shows as higher costs. Very high costs are usually a symptom of low EROEI.
Government subsidies in one form or another (as tax breaks) can mask these higher costs and decreasing EROEI. In fact, government energy subsidies mean usually an EROEI problem (as in the US oil and gas). So production can be profitable. Also, when overall energy EROEI is decreasing, the relative cost of producing for instance low EROEI coal can be more profitable - you get, after all, more energy than you put in, if the EROEI is greater than 1, so net energy is produced.
The EROEI creep means that higher gross energy input with subsidies create an illusion of more available energy even if the net energy is not growing or downright diminishing. You mined a million tons coal more this year. This is added to primary energy production, GDP and so on. Nice. But if you really used half of that million tons (eg. as electricity, steel etc.) for new mining investments and production, net energy added for the rest of the economy is only a half million tons. That's different.
Now, if the economy has invested (eg. in coal power plants) in anticipation of one million tons of additional coal, there is a problem. In this situation, typically more energy investments are demanded with more government subsidies - and these will lower the EROEI more and the situation gets only worse, even if production goes up.
If the government is such (as in the Soviet Union) that it can give unlimited subsidies, all this may end in a situation where huge efforts and costs are devoted to decreasing net energy production (and increasing CO2 production). This will destroy any economy. We don't need Socialism here, a stupid Peak Oil Crash Program with heavy oil and gas subsidies, ethanol and the like is enough. Clearly an effort to make the US oil-independent with all kind of very low EROEI projects would cause a bad economic crash and very nasty climate effects.
If I might be so bold, may I rephrase the question. Put simply, so's even I can grasp the reply, are recoverable UK coal reserves currently less than 50%? Is every seam that could be mined in the UK less than 50%?
If not, then is the apparent production peak analagous to the Russian oil "peak" during the fall of "Communism?"
Is the peak actually a function of resource limitation or is it a function of politics and economics?
I don't know the original UK coal reserves in 1300 - it was about that time the mining was already somewhat significant. But for sure the original reserves are probably over 90% depleted. Remember - the decline has continued for over 90 year by now. Every single field is not depleted that much - there is still production. But in Japan, France and Belgium there is no production any more - the coal is 100% depleted.
I know that many people believe that the world has plenty of coal left - for two hundred years or so, and that coal is the unused reserve that is underutilized because it is "old-fashioned and dirty". This is not true at the present production rate. We speak here about conventional, commercial coal. There are huge reserves in the depth of 5000 meters under the sea - but no way of getting at it because the extraction takes a lot more energy than is contained in the coal. There are lots of coal in thin and scattered seams deep down. It is no way to get it up with net energy gain. There are huge amounts of very low-value lignite - but it has very little profitable use.
Coal depletion is real. After all it is just non-renewable fossile fuel. The EROEI problem cannot be dismissed as we speak about coal. The costs start rising considerably and the energy gain diminish when you must dig deeper - kilometer or more - or seams become thinner and the coal quality worse and ash content higher. The best and the easiest coal is always mined first, so the EROEI is constantly falling. This eats up the production growth in mature areas like the US and finally ends all production long before all physical coal deposits are exhausted.