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Telling the Truth About Our Future

March 3, 2024

Telling the Truth About Our Future

Energy Aware II

Renewable energy is a poor substitute for fossil fuels. That’s because renewables are a diffuse form of energy and produce power only about one-third of the time.

That doesn’t stop renewable energy true-believers from trying to bend the laws of physics to tell a story that’s not true. EROI** (energy returned on energy invested) was used in this way by Murphy et al in 2022 and more recently, by Delannoy et al in late 2023.

Louis Delannoy and twenty-one co-authors proclaimed the good news in November that there is now a consensus that renewable energy is cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuels.

“The EROI of fossil-fueled electricity at point of end use is often found to be lower than those of PV, wind and hydro electricity, even when the latter include the energy inputs for short-term storage technologies.”

Emerging consensus on net energy paves the way for improved integrated assessment modeling

That’s not true. There is great uncertainty about EROI and a range of net energy values for every type of energy source. It’s a blunt instrument at best. It requires knowing an unknowable array of complex inputs and outputs to be anything more than a high-level guess.

First, let’s examine the easy part of their statement—“including storage technologies.” Lazard’s latest data shows that wind and solar are the most expensive forms of electric power once backup storage is included. Cost and EROI are not the same thing but they are related so it’s a red flag that Delannoy et al’s statement may be untrue.

The reference for their claim is a 2020 paper by one of the co-authors about modeling carbon emissions in California that included simulations for future solar PV EROI . California is not the world, forward modeling is not historical data, and solar PV is not the renewable universe.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Does Renewable Energy Have a Higher EROI Than Fossil Fuels?

May 31, 2023

DOES RENEWABLE ENERGY HAVE A HIGHER EROI THAN FOSSIL FUELS?

There is new momentum behind the idea that renewable energy has a higher energy return on investment (EROI) than fossil fuels.

That contrasts with decades of consensus that the EROI of oil, for example, ranges from 18 to 35 while the range for solar is from 6 to 12.

Nafeez Ahmed wrote in a recent post that

“While the EROI values of wind and solar are “at or above 10”, the average EROI estimate for oil is about 4.2. Murphy et. al’s research concludes that many EROI analyses incorrectly compare fossil fuels with renewables by measuring them at the wrong areas. By consistently measuring them both at their ‘point of use’, they are able to develop a far more consistent approach.”

Similarly, Ugo Bardi wrote a post in January whose title was ” Setting the record straight on the EROI from renewables. It is much better than that of fossil fuels.”

Both Ahmed and Bardi used a 2022 paper, Energy Return on Investment of Major Energy Carriers: Review and Harmonization as their source.

Net Energy and EROI Essentials

Net energy is the difference between the total energy output minus the total energy input over the life cycle of an energy source or technology (Figure 1).

EROI is the ratio of the total energy output divided by the total energy input over the life cycle of an energy source.

That means that the net energy for a 10 megajoule (MJ) energy input and a 20 MJ output is 10 MJ and the EROI is 2 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Net energy and EROI for a hypothetical energy source or technology. Source: Modified from Hagens (2010).Table 1 shows a range of energy inputs and outputs and their corresponding EROI and net energy values. The important observation is that EROI is non-linear while net energy is linear.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Corn for ethanol & soy for biodiesel tremendously destructive

April 19, 2022

Corn for ethanol & soy for biodiesel tremendously destructive

The Green Gold Rush to make biodiesel has begun in earnest in California. It would not be profitable without subsidies from LCFS credits, federal RIN D5 credits, and  Blenders Tax Credits at $3.32 a gallon, which is enough to cover production costs, according to Van der Wal, biofuel advisor at Stratas Advisors in Singapore.

He said “It’s a mind-boggling amount of money, you will make a lot of money as long as all these subsidies come in.” Without this money, biodiesel is an energy sink, with very low EROI.

Biodiesel competitors already in the market have already locked up much of the tallow, cooking oil, and other resources Marathon and Phillips hope to use (Bloomberg 2021). And California doesn’t grow many soybeans because of water shortages, so importing soy will increase CO2 via transportation emissions here and the CO2 from tractors and trucks in other countries or the U.S.

Corn and soybeans are very destructive to the environment, eroding more topsoil, causing more pollution, global warming, acidification, eutrophication of water, water treatment costs, fish kills, and biodiversity loss than most other crops (Powers 2005, Troeh and Thompson 2005, Zattara and Aizen2019).

Food versus fuel. Over 40% of the corn crop becomes fuel, not food at a time when 43 million Americans need help with food stamps (USDA 2020) and the high unemployment rate from Covid-19 could drive the need for food aid up to over 54 million people (Lee 2020).

Too many pesticides.  Corn and soy are especially destructive because they need a lot of pesticides. Of all pesticide use on crops, corn’s share is 39.5% and soybeans 22% (Mclaughlin and Walsh 1998, Padgitt et al. 2000, Pimentel 2003, Patzek 2004, Fernandez-Cornejo et al. 2014). I don’t want to say they have a drinking problem, but shall we say they have a “dependency problem.”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fossil Fuel Companies Received $5.9T in Subsidies Worldwide

February 7, 2022

Fossil fuel subsidies shield us from the real price at the pump

Oil Refinery at Night

Subsidies make fossil fuels cheaper for the consumer making it a tough sell to go green

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

5 Signs a Civilization is About to Fail

October 11, 2021

5 Signs a Civilization is About to Fail

 

A question you always wanted to ask but you never had the time to: Is the “EROI” of energy studies the same as the R factor in epidemiology?

June 4, 2020

A question you always wanted to ask but you never had the time to: Is the “EROI” of energy studies the same as the R factor in epidemiology?

There is a certain logic in the way the universe works and so it is not surprising that the same models can describe phenomena that seem to be completely different. Here, I’ll show you how the same equations describe chain reactions that govern such different phenomena as the spread of an epidemic, the cycle of extraction of crude oil, and even the nuclear reaction that creates atomic explosions. All these phenomena depend on the efficiency of energy transfer, the parameter that’s known in energy studies as EROI (energy return on energy invested), related to the “transmission factor” (R) of epidemiological models. Above, a classic clip from Walt Disney’s 1957 movie, “Our friend, the atom.” 

You may be surprised to discover that epidemiological models share the same basic core of peak oil models. And it is not just about peak oil, the same models are used to describe chemical reactions, resource depletion, the fishing industry, the diffusion of memes on the Web, and even the nuclear chain reaction that leads to nuclear explosions. It is always the same idea: reinforcing feedbacks lead the system to grow in a frenzy of exploitation of an available resource: oil, fish, atomic nuclei, or people to be infected. In the end, it is perhaps the most typical way the universe uses dissipate potentials. As always, entropy rules everything!

Modeling these phenomena has a story that starts with the model developed in the 1920s by Vito Volterra and Alfred Lotka. They go under the name of “Lotka-Volterra” models or, sometimes, “Prey-Predator” models. This heritage is not normally recognized by people in the field of epidemiology, but the model is the same: the virus is a predator and we are the prey.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

THE ENERGY DISASTER KICKING INTO FULL GEAR: World Is Totally Unprepared For What’s Ahead

March 29, 2020

THE ENERGY DISASTER KICKING INTO FULL GEAR: World Is Totally Unprepared For What’s Ahead

There’s more evidence finally surfacing in the media of the dire energy predicament the world is now facing.  The negative ramifications of peak oil and the falling EROI were going to hit the world economy within the next 2-5 years, but the global contagion has sped up the process considerably.  Unfortunately, the world will never return back to the energy consumption and GDP growth experienced in 2019.  I believe the peak of unconventional oil production has finally arrived… FOREVER.

Here are a few highlights describing the ongoing ENERGY DISASTER taking place

U.S. Bakken Oil Production Peaked Oct 2019 While Setting A New Record In Wastewater Production

According to Shaleprofile.com, the Bakken’s production peaked in October 2019 at 1,506,358 barrels per day (bd) and fell to 1,462,025 bd in December.  When the data comes out for Mar-Apr-May, I believe that Bakken’s oil production will begin to drop off considerably.

Furthermore, even without the global virus destroying oil demand, the Bakken was going to peak shortly due to a key indicator… a tremendous increase in the amount of associated wastewater production.  Surging wastewater production is a bad sign signaling reservoir depletion.  Using the data from the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, the Bakken is now producing nearly 1.5 barrels of wastewater for each barrel of oil:

In January 2016, the Bakken was producing 115% more wastewater than oil, but that has surged to 149% during January 2020. While oil production increased by 8.2 million barrels (per month) since January 2016, wastewater surged by an additional 23.2 million barrels (per month).

The Death of the Bakken has finally arrived.  Due to the collapse in U.S. oil consumption, I see a huge decline in Bakken oil production over the next three quarters.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Energy storage and our unpredictable future

March 6, 2020

Energy storage and our unpredictable future

March 4, 2020

A review of Energy Storage and Civilization

It’s a fine spring day and you decide on a whim to go camping. By early afternoon you’ve reached a sheltered clearing in the woods, the sky is clear, and you relax against a tree trunk rejoicing that “The best things in life are free!” as you soak up the abundant warmth of the sun. As the sun goes down, though, the temperature drops to near freezing, you shiver through a long night, and you resolve to be better prepared the next night.

And so by the time the sun sets again you’ve invested in a good down sleeping bag, you sleep through the long night in comfort due to your own carefully retained heat, and then you greet the cold dawn by cheerfully striking a match to the pile of dry sticks you had gathered and stacked the day before.

In this little excursion you’ve coped with variable energy flows, using technologies that allowed you to store energy for use at a later time. In short, you’ve faced the problems that Graham Palmer and Joshua Floyd identify as critical challenges in all human civilizations – and especially in our own future.

Their new book Energy Storage and Civilization: A Systems Approach (Springer, February 2020) is an important contribution to biophysical economics – marvelously clear, deep and detailed where necessary, and remarkably thorough for a work of just over 150 pages.

The most widely appreciated insight of biophysical economics is the concept of Energy Return On Investment – the need for energy technologies to yield significantly more energy than the energy that must be invested in these activities. (If it takes more energy to drill an oil well than the resulting barrels of oil can produce, that project is a bust.) While in no way minimizing the importance of EROI, Palmer and Floyd lay out their book’s purpose succinctly:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Silver Is Better Than Gold

August 31, 2019

Why Silver Is Better Than Gold

While the surging gold price has received most of the spotlight in the market, silver will outperform the king monetary metal over the longer term.  Key fundamental factors make silver the more attractive asset and investment to own versus gold when we look closely at the data.  However, that doesn’t mean precious metals investors shouldn’t own gold.  Investors need to own both precious metals, but I believe silver will provide better returns than gold in the future.

Now, there is this notion put forth by many precious metals analysts that central banks will be forced, at some point, to back their currencies by gold.  Thus, the idea is that gold will reset at a much higher price.  While that is a possibility, backing debt-based currencies with gold will not solve our coming energy crisis.  And, let me tell you, it’s an energy predicament that we have no real solution.

You see, it doesn’t really matter if we back fiat money with gold.  The REAL ISSUE has always been ENERGY. The massive increase in debt and derivatives are a symptom of the Falling EROI (Energy Returned On Investment) of oil.  Basically, while gold may solve certain issues in regards to “Confidence” in money, it doesn’t fix our energy problems.

I touched on this briefly in my newest video, Why Silver Is Better Than Gold.  However, most of the video explains new charts that show fundamental factors on why silver is a better investment than gold as well as some key price levels for the short term.

One of the more important charts in the video shows the amount of “Identifiable” physical gold and silver investment stocks.  Interestingly, according to the data from the World Gold Council and the World Silver Surveys, there is just about the same amount of physical gold investment as there is silver.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Energy Return on Investment (EROI).

April 8, 2019

Energy Return on Investment (EROI).

This is the text of a book review that I wrote, and which has just been published online in the journal Science Progress.

Energy Return on Investment: A Unifying Principle for Biology, Economics and Sustainability. CHARLES A. S. HALL, Springer 2017 ISBN 9783319478203; xii + 174 pp; £37.99

The preeminent mathematical physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, famously described energy as being “the ‘go’ of things”. Thus, “energy” is the fundamental, underpinning driver and enabler of all processes in the universe. Since it takes energy to produce energy, in order to survive, animals must derive more of it from the food they stalk and hunt down than they expend in getting it, while to provide food and to serve all the other functions of a complex human society, it is necessary to recover very much more energy, overall, than is consumed in acquiring that energy. Such energy requirements may be gauged from Energy Return on Investment (EROI), the definition of which is deceptively simple: i.e. it is the amount of energy delivered to society, divided by the energy consumed in delivering it (and therefore not available to society for other purposes). As this ratio falls, fewer units of energy are made available for each unit of energy that is consumed in the production process. In the limit, for an EROI of 1:1, there is no net profit, since the amount of energy consumed is equal to that produced, thus rendering the exercise self-limiting and pointless (and for an EROI < 1:1, an energy sink is identified). EROI is a useful metric for determining the viability of an energy source, and we see that unconventional oil sources (e.g. oil sands and oil shale) tend to be more difficult to produce from than their conventional counterparts, and deliver fewer units of energy to society for each unit of energy that is consumed in the production process, i.e. a smaller energy return on investment (EROI).

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Massive Increase Of Central Bank Paper Assets Warns Of Financial Danger Ahead

April 4, 2019

The Massive Increase Of Central Bank Paper Assets Warns Of Financial Danger Ahead

By purchasing increasingly worthless paper assets, we can thank the central banks for propping up the global economy for the past decade.  Since the 2008 financial crisis, the top central bank’s have acquired $13 trillion worth of assets on their balance sheets.  While the central banks label these balance sheet items as “Assets,” they are nothing more than glorified Paper IOU’s.

And these trillions of dollars worth of paper IOU’s can only get their value from the burning of energy… a critical factor overlooked by mainstream financial analysts.  Without growing global oil production, most of these “supposed” assets would see their values plummet.  Unfortunately, the world is heading towards a collapse of global oil production due to the Falling EROI – Energy Returned On Investment and the Thermodynamics of oil depletion. 

Yes, the disintegration of the global oil industry is now speeding up.  Here are a few headlines that should provide some clues on how the situation is rapidly deteriorating:

Wall Street Loses Faith In Shale

Saudi Aramco’s Ghawar field produces 1.2mbpd less than expected

NEXT OIL DOMINO TO FALL? Mexico Becomes A Net Oil Importer

Fracked Shale Oil Wells Drying Up Faster than Predicted, Wall Street Journal Finds

THE BLOODBATH IN U.S. SHALE STOCKS CONTINUES: Worst Is Yet To Come

US Shale Companies Facing “Catastrophic Failure” over Ballooning Debt

EXXONMOBIL U.S. OIL & GAS FINANCIAL TRAIN-WRECK: Producing Shale Is Destroying Its Bottom Line

As you can see, most of the articles are on the U.S. Shale Industry.  We must remember, the majority of the increase in global oil production over the past decade (80+%) is due to ramping up of the U.S. shale oil and Canadian oil sands operations.  U.S. shale oil production has surged by more than 7 million barrels per day (mbd) since 2008:

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The real Energy Return of Crude Oil: smaller than you would have imagined

March 9, 2019

The real Energy Return of Crude Oil: smaller than you would have imagined 

A simple but important study by Luciano Celi shows what is the real energy return that oil companies manage to attain. Much smaller than you would have believed, in several cases it is today well below 10. Which means that renewable energies already produce a larger EROI than oil and gas. No more excuses for not switching to renewables as fast as possible!And we have to do it fast because, as Celi shows, we are on the edge of the Net Energy Cliff of fossil fuels. 

Researchers involved in the energy sector know very well what the EROI (acronym of Energy Return on Investment) is and how frequently is cited in scientific publications, in spite of differences of definition among researchers.Well aware of the fact that I arrived last in the middle of a dispute that has engaged researchers for decades, I accepted the challenge and tried to understand, with Claudio Della Volpe, Luca Pardi, and Stefano Siboni, if there was a way to know something that is difficult know: the EROI of oil companies.

The method we have implemented is quite simple, even if with some useful simplification that we have discussed in details in our paper.

The denominator in the EROI value is the Energy Invested, while the numerator is the Energy Return (how much energy is gained with respect to the investment). Knowing the numerator it is quite simple (we are talking of oil companies) because this value corresponds to the production of a day (or of a year). The issue in different cases was knowing the value of energy cost of that production. It is difficult to know how much energy they use to produce what they produce in a year (or in a day), sitting at a desk without wandering the world knocking on the doors of companies. However… we have found an indirect way to have these data.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Something about the Oil companies’ EROI

March 5, 2019

Something about the Oil companies’ EROI

Researchers involved in the energy sector know very well what the EROI (acronym of Energy Return on Investment) is and how frequently is cited in scientific publications, in spite of differences of definition among researchers. Well aware of the fact that we arrived last in the middle of a dispute that has engaged researchers for decades, we accepted the challenge and tried to understand, with Claudio Della Volpe, Luca Pardi, and Stefano Siboni, if there was a way to know something that is difficult know: the EROI of oil companies.

The method we have implemented is quite simple, even if with some useful simplification that we have discussed in details in our paper.

The denominator in the EROI value is the Energy Invested, while the numerator is the Energy Return (how much energy is gained with respect to the investment). Knowing the numerator it is quite simple (we are talking of oil companies) because this value corresponds to the production of a day (or of a year). The issue in different cases was knowing the value of energy cost of that production. It is difficult to know how much energy they use to produce what they produce in a year (or in a day), sitting at a desk without wandering the world knocking on the doors of companies. However… we have found an indirect way to have these data.

The oil companies are requested to compile a Sustainability Report (SR) yearly. Even if not mandatory many companies have accepted to prepare them probably under the pressure of the public opinion or/and the business branch named CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), especially after the alarms launched at the last world conferences on climate.In these Reports, it is possible to find the emissions of their up- and downstream activities expressed in CO2 equivalent.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pedro Prieto: many solar panels won’t last 25-30 years, EROI may be negative

March 4, 2019

Pedro Prieto: many solar panels won’t last 25-30 years, EROI may be negative

Preface. Pedro Prieto and Charles Hall wrote the definitive book on the EROI of solar power, “Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution. The Energy Return on Investment” and has built many commercial facilities himself and witnessed the failure of solar panels long before the supposed 25-30 years they were guaranteed to last.

This is being seen in England where there’s been a loss of 25% of power in the UK due to imperfections known as hot spots on solar panels:Photovoltaics hot spots are areas of elevated temperature which can affect only part of the solar panel. They are a result of a localised decrease in efficiency and the main cause of accelerated PV ageing, often causing permanent damage to the solar panel’s lifetime performance. Dr. Dhimish discovered that of the 2580 panels he looked at, those that had hot spots generated a power output notably less than those that didn’t. He also discovered that location was a primary contributor in the distribution of hot spots (Solar power – largest study to date discovers 25% power loss across UK October 29, 2018 https://phys.org/news/2018-10-solar-power-largest-date-loss.html).

You may want to read my review of “Spain’s Solar Revolution” for background on what this post discusses, since what Pedro Prieto wrote assumes you’re familiar with the book.

Pedro writes:

“Our study concluded that, when analyzed what we called “extended boundaries energy inputs”, about 2/3 of the total energy inputs were other than those of the modules+inverters+metallic infrastructure to tilt and orient the modules.

So even if the cost of solar PV modules (including inverters and metallic infrastructure) were ZERO, our resulting EROI (2.4:1) would increase about just 1/3.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Future as Seen by the Doomers. It Will be the Seneca Rebound!

January 12, 2019

The Future as Seen by the Doomers. It Will be the Seneca Rebound!

Recently, RE (Reverse Engineer) of the famed “Doomsday Diner” carried out an opinion poll among the people frequenting some of the most doomeristic/catastrophistic/millennialistic sites of the Web (including Ugo Bardi’s blog, Cassandra’s Legacy).

Refreshingly, a majority of the members of this group of hard-liners are in favor of renewable energy! Only 36% of the group think that renewable energy is useless, while 57% think it will power a sustainable technological civilization.

So, maybe you are one of those people who feel it is their duty to pester the discussions on this subject with your favorite statement that goes as “renewable energy plants are built using energy coming from fossil fuels, therefore will never be anything but fossil fuel extenders.” Then, know that not only you are wrong, you also understood nothing of the concept of EROI, and, finally, you are also a minority even among the minority of the millennialists of the Web.

Yes, the transition will not be easy, but renewable energy is the future of humankind. It is the Seneca Rebound, baby!

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