The Oil Drum: Net Energy | Welcome to The Oil Drum: EROI

108 comments on Welcome to The Oil Drum: EROI

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greenish on December 28, 2008 - 9:48pm

It's not a minor quibble.

The use of the inherently-confusing acronym EROI is quite unfortunate. Why are we reluctant to take even a minor logical step away from an arbitrary academic convention?

This has been discussed at some length in the past by me and by others. I won't beat it to death here, as there is no logic to using EROI. But since Black Dog brings it up, I'll agree.

I appreciate the motivation of the posters and wish them well, but as a longterm activist and strategist it's painful to see so little apparent forethought paid to the subject's accessibility by the target audience. Feel free to search my past comments on this if you forget the arguments.

"Return on Investment" is a financial consideration, and that's how it will be perceived by default every single time by every single new person who is introduced to it.

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aangel on December 28, 2008 - 11:43pm

Like Boof below, I too am starting to use net energy profit because I can say "it's like net profit is to money; if the energy profit gets too low, in some cases it isn't worth taking the energy out of the ground. Right now that's the case for shale and it could possibly always be that way."

And when I do use the full term I definitely include the extra "energy" as in "energy return on energy invested" to make sure people don't start including money in their thinking except to distinguish why money doesn't play a role in this concept.

As for accessibility, I agree that EROI or EROEI aren't very good -- acronyms should be avoided for general audiences.

But TOD seems to have always been wonkish and not afraid of equations and acronyms. So I suppose it comes down to who the audience of these articles is and that's for the people behind TOD to decide. My guess is that the first articles are going to be pretty involved.

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greenish on December 29, 2008 - 12:34am

I'm tending to the term 'net energy' because if you mention EROEI people think you are a wanker.

A salient comment by Boof, and in fact I personally use "net energy" as a conversational term for the same reasons; TOD:Net Energy would probably be a lot more intuitively accepted by new TOD readers.

Certainly here on TOD acronyms shouldn't be a problem per se among the cognoscenti. I know what the post is about. But it's rather the point that people who DON'T currently understand it not be hindered by unnecessarily poor terminology.

I'd say that the most important messages to get across here are that there are absolute thresholds beyond which energy carriers and mineral resources are not available even if they physically exist; and that the ER/EI ratio may be the one of the best quantitative determinants of the level of complexity which human societies can maintain. The words "invested" and "investment" should probably not be used at all due to the fiscal default connotation...

allright, that's it, I'm off to bed. g'nite gang.

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Nate Hagens on December 29, 2008 - 9:58am

Or maybe just TOD:Net
;-)

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greenish on December 29, 2008 - 4:09pm

Nah, that sounds fishy as well as fiscal.

When it comes down to it, EROEI vs EROI is an add homonym argument. ER/EI would be a lot better, but it doesn't roll off the tongue well. "net energy" is probably the best compromise.

Other alternates might include words not currently in use, so one would be obliged to refer to the definition. Off the top of my head, I might suggest

e-mojo
monkey mischief factor
entropoopy
ploofmibble
gettability
hagens (where a 5 hagen source corresponds to a 5/1 EROEI)
etc

None of these are perfect, but none are as inherently confusing as is EROI. Just saying.

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