The Oil Drum | EROEI Short #2: Lenin & Lohan

68 comments on EROEI Short #2: Lenin & Lohan

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2007 - 1:30pm

Therefore, the only practically important question is relative EROEI among candidate alternative sources

Well, if energy alternative A has a 3:1 EROI and energy alternative B has a 5:1 EROI, one might be tempted to choose B, ceteris paribus. But if one is aware that society currently runs on an EROI of 12:1, then neither is fully acceptable and conservation, lifestyle, infrastructure have to be changed IN ADDITION to introducing the new energy source -frankly I think the absolute level of energy gain is much more important than the relative.

The deep levels of energy cost that you discuss are, at some point down the line, going to be essentially equivalent for all alternative sources and so can be ignored in the relative EROEI calculations, no

This is true. In a recent book chapter for David Pimentel, I break up net energy analysis into 3 categories - narrow boundary analysis, which is just using the direct energy inputs, intermediate boundary analysis, which uses both direct and indirect inputs, like not only the gasoline to fuel the tractor but also the energy to make the tractor, etc, and finally, wide boundary analysis which also would include the energy required to maintain the infrastructure necessary to create the energy - as well as any environmental externalities. I didn't go so far as Jeff with Lindsay Lohan though. To me the analysis has to stop at some meaningful level of comparison of physical inputs - once we get into psychic measures of societal creativity, we lose all ability to be precise.

The important point is, we need everyone involved in 'energy accounting' to speak the same language, and if they don't, at least tell people what language (e.g. what boundaries) they are using.

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PaulS on August 28, 2007 - 2:27pm

Well, if energy alternative A has a 3:1 EROI and energy alternative B has a 5:1 EROI, one might be tempted to choose B, ceteris paribus. But if one knows discovers that society currently runs on an EROI of 12:1, then neither is fully acceptable and conservation, lifestyle, infrastructure have to be changed IN ADDITION to introducing the new energy source -frankly I think the absolute level of energy gain is much more important than the relative.

This just seems like a hopelessly crabbed, narrow, unworthy view of life. There's more to life than just saving energy. If the 3:1 alternative is the one that serves best overall, then I'll take the 3:1 alternative. Which, I suppose, is why we have economists, and which, I suppose, is why those off-center folks who take energy as the be-all and end-all seem to hate economists.

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2007 - 2:33pm

Actually, society would not function on a much lower EROI - energy allows to do work, which includes water, food, heat, shelter, etc. Thats the whole ball of wax with net energy analysis. If a system is conditioned to high energy gain, yet the alternatives are only low energy gain, changes or consequences must follow, by definition. Sorry if its crabbed or narrow - its reality.

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findrbob on August 28, 2007 - 2:40pm

Well, if energy alternative A has a 3:1 EROI and energy alternative B has a 5:1 EROI, one might be tempted to choose B, ceteris paribus. But if one knows discovers that society currently runs on an EROI of 12:1, then neither is fully acceptable

Why not? Why can't a society currently run on 12:1 be adjusted to run similarly on 5:1? You could still in principle produce just as much net energy.

and conservation, lifestyle, infrastructure have to be changed IN ADDITION to introducing the new energy source

Well, infrastructure would have to be changed even if the new energy resource is 12:1. Focusing on relative EROEI in no way presupposes that conservation and lifestyle will not change. They will by economic imperative.

he important point is, we need everyone involved in 'energy accounting' to speak the same language, and if they don't, at least tell people what language (e.g. what boundaries) they are using.

Yes, good point. But wouldn't it be far easier to get them to agree if the focus is on relative EROEI? Absolute EROEI strikes me as one of those cases where there simply is not enough good information and the problem is just too complex to ever get various groups with different agenda to agree on how to measure it. So, your goal of achieving agreement is, in my opinion, facilitated by focusing on relative EROEI.

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2007 - 3:01pm

This is Jeffs post, so I don't want to hog the comment threads, but:

Why not? Why can't a society currently run on 12:1 be adjusted to run similarly on 5:1? You could still in principle produce just as much net energy.

This is incorrect, but very important. Society aggregate EROI of 5:1 is NOT the same net energy as 12:1. Not even close. Put it this way. Right now the average american uses around 60 barrel of oil equivalent of primary energy - lets use those same numbers. That means we are using 5 BOE to get the 60. If we use that same 5 in the future we will only get 25. Thats 35 BOE of efficiency and sacrifice we have to come up with. (Or alternatively, we would need an input of 12 to get the 60). We now have 20 boe available to do work for each american, as opposed to 55 before - meaning that conservation, efficiency and infrastructure changes must accompany this decline in net energy. Sure it can be done and yes we can be successful and happy, but there are constraints.

Similarly, if we discover nuclear fusion and its 100:1, it frees up an enormous amount of energy that we could use (or waste)on any manner of wild ventures. Few constraints

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findrbob on August 28, 2007 - 3:38pm

That means we are using 5 BOE to get the 60. If we use that same 5 in the future we will only get 25. Thats 35 BOE of efficiency and sacrifice we have to come up with. (Or alternatively, we would need an input of 12 to get the 60). In either case, there is much less energy available to do work for society, meaning that conservation, efficiency and infrastructure changes must accompany this change.

Or put in 14 to get 70, yielding more than the original 55 net. Going to lower EROEI does not, of course, logically constrain us to producing less net energy. More of the economy would be devoted to energy production and less to fast food and car servicing.

My main point was that this fact does not seem to be relevant to the merits of relative versus absolute EROEI calculations. What we really need to know is which of the various available alternatives is best under a given set of circumstances (e.g., geographical region). In the end this is the only exercise that will actually affect policy/decision making, in my opinion. Fortunately it is apparently relatively easy.

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2007 - 3:53pm

OK - take that one step further. Imagine there are only 100 people in society, so that right now the 60 boe are 6000 boe for entire society. That means at 12:1, society is using 500 boe to get the 6000. Now after the energy decline to 5:1, we have to input 1200 to get the 6000. And from that 6000, we need 1200 to get the next 6000, etc. If we 'put in 14 to get 70', where does it come from?? this is the critical point With a decline in societal net energy, this DOES logically constrain us to producing less net energy. By definition.

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findrbob on August 28, 2007 - 4:24pm

But you are assuming that the rate of gross energy extraction must remain constant and does not change with energy resources utilized. Let's assume that rate of oil extraction is already at its peak. Rate of solar and wind extraction is clearly not. The combined rate of extraction that is possible from these and other alternative resources in principle probably exceeds, by a wide margin, the current rate of energy extraction from oil. If so, then even at lower EROEI, there could in principle be more net energy extracted from these resources someday than is currently extracted from oil. If you want to make claims about possible rates of net energy extraction you must consider not only EROEI but also maximum possible gross extraction rate.

Please don't jump on me about being too optimistic about alternatives. I'm not claiming that this will happen, but just that it logically could, and hence in my opinion your argument is flawed, or at least incomplete.

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2007 - 7:25pm

If so, then even at lower EROEI, there could in principle be more net energy extracted from these resources someday than is currently extracted from oil

You are correct. This is why people (including me) need to be clear on their assumptions. And I wasn't jumping on you, but many people don't get precisely this important point, which is why I spelled it out So thanks for fleshing it out - yes - if the SCALE of energy is doubled, the EROI can be halved and we would be at the same societal net energy.

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Toby Kelsey on August 29, 2007 - 7:37pm

EROEI seems a nice objective scale we can use to compare technologies, but it misses many factors which should affect our choice. An energy technology with high EROEI may consume excessive fresh water or despoil the environment, or it may prove to be more socially beneficial to forgo some energy intensive activities instead of generating the extra energy.

Let's think about what we are trying to accomplish. We have

a population with needs and desires
biological and geographical assets providing natural services
a limited flow rate of solar, wind and other renewable energies
a limited flow rate of food and clean water
a limited stock of land, topsoil and biodiversity
finite mineral resources and fossil fuels
social capital (educated cohesive communities)
physical and technological infrastructure.

and many options (technologies, industries) for using resources to fulfill human desires and improve welfare. We need to choose options and allocate our limited resources to maximize human welfare for this and future generations. Energy is important, but only one of the limiting factors we must allocate. Happiness is not proportional to energy use, and you need a multi-factor approach to determine how much of what types of energy society needs.

What we really need to measure is HROARI - Happiness return on aggregate resources invested.

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Nate Hagens on August 30, 2007 - 11:33am

Yup!

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findrbob on August 30, 2007 - 12:56am

And I wasn't jumping on you

right, you weren't. I was just trying to avoid having someone throw the "you are a cornucopian" epithet at me.

Thanks for your comments.

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Dryki on August 28, 2007 - 10:10pm

Why not...?

This particular bit of the thread needs to be expanded Jeff.

We can't just replace all the high return energy with more of the low return. The machine (society, technology and terms of trade) doesn't *work* at the low return. Suppose we had to go back to horses. Everything would take much, much longer to accomplish. Many things we do now would not get done at all. We can't even scale our agricultural system to produce the feed.

I went to visit John Howe yesterday and drove in his solar powered MG. One could take it to town and back - on a good day and not twice. The MG is about ten horses and hills are a huge problem. We can't change to all electric cars powered by huge arrays of windmills because we can't scale up to that quantity of windmills without changing society. Just like the horse and horse feed, it takes too much time and resources to build the windmills; doing so will drag the machine down. [I don't have this 100% clear, sorry.]

I'm trying to cut my energy use to the point where I can go off grid. That means the freezer goes - everything possible has to go into the solar drier. That's time and attention. Taking a bicycle to town takes 2 to 3 times as long as driving. I'm only working half-time, so it will be harder to replace my computers with laptops, etc.... I don't have time for Lindsey; what I really need is a couple of serfs. That's a different society.

cfm in Gray, ME

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Davidyson on August 29, 2007 - 3:35am

I think that Lindsey Lohan et al (that is, all discretionary spending) are completely irrelevant to EROEI calculations.

You just have to do one thought experiment:
Assume our general standard of living would be so low that if we do not get hold of that energy, we would die.
Motivation and creativity to solve the problem would be sufficiently stimulated, I dare say.

Now what are the energy inputs into exploiting the one energy source against the other in such a scenario?

The rest is just some pretty heavy accounting.

Of course, there are essential aspects of our societies that developed to support highly complex industries such as the energy industry. Examples for those are legal frameworks and legal processes, a highly differentiated services and consulting industry and a powerful transport system. However, these "overheads" support other industries, too, so switching to alternative energy sources will not change them much.

I think it is fair to assume that we will not be able to actively change general societal patterns in our search for new energy sources. So these patterns can be taken as largely equal for all energy sources and their energy inputs will become irrelevant for a first-level comparison.

However, we must include into the EROEI calculation all required infrastructures that are specific to one of the energy sources. If we were to, for example, expand reprocessed nuclear by an order of magnitude, the required specific infrastructure would include the building, running and maintenance of the uranium mines, the power plants, the reprocessing plants, the nuclear waste dumps, the transportaion system (special trailer trucks and trains) and all the necessary security measures for the plants and the transport of nuclear material.

Cheers,

Davidyson

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luisdias on August 29, 2007 - 8:28am

This discussion of EROEI being 3:1 or 200:1 is ridiculous from my point of view because of a single simple reason. Imagine you have a factory that produces energy from a certain source in 200:1. This means it produces to the rest of the society 199 for every 1 that it uses. Now imagine that you have a factory that has a EROEI of 3:1. For every 200 it will produce, it gives 133 to society. It seems bad, but the only thing you'll have to do is to create another one of that and you will have surpassed the first one. The energy cost of that is already accounted for in the EROEI itself. Basically, it doesn't matter if the EROEI is 20000:1 or 2:1. What matters is other questions:

1 - how much energy will I be producing (having made the EROEI discount) per day?

2 - how much impact does my production has in the environment?

3 - will my sources be permanent, or are they finite?

To these questions, it is undeniable that wind, solar and these kinds of energy sources are good responding 2 and 3. Our big problem is that they still don't respond well to the first one. Our industry is based on a source that is about to collide with the third. EROEI has nothing to do with this, as long as it is greater than one (meaning it has an output to the society).

Another picture: imagine you have this amazing factory that outputs 200:1. Right, but it has a catch. You can only build one. And then you have these PV that only give you 6:1. But if you build one of them, you can, with the power of the first, create 5 more. With those 5, you can create 25. Next, 125. 625. You get the picture. Now tell me, what's more important, EROEI or finitness of resources?

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Leanan on August 29, 2007 - 8:37am

People often make this argument - that as long as it's energy-positive, it's worth doing.

I disagree. That's like a wealthy heir burning through his inheritance like there's no tomorrow, saying that when the money runs out, he'll get a job at McDonald's. As long as it's "money-positive," he can continue his lifestyle.

Of course, it's not true, or we'd all be living the life of Paris Hilton.

The more of our economy that is devoted to gathering energy, the less there will be for other things.

There's also the question of whether the EROEI actually is positive. If it's not, it won't be sustainable, and that will quickly become apparent in the post-carbon age.

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luisdias on September 1, 2007 - 7:09pm

Mr Leanan, your repply is so full of bullshit I don't even know where to start.

EROEI is not about of how much of the economy is devoted to make energy. EROEI is about a mechanical process. EROEI = 1 is the process that gives eternal loop, and EROEI > 1 is the enough basis for any economy GROWTH.

Your McDonald's metaphor is wrong because a worker in McDonald's always wins poorly. Renewables only win poorly as long as they are small. You can't expand infinitely your time working on McDonald's because a day is only 24h. But you CAN expand infinitely renewables without too much of a burden in the society. Not to mention the obsolescence of war, which is a cost to bear.

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