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77 comments on EROEI Short #1: Boundaries & Calculations

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Gail the Actuary on August 23, 2007 - 11:44am

One of the issues I see with EROEI is the belief by some people that we have an essentially unlimited amount of coal (or natural gas). If they have this belief, then what they are looking for is an "oil-leverage" ratio to see how petroleum- intensive the process is. Thus, one sees analyses like the Berkley corn ethanol study. The summary report of the Berkeley study is here.

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billp on August 23, 2007 - 5:12pm

Don Brown reported that PNM has people working on the getting answers to

Please get answers to questions

1 annual gallons of motor oil consumed
2 annual gallons of diesel oil consumed
3 annual gallons of gasoline consumed
4 megawatts of electricity produced

by PNM electric for years 1991 through 2006

Future shorages of diesel and gasoline may do bad things to coal mining.

I recently read on Internet that the US consumes 1.1 BILLION tons of coal per year mostly for electricity.

According to the Department of Energy, the United States mines more than 2.8 million tons of coal each day and if it did not, the nation would have double its natural gas production. Coal remains cheap and plentiful, with 250 years worth of reserves. It comprises 51 percent of the electricity generation.

energybizinsider August 20 2007

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