163 comments on EU Commission's Energy Strategy for Europe
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163 comments on EU Commission's Energy Strategy for Europe
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Chris - I've posted this many times now - it should be abundantly clear that society as we know it cannot run if 20 to 30% of the workforce and resources are devoted to producing energy.
Chart is not zero scaled running from 50 (left) to 1 (right).
What is happening now is that high eroei fuels (that are fast depleting) are being used to subsidise production of unsustainable fuels - temperate latitude ethanol in particular. The tar sands are marginal.
What must happen is that we invest the high eroei fuels in a sustainable energy infrastructure, that includes wind, solar, hydro and most likely unavoidably nuclear.
What needs to happen with some urgency is that all major infrastructure projects built around burning liquid FF are abandoned - or at least no new ones are begun - and all these resources need to be poured into power generation and electric transportation projects. The shear stupidity of what is going on right now in the UK with road building and expanding airports is difficult to comprehend. And painting a line down the side of a road and calling it a cycle lane, is mind numbingly pathetic - especially since the paint wares off after a couple of years.
The government must legislate on energy efficiency at energy production and consumption stages so that all inefficient practices are discontinued with some urgency - this will mean closing or upgrading all our coal fired power stations so that all the 65% + waste heat is recovered and used.
I don't know who it is that posts the sayings in top right corner - either Kyle or SuperG - but I was looking for the one that said we cannot expect to solve problems with the thinking that created them - couldn't find it but came across all these wonderfully perceptive quotes whilst I was looking.
Today's new road building and airport expansion would be comical if it wasn't so deadly serious.
Temperate latitude ethanol is not only stupid, it's contributing to the energy pain being experienced by Europe's poorer citizens by being partly responsible for big rises in food prices. Higher food costs effectively lower the threshold when one enters the 'fuel poverty zone'. We might say that the 'dash for ethanol' has contributed to Europe's fuel riots.
I can partly understand the dilema that politicians face - we only have to look in today's P&J letters column to see demands for a 'modern transport system' which, unsurprisingly the correspondent defines by yet 3 more major road schemes! Any sympathy I had for politicians however is fast evaporating due to their abject failure to communicate the seriousness of the EU energy situation. A large majority on this forum clearly see the need for urgent and dramatic policy changes and I suspect many others would to....if only the politicians and MSM would start to do their job and properly inform people that we cannot possibly continue on the present course.
I personally find it appalling that various (completely unpaid) individuals on this forum can come up with such comprehensive analysis and action plans and yet EU and Gov't officials with multi-billion dollar budgets (paid for by us!) either come up with nothing at all or what amounts to dangerous complacency and nonsense. It's also not hard to imagine that when things go badly wrong (which they will, and soon) most of these key officials will simply leave and take gold-plated pensions (again which we've paid for) and leave others to sort out the mess.
On a more positive note I'm seeing that 'energy depletion' and 'peak oil' are showing up more and more in the online comments sections of press articles including the Daily Mail and Daily Express - it thus appears some are getting the message despite lack of political leadership. We write to our MP's and councillors but, so far, it's not achieved much. The oil price, however, is doing more than anything to spread the word. When shortages start to appear the whole subject of energy will ramp up yet further and just maybe will force politicians to take action but by then, of course, it will be very late in the day.
Anon.
I wonder how much of Prof Odell's '30 Gbbls yet to be extracted from UK N Sea' has ERoEI >7? I'd hazard a guess that it's less than 5%.
Nice comment but I'm not sure about the EROEI needing to be greater than 7. For example, if your chart stuck at EROEI 6, or possibly even 5, it wouldn't look so bad. And I don't get that 20% of the workforce would be devoted to energy production at EROEI less than 7. I've a feeling that there was a post on this, some time back. Do you have a link?
Euan,
Excellent post and excellent retort to the blog.
One minor quibble: I think you blunted your message significantly by effectively calling the guy an incompetent idiot. (Though he is indeed)
It's my experience that when dealing with decision makers/policy makers, their ears slam shut to your arguments (even if they are unassailably logical) when this happens.
My 2c: take it how you will.
Point taken Dan, I concede I was a bit harsh. However, the context is that we've run about 6 of these articles covering Andris' policies and its not at all clear he or his cabinet has read, understood or considered a word that has been written.
OK - so we can't expect the EU to U turn on policy overnight. But I think "they" do desperately need to start dialoguing in some way - if they want to run a blog.
"Sticks and stanes can brak yer banes but names can never harm you"
I fear Andris and colleagues will be confronted with rather more of the former if they don't take some urgent action.
Its Mervyn King and Alasdair Darling to get the TOD treatment tomorrow.