The Oil Drum

This is the final piece of a series on Energy Return on Investment from Professor Charles Hall's EROI Workshop at SUNY. Today's papers outline the energy technologies of wave and geothermal power, concluding a 5 part series that has looked at Why EROI Matters, Natural Gas and Imported Oil, Tar Sands and Shale Oil, Nuclear Power, and Passive Solar, Photovoltaic, Wind, and Hydro-electric. Previously, Professor Hall also wrote the thought provoking, At $100 Oil, What Can the Scientist Say to the Investor. Forget not about the simple 'balloon graph' below of EROI x Scale for fossil and renewable energy sources that this project is attempting to update with the help of theoildrum.com readership.

Britain risks becoming too dependent on natural gas unless it builds more nuclear power stations, boosts renewable resources and improves energy efficiency, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

"We think it is a model for other IEA countries... However, there is room for improvement, particularly in the area of gas dependence," Mandil told reporters in London. "The UK government needs to monitor this situation and should keep all options open for potential developers of power stations to use other fuels."

The main threat to Britain, the IEA report on UK energy policy released on Thursday says, is that new investment is focussing on gas-fired power generation at a time when Britain's own production is falling rapidly.