The Oil Drum

This is a guest post from Cutler Cleveland. Theoildrum.com previously highlighted Dr. Clevelands work on the Energy Return from Wind. Todays post is Professor Clevelands latest installment on net energy analysis at the Encyclopedia of Earth, which I have reformatted to theoildrum. The Encyclopedia of Earth, where Prof. Cleveland is an editor/director, has made amazing progress in its short history attempting to become an academic/content based web clearinghouse for information on earth and our environment. I encourage everyone to follow some of the hyperlinks in the below story and peruse that site.

Outside of taxes and profits, we are a society used to thinking in gross terms. But the net is what we get to use. Net energy is how much energy is left for productive purposes after the energy needed to find, concentrate and deliver its energy services are subtracted. Net energy analysis, (and its subset EROI) get alot of airtime in peak oil discussions. If the world is running on a certain total energy surplus, what are the implications for a decline in this surplus? Will the market, via dollars, anticipate or obviate a future constrained by biophysical limits? There seems to be much disagreement as to how best to use EROI and net energy principles, if at all, in tackling what we perceive on the horizon as a looming energy crisis. In this piece, Dr. Cleveland gives and overview of the central tenets of net energy analysis, in a broader perspective that we are used to on this site.

!Kung Hunter Gatherers- Figuring out net energy?

This is a guest post by Cutler Cleveland. Dr. Cleveland is a Professor at Boston University and has been researching and writing on energy issues for over 20 years. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Earth, Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Energy, the Dictionary of Energy and the Journal of Ecological Economics. He has particular interest and expertise in the field of net energy analysis.

As the world transitions from fossil based energy systems to a larger portfolio of renewables, the tradeoffs between energy quantity, energy quality and environmental impacts will increasingly need to be compared using meaningful metrics. Wind energy seemingly provides high returns, high quality energy (electricity) with minimal large scale environmental impacts.

The post below the fold is Dr. Cleveland's and Ida Kubiszewski's 2006 meta-analysis on wind, "Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for Wind Energy".**