In a growing world with no forseeable limits, I think capital COULD be aggregated as such. Now I don't think it can (though most would disagree).

Technically yes, but the amount of energy to remediate polluted water from say tar sands or Marcellus nat gas drilling would be extreme, and to parse that into energy terms would then make the energy return less meaningful - energy return is the biggie no doubt, but in the end we need a portfolio approach, just like in finance. To take it one step further, we want the highest return on scarce resources adjusted for risk (not just mean return). Same goes for energy (high standard deviation on biofuels, solar, wind, etc. though with more installations the dispersion on techs like wind decreases).

They dont know us personaly so why should they care about us? It is part of human nature to only care about those who are close to us or people we have a connection with, friends and family.

I would add payback period to your list. Longer is worse, especially in the present economic climate. The longer the payback period, the longer it is until the capital investment is recovered and freed to be re-applied to other capital projects. Longer payback periods also tend to be associated with more iffy assumptions and uncertainties; what is supposed to be a 25 year payback period could easily end up actually being 30 or 40 or 50 years - or never. At a certain point, you also have to start looking at how the payback period stacks up against the useful life of a project; you want to avoid getting on a "treadmill", where as soon as a project has broken even, you have to start thinking about replacing it.

We just don't have the horses to accomplish this in our spare time. Mandating that energy efficiency of energy procurement happened in the 1970s but has long been forgotten - data is sparse - I send this stuff to API, Matt Simmons (who recently said we nee $100 TRILLION to upgrade our rust/iron ore in energy delivery systems - I haven't heard back) -very few view the problem in these terms because they (like I) have been trained in dollars - you have to be able to look out a few steps -Chu/Holdren and others should be conducting massive research on this topic and it should be married with equivalent research on our 'ends' somewhere else in government. Instead we will evaluate things via the fantastically fast moving target of dollars.

Your suggestion is a good one - but someone more connected than us is going to have to step up -we've tried for years to even get people thinking in these terms - and many before us as well (this is related to Technocracy movement of 70 years ago...).

At least there are scientists in DC now - but even scientists succumb to politics, and the needs of the moment - they just draw the line sooner (or they should).

Nate certainly has it right, this needs to be done at the top, where the resources to do it could actually be mustered. but...

I vaguely remember back in the day Nixon giving a speech and pointing up America's current and potential productivity (I think he was equating GDP with productivity) PER SQUARE FOOT. I remember cringing, since the long term costs incurred by that productivity were always ignored. Back then these costs were always very poorly defined and lumped into that amorphous under the radar blob called 'social costs' (calling attention to their potential enormity never endeared me to my economics instructors either). By the end Reagon's time 'social costs' weren't even mentioned anymore. Short term positive cash flow had become the only god worshipped.

The challenge of trying to get a true benefit cost analysis factoring long term costs and long term benefits--which takes in every aspect of as much of the ERoRI equation as can be humanly modeled--into all government policy making is immense. It would be an almost a complete about face from what we have been doing for a long, long time. That some are undaunted and trying to do this yet is more than admirable. Unlikely as this about face is to happen, it is this society's only chance of going forward more or less whole.

I would agree with this and am aware it is a framework valuation mess. But I am confident using something incorporating biophysical assets without corresponding markers will be beneficial to society in the intermediate and long run. As esoteric as these discussions become, hopefully someone will use pull these principles together into something meaningful. At what point does $1 trillion Swiss Francs or $500 billion US dollars change in it's ability to reflect true capital? Sometime soon methinks.

Well if you doubled your money in a month that would 24 doubling in a year and maybe 480* over the 20 year life cycle of your magic source - so the ERoEI would be very, very high - maybe 500, and so of course this could sustain industrial civilisation.

You appear to be defining EROEI in a reference to a specific time period. That is you are taking the energy output after a year's time and dividing by the energy input at the beginning of the year and calling this EROEI, thereby ignoring the disappearance of energy in the intermdiate doublings. This quantity is not EROEI as defined by Charlie Hall. However, in this conception lies the seed of the real signifcance of net energy. What is really important is not the ratio of output to input but the ratio of net output to non-energy related production resources such as labor, fresh water etc.
If you could produce energy by waving a magic wand and having one batch of energy disappear followed by the materialization of a new batch with a even larger amount of energy, then even an energy producing process with a very small output/input ratio could produce enormous amounts of energy as long as the time period required to cast your spell is short enough. What matters in this case is net energy/magician hour not the ratio of output to input.

As I have explained many times if we define the energy utilization rate as µ=Net Energy/Gross Energy and if R is the amount of some non-energy resource (e.g. labor, fresh water, etc) required to extract 1 gross unit of energy then the amount of resource required to extract 1 net unit of energy is given by:

RN = R/µ

As the energy utilization rate goes to zero the resource intensity of net energy production goes to infinity. It is the land and water intensity of biofuel production that will limit the scale of biofuel production rather than energy balance per se. The water intensity and labor intensity of shale oil production are likely to be the limiting factors of production for this fuel source and so forth.

Euan,

I don't think the problem is as simple as 'net energy' of ER0EI.

We must consider the 'total energy' involved, we have to produce all the 'energy in' as well as the 'energy out' - this is not simply a ratio, it is an amount.

Your graph is only two dimensional, in order to see the real challenge we face somehow it needs to show how the total amount of energy possible is constrained by the ability to scale each technology in the third dimension.

As an example: Production of bio-fuels will have some Liebig's minimum - the amount of land available, or phosphorus maybe, but most likely it will be lack of credit - at an ERoEI ratio of say 2:1 you have to produce 3 in total to get a net 2 from, at best, a limited land area.

How does the technology scale to match current FF production at ERoEI of >50:1? What proportion of current FF demand could each technology replace?

ERoEI alone does not tell you the answer.

As long as we're analyzing the ERoEI graph, consider "sensitivity".

Park yourself at your favorite ERoEI (on the horizontal axis) and consider the %Energy available (vertical axis).

Now make small variations in ERoEI and see the effect upon %Energy.
Do this for historical oil field returns (> 30) and then for the minimum (9) and then for the ERoEI under discussion (1).

Is it really a good idea to be in a region where we jump around like that? Does variation in wind power really look that bad in comparison?
(It will come as no surprise that I dont' know the answer to those questions.)

Assuming the tar sands were economic at an eroei of 1.3, and other "limiting factors" were not a concern

... isn't assuming away other limiting factors assuming away sustainability?

If we need a simplifying assumption, assuming that other limiting factors are also consumed at a similarly high rate would seem more plausible.

However, wind is a limited resource and so should never be viewed as a complete alternative. It's not clear to me how much energy we can divert from the earth's natural energy systems without seeing unintended consequences. Even if the proportion is small I hope we don't assume that there are no negative effects. Unfortunately, most economies need to grow continuously (even though that's impossible) and so energy provision needs to grow to accommodate that.

We need a complete re-think of our societies and economies, not just a strategy for energy.

Euan,
The study published in 2006 can be downleaded here
(http://hydropower.inl.gov/resourceassessment/pdfs/main_report_appendix_a...)

The study is basically saying that there is a very large small hydro(1-30MW) potential in most US states(300,000MWa) and excluding federal lands, and remote locations and only harnessing 50% of stream flows without using dams, could have additional 30,000MWa production.
Large hydro also has considerable potential to be increased(perhaps 21,000 MW but this was not the scope of the study).
The study did not consider the cost of developing these sites except only considered sites within 1 mile of a road/ or existing grid infrastructure.
Canada also seems to have a lot of additional potential large and small hydro( 166,000MW by another estimate).

Your comment about why wind power is "struggling", growth rates of 25-50% per year indicate that the struggle is to expand manufacturing capacity and skills.

I would agree with you about low EROEI of ethanol,and other bio-fuels, but one way of looking at this is that's part of the adjustment to a shortage of liquid fuels. If we eventually have stacks of non FF electricity, it won't matter if ethanol uses as much electrical energy in its production as it contains, it would be a way of still flying aircraft without using any FF.

If wind is soooooooo good, then it is a surprise to me why it is still struggling to take off really big time.

Money.

Private investment follows public investment. There exist enormous public subsidies for oil, coal, gas and nuclear. Subsidies for wind, solar and the like are considerable less.

In Australia each year we have,

Fossil fuel consumption subsidies, $9,300-$10,100 million up from about $8,900 million a few years ago
Renewable subsidies, $313-$334 million
[source 1], [source 2]

Feed one guy 10,000 calories a day, and feed another one 330 calories, one will get fat and the other one will get thin. You might want to blame their different metabolisms, but in the end... 10,000 calories vs 330 calories utterly dwarfs any difference in their metabolisms. Put them on 2,000 calories each and then we'll see what they're like.

Judging by the weight of the subsidies, fossil fuels are not commercially viable compared to renewables. In fact, it's remarkable how well renewables do given their relative lack of support.

Incidentally, for $10 billion you could buy something like [source] 7,700 x 1.65MW wind turbines, each of which would produce about 5.6GWh annually (obviously depending on placement), thus the $10 billion would give us 43,120GWh. Australia produces about 220,000GWh in total. So the $10 billion - one year's fossil fuel subsidies - could convert one-sixth of Australia's electricity generation to wind. The Danes and Spaniards manage more than that renewable penetration, so it must be technically feasible.

Of course spending $10 billion of public funds on wind power would be a vile and disgusting interference in the free market. Whereas spending $10 billion of public funds on encouraging fossil fuel consumption is... um...

Euan: In terms of wind ERoEI, as you point out when you get >>20, it becomes largely irrelevant - and finance takes over. If wind is soooooooo good, then it is a surprise to me why it is still struggling to take off really big time. The advantage of >>> ERoEI would be that significant amounts of the output could be used to mitigate intermittency.

Here is my thinking:

First, wind is competing with coal and coal still has a fairly high EROEI (in the US).

A. Two energy sources will have the same cost when their energy inputs (quality adjusted) are the same. So wind will have the same cost as coal when both have the same EROEI.

B. An existing energy source will have a major subsidy to it's transportation and distribution system from past energy investment. Coal generated electricity has likely paid off power lines, power plant, rail ways, road systems, etc. Only the maintenance cost on these items is being factored in. Wind must build all of these things new and pay the energy cost of them.

C. Growth. Above and beyond all the input costs, if wind is going to grow, the cost of that growth must be added. Say we have a 10:1 EROEI energy source. We want 10% of the power redirected into growth. That drops it to a 5:1 source when comparing power prices. Clearly, any power source trying to grow is going to be at a penalty to a power source that does not try to grow.

So to get alternatives to grow in a free market requires the following:

Alternative Energy In + Supporting Infrastructure + Growth Requirement <= Existing Fossil Energy In

What this says to me is that the free market will never even try to replace a fossil source with a new source until the fossil source is falling down the energy cliff. And then how much time is left? Not enough.

Notice how badly growth chops down the EROEI. If the minimum EROEI is, for nice round numbers sake, 10:1 and we have a 20:1 power source. We can't divert more than 5% of the net energy into growth or we push the power source below 10:1.

We can expect that the current Wind growth rates of 20% - 50% to slow way back as fossil net declines and less surplus exists to direct into growth.

What is the carrying capacity for hunter gatherers?

Of course, in the worst case scenario, we'll likely find out again.

On a different track, while not exactly what you meant, this image came to mind about carrying capacity for hunters...

This overlooks the basic point of this posting - Labour will keep on getting cheaper in real terms until the price of labour is insufficient to keep up the supply. In physical terms, wages for unskilled labour fall until they fall below a starvation wage for the labourer and his/her family. At that point the supply starts to decline- people start starving to death. Given that half the planet is already close to that level of income, it will not take much of a decline in total energy/food for significant numbers to start falling below that level. The alternative is that the level of hierarchy (social complexity) declines - the pyramid of wealth (as measured by per capita energy consumption) flattens. In fact, both will inevitably happen at the same time. The problem is as the pyramid flattens, the amount of energy that a simplified society can produce falls as well (research into fusion will be abandoned. New nuclear build will be abandoned, existing nuclear will be abandoned etc. etc.) in a negative feedback spiral until a new equilibrium is reached.

This sort of thing correctly went out of fashion in 1945. I hope it stays that way

If the return on a year of schooling (note that I don't say education) is too low, we will eventually run out of resources for schools. How to improve that return? The "easy" (if Politically Incorrect in the extreme) answer to this is... improve the human animal.

Another way, equally PC incorrect, would be to stop sending everyone to school. Tainter discusses the diminishing returns of education as more and more less well qualified students pursue "advanced" education.

cfm in Gray, ME

Imagine that parents used widespread IVF and PIGD to cut off 90% of the intelligence bell-curve below 90 IQ and try to avoid the health penalty from some of the more troublesome high-IQ combinations. The return on good schooling would skyrocket

I wonder what would happen to ambition and resource use....

Ralph,

And we have a charging regime where people who consume less pay more per unit energy than the energy hogs.

Are you referring to the con trick that the "standing charge" was dropped so that people who don't use electricity don't pay a standing charge. The price was then increased so dramatically of the first few units (kWhr)used that unless you disconnected the supply it was virtually impossible to avoid paying it (the standing charge equivalent). You are "bang on" and when I tried to explain this "con" to British gas the guy failed to see my logic. I got nowhere, just some pleasure pissing the guy off!

I keep getting amazed that folks are still thinking that somehow windmills and solar panels will save the day and we don't have to face TEOTWAKI.

Generally, "TEOTWAKI" as "the end of the world as we know it" is taken to mean an apocalyptic and bad change. Unless they're joking, people don't usually say, "I'm getting married, it's the end of the world as I know it," or "I got a new job, it's..." and so on.

So I'll assume you mean that we're facing an apocalyptically bad change. I disagree, but let's take it as given for the moment.

My response is that we may be able to avoid it by determined action, or we may not be. Windmills and solar panels may save us from it, or they may not. But there is no harm in trying. It is better to flail wildly screaming than slip under the waves without a murmur. Better to swim. Best to build a new boat. Which we're able to do, we don't know - all we can do is try it and see.

In the process of building the good life based on oil, we have depleted our old growth forests, our aquifers, our soil, our phosphorus, our ability to dump waste into the skies, our wild fauna.

Forests can be and have been replanted. This along with conservation can renew aquifers. Soils can be revived by good husbandry of the land. Phosphorus does not disappear when used like burning fossil fuels, but is simply dispersed, so that again with good husbandry of the land we can use it without dispersing it. And so on.

To say that we need to build renewable energy generation is not to say that there is nothing else we need to do. We can do all these things. For example, I buy wind-generated electricity from my retailer, and I am a guerilla gardener of trees. I do two things at once, amazing, someone might make me an honorary woman if I'm lucky!

This does not mean that doing these things is easy, or even that in doing them we are certain of success. Trying may lead to miserable failure. Not trying will certainly lead to miserable failure. I'll take possible failure over certain failure any day.

Oxidatedgem,
"Part of the problem of calculating EI is that by and large oil energy has created electric energy - whether in building damns, building windmills, building solar panels (including mining, refining, and forging the materials as well as building and maintaining the roads to supply them)."

You are stretching the contribution of oil energy. Most of the energy for dams( steel, cement) or wind turbines( again steel and cement) has come from coal and NG but could come from electricity if no coal or NG was available or if wind and hydro replaces the need to burn coal to generate electricity. In 2009, yes, some oil is used in transport and to move earth and gravel for road building.

"It doesn't matter what the base ERoEI of windmills are if electricity cannot build and maintain roads"

How do you think roads were build in 1908? I can still remember seeing gravel roads being build in early 1950's by steam power steam rollers(burning wood). How were dams built before oil?
Many hydro dams built 100 years ago are still operating, and there is no reason why the dams and electricity grid cannot continue to be maintained when the oil runs out or even when no FF is available. Most oil today is used for private vehicle and air transportation. Very little of our standard of living depends upon being able to drive 12,000 miles/year in a two tonne vehicle getting 25 mpg, or flying around the world. It does depend upon using >4,000kWh per person of electricity. It also depends on not continuing to burn coal to generate electricity.
The most critical large use of oil is for truck and sea transportation, both of which can be converted to CNG but NG availability will be an issue longer-term.

Isn't the answer to #2 R&D? Computer chips are expensive too, and they cost little to produce, and do not harvest any energy at all.

500kwH system is $58,000 (without delivery or installation)

That seems a bit high unless you have really bad insolation, was it a grid-tie?

If the EROI is accurate, where is the disconnect in actual dollar pricing?

Capital material and processing costs are higher per kWh (the process for refining them to the end product is complex and expensive). Note that panels are not a fuel, but energy conversion devices harnessing an energy source that has no direct costs, so a direct comparison this way is problematic.

solar will NEVER scale except for distributed generation

That depends upon:

- How external costs are treated in the future
- The advances in marketization and production of much less expensive PV technology

You should be able to get a solar electric system from a reputable integrator for no more than $9 per watt. Make sure they have at least one NABCEP certified individual on staff.

It looks like MN has a $2,250 per kW rebate. Tie that in with the new 30% ITC and the sale of the system's RECs, (with an assumed 7% inflation rate on the price of electricity) and your "pay-back" should be 6-10 years.

Remember that having a solar electric system is worth a lot of $$$ and piece of mind and should never be thought of in terms of pay-back time.

Nate, it's even worse than you suspect. I got 2 quotes for solar powered heating (supposedly more cost effective than PV) and the economics were awful - I would earn more interest in the bank (even now!) than savings on gas for hot water. And that was with a govmnt subsidy.

When I mentioned the possibility of PV instead the guy just laughed. Mind you, I do live in Scotland.....

TW

My understanding is that part of the problem is just looking at the panel costs where they are manufactured. By the time you actually get them installed on a given home, the cost is a lot higher.

We may be conflating two different things in looking at costs to homeowners, but that is what real people look at (unless they have massive government subsidies).

I called several solar companies and got quotes for my house - on DOLLAR payback at current rates of electricity (which I understand is NOT an EROI analysis, but should give us a clue, like it did with ethanol)

You should have stopped there.

The US $ is not a Joule-based currency.

Certainly the EROI of a solar installation is going to vary with the amount of sun you have. Solar will certainly be a better investment in Arizona than it will be in Minnesota. It will be a long time (if ever) before solar is going to make sense in Minnesota. That does not mean that a similar installation would not be closer to paying out in Arizona.

The other issue is storage. If you require storage it is going to drive down the EROI. Since the demand is peaked in the daytime it seems that the grid is a better storage mechanism than batteries, at least until the penetration is far higher than it is currently.

Written by Nate Hagens:
...500kwH system is $58,000....
...half the cost (almost) was batteries. I live near Minneapolis MN - it was assumed 4.6 avg hours of sun per day and worst month (Dec) with 2.4.

Assuming "500kwH" means 500 kW·hr / year guaranteed minimum power = 1.37 kW·hr / day, your numbers seem too large. During a cloudy day, a PV panel outputs about 20% to 25% of its sunny day power. Do not think of winter as having 2.4 hours of sunlight and 21.6 hours of darkness during which the batteries must provide all of the power. Most buildings use less power during the night than during the day. If the PV panels output 1.37 kW·hr / (cloudy day), the batteries will be recharged the next day and always stay near full charge. If the daily cycling is between 95% and 100%, deep cycle lead acid batteries will last about 14 years. Do not go overboard with the number of batteries.

For example, I have too few batteries in my PV system to properly match to the charging current from the PV panels. The literature recommends 100 A·hr of battery capacity per 1 A of maximum output current from the PV panels. I have 8, 6 V ~400 A·hr batteries (aka forklift batteries) being charged by ~27 A peak PV current at 12 volts. That works out to be ~59 A·hr / A. I compensate for the imbalance by using a relay switched regulator to control 20 A while the remaining 7 A is connected through a diode without a regulator. The batteries get charged with 27 A when discharged and 7 A when close to full charge. My previous battery array lasted 14 years. You could hook up the output of two independant relay switched regulators in parallel to achieve something similar.

Crystalline PV panels are more efficient in cold weather. You can place a horizontal reflector in front of the panels to concentrate sunlight in the winter without overheating them. Snow on the ground reflects sunlight making it brighter than an assumption of direct illumination. Snow and rain clean the air making Sun brighter during the winter. There is less air pollution during the winter making Sun brighter than in Summer.

If half of your daily power is provided by the batteries during winter, to keep your daily cycling within 95% of full charge you need:

1.37 kW·hr * .5 / (1 - .95) = 13.7 kW·hr of battery storage. You only need six, 6 V, 400 A·hr deep cycle lead acid batteries to stay within this range. I suggest you have at least 8 of these batteries to power a 1,200 W microwave oven. If a refrigerator and 1,200 W microwave oven could operate simultaneously, then you need a few more.

I notice the price of the batteries has nearly doubled over the last few years to $280 / battery up from about $180 / battery. Peak oil may drive the price up.

Insolation for Duluth, MN

Thanks, Nate.
I haven't seen this before.
The graph is interesting--it has rank(EROEI?)versus energy per unit time(power, not energy)plotted with an 'optimal'rank and even a possible decline
in 'power'above the optimal(this resembles 'economies/diseconomies of scale' an inverse parabola, not asymtope).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

Basically it is a peak demand hypothesis.
I would guess you are saying that people will
stop looking for energy as EROEI falls(as energy becomes more expensive people won't want it--a rather conventional economic analysis).
People were still buying $150 oil when the speculators cashed in.
Tar sands and ethanol operations continue to operate and even in some cases expand despite horrendous EROEIs and terrible markets.
Still, it is an interesting approach worth further thought.

Nate -

I have been loosely following (and occasionally participating in) this EROEI debate for quite some time. It appears to me that we are no closer to reaching a consensus as to what it all means than we were over a year ago. I am somewhat of an agnostic on the subject of EROEI, and think neither that its a flawed concept nor something that gives anything close to a complete picture. It is highly useful, but has its limitations.

As I see it, where people often get on shaky ground when using EROEI is when they try to extend its applicability from straightforward technical applications such as comparing the net energy made available by say wind power versus ethanol-from-corn to more nebulous things having to do with human behavior and the viability of societies in general.

While those are both worthwhile areas of study, I sometimes question whether the concept of EROEI is as helpful in these studying these areas as you appear to think. Everything that makes a society succeed or fail cannot be automatically be blamed on either poor EROEI or poor capital management. Never underestimate the power of human perversity as a driving force in screwing things up.

In my view, the most valuable thing that EROEI tells me is how much of a capital investment burden will be required to obtain a given amount of net energy. To illustrate my thinking in this regard, consider a fictional situation in which there was an unlimited supply of energy that we could tap into, say moonbeams, for instance. But let us also suppose that obtaining this moonbeam source of energy involved an EROEI of only 1.001, which is to say roughly that for every 1,000 units of energy put in, you get 1,001 units of energy out. Even though the energy source is unlimited and 'free' for the taking, one would need to go through an extraordinary effort to tap into it, and that effort directly translates into capital investment. So, given such a poor EROEI, it would very likely be physically impossible to build the absurdly large facilities needed to realize the net energy from those moonbeams.

In many respects this not much more complex than realizing that a person might prefer to walk 2 miles for one hamburger rather than 6 miles for 2 hamburgers. The expenditure of 'energy' is not just physical caloric energy, but also what one might call mental or emotional energy. Or just plain time and effort. One can argue whether that person should be eating hamburgers in the first place, or whether he should be seeking more healthy food grown locally, but within the confines of that narrow comparison, EROEI does make some sense.

So, with regard to using EROEI, render onto Caesar .......

Yup. He's right on that energy gain has no biological underpinning in the evolution of life. Don't worry X - 99.99% of society agrees with you in using numbers that only have short term meaning ($$). The ones that look ahead to biophysical principles are a tiny minority.

(I wouldn't even reply to you other than your NON-corn-ethanol comments are cogent and well-reasoned).

I hypothesize that in the future, if TOD is still live, and you are still reading, you will be an advocate of whatever government decides is the best use of your land, and gives you the most profit, as measured by society at that time. Corn ethanol will be a thing of the past, as will your fervent support of it.
Party on.

Weren't most of the gas networks in Britain filled with "town gas" (water gas or carbureted water gas from coked coal) before they were switched to natural gas?

Town gas is far more dangerous (it's got a large proportion of carbon monoxide), but gas works aren't exactly high-tech.  If coal mining was restarted, Britain could have a very clean-burning fuel delivered to homes and businesses even if natural gas imports disappear.

The Pembina paper that you cite is out of date (2006).

I have already posted several times that water is not and will not be a problem in oilsands production.

I have seen a lot of large trucks stuck in traffic jams on freeways as well as using city streets. I read a study some time age done in Australia which showed the average 18-wheeler shifted gears an average of once per kilometer. This argument was used for the use of an hydraulic hybrid drive system. While big trucks may have better ton/mile energy use than a small car they are on the road much more per day as much as 10 hours per day per driver. The average small car puts on less than 40 miles per day which makes the inclusion of an engine unnecessary. Even using old style Pb-acid batteries electric cars make more sense than a hybrid.

The standard locomotive in service last time I looked was a diesel-electric. That is a diesel engine with an electric drivetrain. The ONLY thing necessary to make such a beastie a hybrid is a "battery car" with a good secure electric hookup mechanism.

It would probably add about a quarter ton to the locomotive for the service bus and guards if my recollection of the energies involved is anywhere near accurate and external power capability is not already built into the design.

The technology to allow semi tractors to run diesel-electric may have advanced enough that it would be more efficient than a mechanical drivetrain now. It would certainly be easier to operate and allow more flexibility in design changes down the road.

Mdf's link (world-nuclear.org) has very good information in table form comparing input and output for various energy sources.

The input/output for nuclear, 1.35%, gives is a very high EROI compared to PV, coal, natural gas and wind.

France was right to go nuclear. For us to make the transition away from fossil energy, we will need to spend the minimum amount of energy and resources possible. Nuclear would be a better use of stimulus money than what is proposed.

All we lack is political will.

Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy: A review

Manfred Lenzen; Energy Conversion and Management 49 (2008) 2178–2199

The most popular reactor types, LWR and HWR, need between 0.1 and 0.3 kWhth, and on average about 0.2 kWhth for every kWh of electricity generated.

That suggests about 5. I'm a bit suspicious but this is a peer reviewed review.

We should replace gasseous diffusion plants with a mature technology rather than waiting for this chimera.

Um, isn't that exactly what is happening? France is building the George Besse 2 centrifuge enrichment plant that will replace its diffusion predecessor and the U.S. is building 3 new centrifuge plants to replace its coal-powered diffusion plant at Paducah. Meanwhile GE-Hitachi are planning to bring their Silex laser enrichment facility online sometime in the next decade, at which point virtually all commercial enrichment will be performed via centrifuge.

Sounds like a sensible plan to me. Transition to the mature, proven technology (which lowers enrichment energy needs by 25-50 times) while testing an even better one with a prototype plant. If laser enrichment proves successful it will enable more efficient use of mined uranium and make depleted and reprocessed uranium more economic, all of which bumps up nuclear's ERoEI.

Fascinating. While that chart starts out approximating country vs energy use, one could also read it as energy-regime vs energy use - something I've been wondering about, the relation between levels of culture and technlogy and energy use. At 8-9% depletion, and three halvings of energy over the next few decades, that would put US about where Ukraine is now. Everyone else would move too, so that's barely a first approximation.

Another halving and US is into the realm of Mexico, Indonesia and so forth. A lot more peasants in the fields and flagrantly corrupt governments - if not military authoritarianism.

Presumably most of the countries along the left axis would slide back down the cliff and the cultural structures and institutions would have to morph accordingly. I can't imagine how Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, SIVs and the whole world of FIRE might have to change. Along the downslide, the sunk investments will suck all sorts of resources - assets will in fact be liabilities.

Where do we lose our iPods? China doesn't make iPods for its own people. Nor does Ukraine. Seems to me we need to lose them now, so we can put the energies into renewables. Of course, that won't much help anyone to right of Japan in that chart. They all fall into the Olduvai gorge.

Clearly Nepal, at the very end of the pipeline, has to be a society built on dispersed solar. Their problem now, if one reads the news, is that they have started to use too much petro; it's not working.

cfm in Gray, ME

Jon,
The energy flow trends shows why your "2050" flow diagram will not be accurate.
Nuclear, hydro and wind do not calculate "wasted " energy but KWh output so essentially not loss( small loss due to distribution). Their EROEI is actually of a higher "quality" because we are comparing them to FF where additional losses occur after the coal mine or well head. In your energy flow diagram nuclear losses appear to be shown but usually EROEI for nuclear calculates nuclear output as electricity( have data) not heat(no data).

Thus to replace the 40 exajoules of FF with electric cars, heat pumps etc, would only need a small fraction of this, perhaps 15 exajoules of electricity generated by nuclear, hydro, wind, solar. So if they have an EROEI of 10:1( appears to be higher than this) now, using FF inputs when the only outputs are electricity, the EROEI will be X 3 times higher using electricity inputs, because we are measuring EROEI on the basis of "energy used" to produce "energy" even if the input is FF energy having a 70% loss before providing useful work and the output is electricity having a <10%loss.

As far as electric vehicles having less utility because of lower range that's only relevant until the range exceeds travel distances required. Is a gasoline car less utility than a airplane? In any case range depends upon battery technology and will improve as batteries improve. Cars using lead/acid batteries can have a range of >100miles( greater than needed by 90% of trips). Interstate travel can use electric trains rather than electric cars, car/train transport as is done in Switzerland or hybrid fuel systems.

In terms of range, people could still use, either via a purchase or rental, conventional vehicles and PHEVs, it's just that they would have to pay more for the liquid fuel they're using. In terms of economic utility, we could all keep conventional vehicles because they offer more economic utility, but given the cost, what's the point? We could all drive F-650s because they have more economic utility, but the cost is exorbitant for most. It's cheaper to drive a car and rent a pickup just like in the future it'll likely be cheaper to own an EV and rent a vehicle w/ longer range. Overall, it'll probably come down to EVs in the city and PHEVs in the burbs/country. There is also a limit to how much people will drive, regardless of how cheap gas is or isn't. Given that limit, as well as current tech, we could see EVs w/ 200 miles of range at highway speeds. They wouldn't be two ton pickup trucks, but considering 90+% of all vehicle trips are one or two people w/ minimal cargo, the drop in economic utility would be minimal. And naturally people can still use larger vehicles if they actually need them, they'll just have to pay the $5-10/gallon liquid fuel will probably settle at.

EVs have higher initial costs in limited production, but so does every other vehicle out there. Capital costs over the lifetime of the vehicle are lower, even at $1.50-2/gallon, mostly due to the decrease in maintenance costs. Yanking the engine, complex transmission, fuel system, emissions system, and so on, w/ hundreds, maybe thousands of moving parts and replacing it with an electric motor w/ a couple moving parts results in something that's much more reliable and easier to work on. EVs also provide more in the way of acceleration. For instance the Tesla Roadster, even w/ it's primitive pack (heavy) and pain in the ass management system (That's what they get for using old battery tech), can go from 0-60mph in 4s w/ only ~250hp. A Porsche 996 GT3 needs ~400hp to go from 0-60mph in 4s.

Each vehicle type has it's trade offs. In mass production, EVs are almost certainly cheaper to own and require less in the way of capital over their lifespan, even if they do have a higher purchase price. They are more efficient, can be powered from renewable energy, and have fewer externalities associated w/ their use. No need to be mucking around in the Middle East, no point of use emissions and far fewer lifecycle emissions, better acceleration compared to power, and so on...

Conventional vehicles are cheaper initially, although not over their lifetime, and can store more energy, so we can have much larger vehicles with greater range and towing/hauling capacity, although that comes at a cost. Since we're talking economics, overall it comes down to cost, both direct and externalized. The difference in economic utility is minimal given most use (one or two people w/ minimal cargo), and even if most of the fleet were EVs, we would still have conventional vehicles and PHEVs available for long distance travel or hauling, we just wouldn't be using a two ton pickup to commute to work every day hauling ourselves and a sack lunch. ;)

Almost forgot, as for sources, here's a 1996 RAV-4 EV that uses ~400+Wh/mile at the outlet. The exact same thing w/ a conventional drivetrain according to fueleconomy.gov got 26mpg (old EPA). Gasoline has 36600Wh/gallon, so at 26mpg the conventional vehicle uses about 1400+wh/mile. Not counting all the energy needed to extract the oil... we're at ~3.3 times the oil energy needed compared to renewable energy. Toss in current battery tech, Lithium Iron Phosphate specifically, and we would bump up the efficiency of battery charging/discharging from the ~80% that lead acid is at to the 95+% of LiFePO4 and increase the spread from ~3.3:1 to a shade under ~4:1. Arguably we could increase charging efficiency a bit, but that's not where the biggest difference comes from.

Looking at oil produced in the U.S., California specifically, we can see that...
The high-energy intensity of the oil extraction operation makes this industry the 4th largest user of electricity and the highest consumer of natural gas in California. Annually, the oil extraction industry uses 3,846 million KWh of electricity 2,910 million Therms of gas.

A therm of natural gas is about ~29+ kWh, so to extract ~300+ million bbls of oil per year we use ~84+ billion kWh of energy from natural gas and ~4 billion kWh of electrical energy. A barrel of oil equivalent has ~5.8 million BTU or ~1700 kWh. So in order to extract ~500+ billion kWh of oil energy, we use ~84+ billion kWh of other energy, specifically from natural gas and electrical energy from other sources, so right there, not including refining, we see that oil's EROEI in CA is ~7:1.

Looking at refining does not improve the situation for oil...
Petroleum refining is the number one consumer of energy in California's manufacturing sector. In 1997, the industry consumed 7,266 million KWh of electricity and 1,061 million Therms of natural gas.

Googling shows that CA refines ~2 million bbls of oil per day, so ~700+ million bbls of oil per year. This requires 29+ billion therms of natural gas per year and about 7+ billion kWh of electricity per year. Assuming that we get ~90% of the energy back as distillate, gasoline, kerosene and so on, not counting the stuff such as we get 1,070+ billion kWh of energy from oil's refined products and input about 36+ billion kWh of energy, so the EROEI of just refining isn't too bad at about 30+:1. This is, generally speaking, the upper bound for what oil's EROEI can be considering it's current use. Assuming that everyone in the Middle East didn't need any energy for extraction or transportation would result in this EROEI given it's current use.

Anyhoo, tossing in refining in CA puts oil's EROEI at 5-6:1, after including transportation. Assuming energy free extraction and transportation in other countries and we find that at most oil's EROEI given current use is around 30+:1, right up there with thin film solar panels. Toss the difference in EROEI on top of the already wide difference in energy use, and we can see that in terms of energy, and probably total cost too, renewables in California specifically, and probably most of the U.S., combined with EVs, would be a much better investment than FFs in many (probably not all) applications. We have solar and wind power, at an EROEI of ~20:1, compared to oil at ~5-6:1, on top of EVs using a quarter of the energy conventional vehicles use. Overall that's a ~10-15:1 difference in usable energy. In CA, an electric RAV-4 would only require roughly 1 kWh of electricity for every 10-15 kWh of oil/natural gas/a wee bit of electricity a conventional RAV-4 would need.

That's a huge difference, and puts the renewable build up in context given this application. Like I said before, every application is different and comparing them would make for some interesting results IMO.

Oh, is it? About 20% of Sweden's total energy consumption is from biofuels from the forests. Easily scaled, easily transported, and burned in cogeneration plants for about 45% electricity and 45% district heating for large multi-unit dwellings, at fully acceptabe levels of pollution, of which we have some of the highest standards in the world. Or for that matter, sometimes burned in plain district heating plants for just 90-95% heat generation.

Oh, and we only harvest about 90% of the annual growth in the national forests (out of which a minor part goes to biofuels), so there is not risk of overshoot.

I have a stack of leftovers from this winter's cutting in the forest, treetops, twigs and branches here on the farm waiting for pickup by a district heating company. About enough energy for heating a 20-household multi-unit dwelling all year, including tap-water.

This is perfectly ordinary here in Sweden.