{"id":53644,"date":"2020-06-12T20:14:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T01:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53644"},"modified":"2020-06-12T20:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T01:14:53","slug":"europe-must-prepare-for-life-after-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53644","title":{"rendered":"Europe must prepare for life after oil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.epc.eu\/en\/Publications\/Europe-must-prepare-for-life-after-oil~341fc0\">Europe must prepare for life after oil<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wms.flexious.be\/editor\/plugins\/imagemanager\/content\/2140\/programs\/SPfE\/Coronavirus_EU1.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to leave the fossil fuel era behind. Europe needs to begin preparing for what comes next.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oil prices have crashed. The most visible cause has been the measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which have triggered record lows in global oil demand.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet the crisis also exposes structural vulnerabilities in our fossil fuel-dependent economic system, which requires us to rapidly transition to an alternative energy system if we are to avert economic collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most important scientific concept to assess and understand these vulnerabilities is \u2018Energy Return on Investment\u2019 (EROI) \u2013 the foundation of the emerging discipline of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.springer.com\/gp\/book\/9783319662176\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">biophysical economics<\/a>. EROI is designed to measure how much energy is needed to extract energy from a particular resource. What\u2019s left is known as surplus \u2018net energy\u2019, used to support goods and services in the economy outside the energy system. The higher the ratio, the more surplus energy is left for the economy. That surplus is running increasingly thin.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the early 20th century, the EROI of fossil fuels was sometimes as high as 100:1: a single unit of energy would be enough to extract a hundred times that amount. But since then, the EROI of fossil fuels has gone down dramatically[1], as we are extracting fossil fuels from places that are increasingly difficult to reach. Between 1960 and 1980, the world average value EROI for fossil fuels declined[2] by more than half, from about 35:1 to 15:1. It\u2019s still declining[3]: &nbsp;latest estimates put the value at between 6:1 and 3:1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The decline of fossil fuels\u2019 EROI has acted as a background \u2018brake\u2019 on the rate of economic growth for the world\u2019s advanced industrial economies, which has been slowing down[4] since the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Europe must prepare for life after oil The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to leave the fossil fuel era behind. Europe needs to begin preparing for what comes next. Oil prices have crashed. The most visible cause has been the measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which have triggered record lows in global oil [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29011,29873,279,284,2092,595,617,855],"class_list":["post-53644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-covid-19","tag-epc","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-oil-production","tag-peak-oil","tag-viral-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53646,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53644\/revisions\/53646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}