107 comments on EROEI Short #3: Price-Estimated EROEI
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
The contents below are paid advertisements. Their appearance does not imply an endorsement by The Oil Drum.
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
—Francis Bacon, Essays
Search The Oil Drum with Google
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
- Enjoying Life Close to Home: Fun Streets
TOD:Europe
- UK Energy Flow Chart 2007
- Brown pretends to be tough on Russia
- Russian gas and European energy security - a reprise
TOD:Canada
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
- Weekend Energy Listening: Wind Power with Paul Gipe
TOD:ANZ
Peak Oil Primers
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- Ecological Economics
- David Strahan
- Econbrowser
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- Environmental Economics
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Organizations
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
"Why bother? What does the Price-Estimated EROEI methodology do that a standard EROEI calculation not do?"
Well, what if the price of electricity doubles every 3 years when NG and coal get more expensive? That will change the equation dramatically.
Also, you may be able to untie your PV's from the grid eventually, to run, say, a freezer, which may come in handy with permanent blackouts. This makes price-estimated EROEI irrelevant.
If the price of electricity doubles in three years, are you getting back double the energy when you pay that higher price? Of course you are not, so if you introduce an adjustment for future price changes, you are only fooling yourself.
As far as thinking the EROEI is irrelevant, what if you did this price estimated analysis and it showed you how to pick an alternative that would cost half initially and keep your freezer running after permanent blackouts? Would not the analysis have been relevant? The whole point of EROEI estimates is to help conserve resources by using them in the most wise manner. Just looking at the benefit (keeping your freezer running) without looking at the cost can result in poor choices in using up resources today. And in a world with limited resources, if you remove from the resource base twice what you needed to remove (even if you are willing to pay the money price) then the excess you remove is not available to someone else so your considering EROEI to be irrelevant could deny someone else having a freezer running in the blackout future your anticipate.