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He clearly meant a something like a human centric EROI. Fossil fuels still have an EROI advantage for now, especially if you force renewables to have enough sto
by icegreentea2 9y ago
He clearly meant a something like a human centric EROI. Fossil fuels still have an EROI advantage for now, especially if you force renewables to have enough storage capacity to act as baseload.
Fossil fuel EROI is falling all the time, and renewables are creeping up.
- wpietri 9y agoIt seems to me that "clearly meant a something like" is a contradiction in terms, but let that pass. If they did mean EROI, then I'm not sure that's the measure we should be using. It specifically ignores waste products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Criticism_of_EROEI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve... Which makes it not so good when thinking about global warming and public health impacts, things the CPUC takes into account when setting policy. But even if we just use that, it appears that they're wrong about the EROI of electricity generation. Per Scientific American, the EROI of natural gas, the main competitor in California, is 7. Photovoltaic is 6 (and, as you say climbing), wind is 20, and hydroelectric is 40+: https://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v308/n4/box/scientificamerican0413-58_BX2.html https://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v308/n4/bo... But even if they were right and the EROI of renewables were "far less efficient", I still don't see how that leads to rolling blackouts.