<DrumBeat: December 22, 2006The Oil DrumSite migration this weekend; make sure your email address is up-to-date>

99 comments on Peak Oil and The Energy Utilization Chain (EUC)

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Wolfric on December 22, 2006 - 2:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
About that EROEI boundary...

I think that since every layer of our society is dependent on a way or in an other on fossil fuels, I think that assessing actual EROEI would be kind of taken accounted for by calculating the actual cost of producing that energy.

Say for ethanol for example, cost calculated before subsides and tax break should amount to something more than what a comparable amount of oil (or gasoline) would cost.

If the cost is 3,50$ and the gasoline is actually 2,50$, it would imply that it is needing 1 $ more of gasoline input that is lost in the process.

So in order to get the same amount of ethanol, you need more energy than what is given by it.

Well, that need to be studied more in detail but Jeff Vail came with something near I think.

What do you think about it?

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Nate Hagens on December 22, 2006 - 2:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wolf-

This is the crux of the issue. In theory you are corect. However in reality, using dollars to generate decisions gives you a constant moving target, based on the markets sloth at recognizing scarcity. Your decisions would change monthly in an energy crisis. Net energy analysis attempts to jump ahead of this by acknowledging that energy  is important (implicitly, energy is more central to our needs, whereas the market is good at pricing our wants), and pricing things in energy terms so that accurate planning can be made in advance. I suspect that as we begin to run faster on our natural gas treadmill, the value of pricing ethanol in energy terms instead of $ will become apparent.

In a perfectly functioning market that has no subsidies, that values externalities, and that doesnt exhibit very steep discount rates (valuing the present more than it should), pricing in dollars would equal pricing in energy, but we are a long way from that.

sorry I missed you in Portland...(next summer!)

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JoulesBurn on December 22, 2006 - 4:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Nate,

When calculating EROI in this way, any bias in the dollar value of energy divides out. One might have to take an average over a period of time to account for variations in market forces of different energy types, but this is easy to do. Similarly, all energy produced with fossil fuels is discounted similarly and this bias exists both in the numerator and the denominator in an EROI calculation.

Using a more rigorous approach (following energy expenditures all the way up the chain), you still cannot account for externalities (nuclear waste buried for centuries, global warming effects, missing mountaintops in WV, quite a mess in Alberta, etc. etc.). What is the energy value of those? What is the energy cost to society of disrupting the food supply?

Also, improvements in technology improve EROI--it is not a static number. Pimentel has been often criticised (and then his arguments dismissed) for using supposedly obsolete numbers.

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JoulesBurn on December 22, 2006 - 2:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I suggested something similar further down
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PeakPlus on December 23, 2006 - 5:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually not a response to you, but I was just wondering if I could get more of the contents of Mr. Reneynold's book "Scarcity and Growth Considering Oil and Energy" without having to buy the book. Cost over $100 new - an awful lot for a book that I might read two chapters of. It would really surprise me if the library here in Germany would have it, and the one-page abstract linked above was less than a teaser..

Cheers, Dom

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Nate Hagens on December 23, 2006 - 7:11am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Im not sure - you could email him at the address listed on his home page in intro
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