One of the key deficiencies of ?unconventional? fuels is their low energy return on investment relative to conventional fuels. Many analysts have ignored this factor because investment decisions are made on the basis of the financial, not energy, return on investment. But a growing literature suggests that the two are intimately related?.
The financial return on investment is known as ROI. The analogue in energy, the energy return on investment or EROI (also expressed as EROEI, for ?energy return on energy invested?) is a ratio of the energy produced to the energy invested in its production?.
As we continue to substitute unconventional fuels for conventional fuels and the overall EROI falls below 10, It?s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to continue running our complex society. Prices will go too high for the economy to tolerate and kill demand before unconventional substitutes can scale up to replace?declining higher-EROI fuels. [1]
Conservatives in Washington and elsewhere insist that we can no longer afford the level of governmental services we?ve become accustomed to. Their call for austerity in public spending is partially right, but for reasons that are wholly wrong: they think that by busting public unions, by reneging on pension agreements for teachers and public employees, by privatizing the production of public goods (streets, schools, even national defense), by cutting regulations and in general shrinking the government, they?ll release the pent-up entrepreneurial energies of business, which will put things back the way they were a few decades ago, when oil was returning a respectable 40:1. That?s simply not going to happen?.
It is possible to have a decent civilization founded on the rates of return that renewable energy offers ? and unlike the EROI of oil, those rates can be expected to increase with time and technological development. Solving the EROI squeeze means committing ourselves to building the infrastructure we need to capture current solar income and run our economy on renewable, non-carbon-based energy. Every unit of fossil energy we use to do anything else commits the United States and the planet as a whole to a lower, more straitened standard of living in the future. [2]
Who among us is willing to just readily accept that with a big smile? Who among us is crazy enough to think that that?s always and only nothing but good news and a great vision for the future each and every moment of each and every day?
How About A Plan?
Assuming for just this one moment that Peak Oil proponents like me might be right about one or two aspects of Peak Oil production and the ensuing conclusion that life as we?ve known will undergo monumental changes (because the fuel which provided us the means to fashion such an astonishing array of technological and industrial marvels is on a declining slope of availability), might it then be at least marginally reasonable to think that we should be embarking on a nationwide effort to plan for the transition? As daunting?and unwelcome?a prospect as that surely is, shouldn?t more than just a few us be urging recognition and planning?
Creating a ?green energy? economy may be the most daunting central planning task ever attempted. It entails nothing less than the reengineering of our entire energy infrastructure. And, like all central planning schemes, it is based on a roadmap that eschews real-world experience and sound economics in favor of utopian ideology driven by political connections?.
Everyone acknowledges that electricity generated from wind and solar cannot be produced and delivered at prices that compete with coal or gas. However, alternative energy advocates believe that someday the cost curves will cross, and that government subsidies will accelerate that day?s arrival.
For this to come true, multiple problems have to be solved before taxpayers run out of money or patience. Along the way, the alternative energy industry has to avoid getting sidetracked into the wrong technologies, as this will delay the eagerly awaited carbon-free future. [3]
All absolutely true, and in the long term, entirely irrelevant. Does it really make sense to just sit on our hands and continue to congratulate our vast ingenuity today, and then find ourselves entirely unprepared?practically and psychologically?for the time when all of these magical innovations prove themselves to be exactly what the facts suggest they are: short term solutions and nothing more? Geology, facts, and reality will intrude no matter how rosy one?s scenario might be ? and that sucks!
Not Even Magic Will Help
There isn?t a single even-marginally sane advocate of the need to transition away from fossil fuel-based industry and society who envisions anything other than years and years (decades, truthfully) of trial and error research and all which those efforts entail before reaching commercial and practical viability. So just how successful do these rosy-eyed ?optimists? think we?ll be when Peak Oil reality intrudes on their happy little hopes for human ingenuity and the magic of free-market economics and we?re confronted with the need for beyond-comprehension change and adaptation in the space of just weeks or months? Denial has its limits.
Perhaps they might pause for a moment and consider the evolution of our fossil fuel-based industrial achievements. Pretty certain that didn?t happen in just a few weeks or months, either. Lotsa trial and error research there, too. Where would we all be now without the needed support and encouragement from not just government but society and industry at large in the decades of fossil fuel development? Amish lifestyles for all of us, anyone?
Eighteen months ago, I offered these observations ? not much has changed.
It?s true that the possibility exists that the tipping point when oil production begins its unavoidable decline may yet be many years away ? but are we really willing to wager that something will come along to save the day when it?s time to deal with those challenges on a day-to-day basis? Are we willing to even place bets on exactly when that might be? Doing nothing seems like a monumental?and monumentally foolish??? ?strategy.
?We are confronted with a society built on high-quality energy, dense forms of energy, fossil fuels especially,? says [Boston University] ecological economist Cutler Cleveland. ?Could you have the same standard of living with renewables? I don?t think we really know. Things might have to change very fundamentally?.?
?[R]enewables? handicaps do not bode well for speeding up the next energy transition. Fossil fuels ?were phenomenally attractive,? yet it still took 50 to 70 years to bring them into widespread use, says [systems analyst Arnulf Gr?bler of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)]. That?s because, no matter how attractive a fuel might be, it takes time to create the infrastructure for extracting and transporting the resource, converting it into a usable form, and conveying it to the end user. It also takes time for inventors to develop enduse technologies?such as steam engines, internal combustion engines, and gas turbines?and for consumers to adopt them and create demand. Renewables ?will be slower because they?re less attractive,? says Gr?bler. ?They don?t offer new services; they just cost more.? [4]
Might Not Be A Bad Idea To Consider This
It?s certainly comforting to arrogantly rely on the fully-developed energy supply which supports our ways of life now and snidely pick apart the efforts needed to substitute for the fossil-fuel based existence we all take for granted. That?s shortsighted and narrow-minded at best. I?m likewise fairly certain that that was not the standard MO for 19th and 20th century development.
My main concern is how we cope with the decline stage of fossil fuels, which is not as final as being dead, but effectively forces us into a new era of energy transition. Because conventional oil will begin its decline first, a chief concern is how we might replace its function for transportation.?Rather than write off fossil fuels completely, some see promise in what alternative fossil fuels might offer?.
Note that not one of these options represents a departure from fossil fuel transport. At some level, this speaks to a desperation in our predicament: we simply are not ready to be weened from the fossils, even as it becomes ever more imperative that we do so. [5]
I?d like to think (hope?) that we haven?t come close to maxing-out our potential to create a gratifying future for ourselves.
So here?s the thing. What if I?m wrong to be worried? Or what if my imaginary critic is wrong? Which is worse? If I advocate a path of restraint and careful transition to a possibly lower-energy future and I am ultimately shown to be wrong about the limits we face, what?s the damage? In this scenario, we?ve stabilized our system into something approximating sustainability. If we learn later that we have more resources available, we can make the choice to spend them profligately, use them sparingly, or ignore them. But we do so from a position of stability. If, on the other hand, the critic convinces us that the future is up, up, up, and we don?t take resource limits seriously then their being wrong is disastrous because we charge into overshoot, overextension, hit resource limits hard, and run a serious risk of societal collapse. [6]
Probably safe to say that?s not anyone?s first ten choices. Time will tell?.
Peak Oil Matters
Source: http://peakoil.com/production/peak-oil-one-more-dose-of-crude-oil-reality/
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