5 ms·

> That's a pretty shocking stat too! Is it, though? It sounds like plain old production costs. I mean, unless you build a coal plant right into a coal mine, a

by fivea 5y ago

> That's a pretty shocking stat too! Is it, though? It sounds like plain old production costs. I mean, unless you build a coal plant right into a coal mine, a natural gas generator at each gas well, you don't store any surplus wind power... Energy is needed in parts of the energy production chain to keep it working.

geoduck14 5y ago
I agree! I 1:9 ratio of energy-in to energy-out is pretty good!
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  There was a whole subspecies of climate change denialists who claimed modern society would collapse if we dropped below 13:1 ratio on this. Fortunately for the future of civilization: a) EROI is a BS metric which is basically meaningless. b) modern renewables score much, much higher on this score than fossil basically ever did.
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Why is EROI BS?
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-unimportant-and-is-being-used.html https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-unimpo... > For example, suppose we had single 1KW solar panel, and the panel had a very low ERoEI of 4 (which is certainly an underestimate [1]). Even if you increased the ERoEI from the very low value of 4, all the way up to to infinity, so that no energy was required to replace that solar panel, it would make little difference--it would increase the amount of NET energy obtained by only 25%. On the other hand, if you could build 3 such solar panels, instead of 1, then you would triple the net energy obtained. In this case, building two more solar panels had 12x greater effect than increasing the ERoEI to infinity.
      - geoduck14 5y ago
        I get what you are saying, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to say it is "BS". Here is a different pov: You are about to build 1 solar panel. Where should you put it it? Somewhere with a lot of sun (EROEI of 1:10) or somewhere with a little sun (ERORI of 1:4). All else being equal, you would put it where you get more sun. Of course, as you build more and more panels, you ask yourself "when should I stop", and the answer is "when it costs just as much to install as I get back" (ERORI 1:1) A separate calculation is "I have invented a more efficient solar panel! Should I replace existing solar panels?"
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Thats not a real problem, nor a real solution. If you have a panel already built, the energy input is a sunk cost. It has no relevance to where you put the panel to maximise its output, you only care about the E part, not the ROEI part which is the hard bit to calculate. And no-one used it that way anyway. Zooming way out, you also don't stop building panels on a global scale when EROEI reaches 1.0000001. You stop when there's an opportunity cost. Can that same input be used for something more valuable? Then stop building panels, even if their EROEI is massive. We're not phasing out fossil fuels because their EROEI is below one, for example. Similarly, We have plenty of different solar panel designs, with different EROEI's. We're not building the ones with the highest score on this metric, and we shouldn't, it's not as important as other things like mass scale manufacturing capability. Especially because what we are building generates electrical energy. If energy is the deciding factor we can make some, by building solar panels. I used BS specifically because it is a real thing that you can actually measure. Its just that it was only ever found to be useful to people who were making most of their facts up anyway. Its not a lie if the person saying it doesn't care if its true or false, its just BS.
- wffurr 5y ago
  Oil used to be 40:1.
epistasis 5y ago
That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of around 9, which is pretty damn bad. Wind is at 18 right now, solar at something like 15. These will only go up as they become cheaper and cheaper. Given how frequently renewables are critiqued for low energy return on energy investment, 11% is a pretty pathetic stat. I think it's pretty clear that these industries are the walking dead. I should have switched my total market index funds to exclude the fossil fuel companies a few years ago, before they lost so much of their value recently.
- fivea 5y ago
  > That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of around 9, which is pretty damn bad. Is it, though? That sounds pretty awesome, specially as renewables lower/eliminate energy imports thus improve a country's balance of trade. Also, one aspect of renewables that results in energy dissipation/loss is energy storage. Wind and solar farms generate energy that don't coincide with peaks in demand, thus that production is stored and reintroduced in the grid resulting in a drop of efficiency. However, it would be stupid to argue that losses from, say, restocking the reservoir of a pumped storage hydroelectric plant, specially one which has been retrofitted as an energy reservoir, makes the technology worse than only generating power during periods where demand surpasses supply.

by fivea 5y ago

geoduck14 5y ago

I agree! I 1:9 ratio of energy-in to energy-out is pretty good!

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
There was a whole subspecies of climate change denialists who claimed modern society would collapse if we dropped below 13:1 ratio on this. Fortunately for the future of civilization: a) EROI is a BS metric which is basically meaningless. b) modern renewables score much, much higher on this score than fossil basically ever did.
- bjourne 5y ago
  Why is EROI BS?
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-unimportant-and-is-being-used.html https://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2016/06/eroei-is-unimpo... > For example, suppose we had single 1KW solar panel, and the panel had a very low ERoEI of 4 (which is certainly an underestimate [1]). Even if you increased the ERoEI from the very low value of 4, all the way up to to infinity, so that no energy was required to replace that solar panel, it would make little difference--it would increase the amount of NET energy obtained by only 25%. On the other hand, if you could build 3 such solar panels, instead of 1, then you would triple the net energy obtained. In this case, building two more solar panels had 12x greater effect than increasing the ERoEI to infinity.
    - geoduck14 5y ago
      I get what you are saying, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to say it is "BS". Here is a different pov: You are about to build 1 solar panel. Where should you put it it? Somewhere with a lot of sun (EROEI of 1:10) or somewhere with a little sun (ERORI of 1:4). All else being equal, you would put it where you get more sun. Of course, as you build more and more panels, you ask yourself "when should I stop", and the answer is "when it costs just as much to install as I get back" (ERORI 1:1) A separate calculation is "I have invented a more efficient solar panel! Should I replace existing solar panels?"
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Thats not a real problem, nor a real solution. If you have a panel already built, the energy input is a sunk cost. It has no relevance to where you put the panel to maximise its output, you only care about the E part, not the ROEI part which is the hard bit to calculate. And no-one used it that way anyway. Zooming way out, you also don't stop building panels on a global scale when EROEI reaches 1.0000001. You stop when there's an opportunity cost. Can that same input be used for something more valuable? Then stop building panels, even if their EROEI is massive. We're not phasing out fossil fuels because their EROEI is below one, for example. Similarly, We have plenty of different solar panel designs, with different EROEI's. We're not building the ones with the highest score on this metric, and we shouldn't, it's not as important as other things like mass scale manufacturing capability. Especially because what we are building generates electrical energy. If energy is the deciding factor we can make some, by building solar panels. I used BS specifically because it is a real thing that you can actually measure. Its just that it was only ever found to be useful to people who were making most of their facts up anyway. Its not a lie if the person saying it doesn't care if its true or false, its just BS.
wffurr 5y ago
Oil used to be 40:1.

epistasis 5y ago

That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of around 9, which is pretty damn bad. Wind is at 18 right now, solar at something like 15. These will only go up as they become cheaper and cheaper. Given how frequently renewables are critiqued for low energy return on energy investment, 11% is a pretty pathetic stat. I think it's pretty clear that these industries are the walking dead. I should have switched my total market index funds to exclude the fossil fuel companies a few years ago, before they lost so much of their value recently.

fivea 5y ago
> That puts it at an energy return on energy invested of around 9, which is pretty damn bad. Is it, though? That sounds pretty awesome, specially as renewables lower/eliminate energy imports thus improve a country's balance of trade. Also, one aspect of renewables that results in energy dissipation/loss is energy storage. Wind and solar farms generate energy that don't coincide with peaks in demand, thus that production is stored and reintroduced in the grid resulting in a drop of efficiency. However, it would be stupid to argue that losses from, say, restocking the reservoir of a pumped storage hydroelectric plant, specially one which has been retrofitted as an energy reservoir, makes the technology worse than only generating power during periods where demand surpasses supply.