People Who Save Lives and Enlarge Ecologocal Footprint

So far as I can tell, I am the only technologist, or one of the very few, who understands the true implications of saving lives as a commercial transaction. As usual, savers of lives do not seem to be aware of the population crisis as it actually threatens our species and other species. Let us agree to become aware of Prof. Albert Bartlett's two lists. The first list is a list of those activities or circumstances that worsen the population problem; the second list is a list of things that improve the population problem however regrettable the items are from any other perspective. Next, we understand what can go wrong when economic growth is expected to have a continued beneficial effect even beyond the point where the harmful effects outweigh the good. In short, we have reached the de-growth regime. Both population shrinkage and economic shrinkage are necessary. We should contemplate the game of Monopoly. Private profit has become a very great danger to all living things. https://www.dematerialism.net/ #de-growth; #population; #chrematistics; #ecological footprint; #private profit, harm done by; #resource dominance hierarchies, harm done by

In What Way Are Investments Harmful?

This post assumes you have read Why Capitalism Requires Economic Growth, which explains among other things how the stock market requires economic growth. I assume as well that the reader requires no proof that perpetual growth in a finite world is impossible. (Possibly, the idea that all economic growth results in increased energy consumption should be mentioned.) Now, we come to the brief answer to the question in the title: If the venture capitalist or other investor makes money, we have economic growth, which is justified in the case of the poorer nations of the world provided that it is accompanied by equal or greater shrinkage in the rich countries; however, this is not accomplished by the growth of private fortunes. Otherwise, it exacerbates resource depletion, economic inequality, authoritarianism, and hastens collapse. If the investor loses money, the investor himself is the worse for it. When we are near collapse, it is most likely that the investor will lose. Of course, as in the game of Monopoly, which models today’s economic climate quite well, a talented player might end up with everything, which, as the final inequality, could precipitate a revolution, if earlier events haven’t anticipated it.

Five Fundamentally Incorrect Views of Economics by Jay Hanson

( The Long Version is archived at http://dieoff.com/page241.htm ) (Permission to reprint explicitly granted.) Any ONE fundamental error in neoclassical theory should be sufficient reason to reject conclusions based upon that theory. Here are five fundamental errors in the theory: #1. A fundamentally incorrect"method": the economist uses "correlation" and "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"(after-the-fact) reasoning, rather than the "scientific method". #2. A fundamentally inverted worldview: the economist sees the environment as a subsystem of the economy, rather than the other way around. In other words,economists are trained to believe that natural resources come from "markets" rather than the "environment". The corollary is that "man-made capital" can substitute for "natural capital". But the First Law of thermodynamics tells us there is no "creation" — there is no such thing as "man-made capital". Thus, ALL capital is "natural capital", and the economy is 100% dependent on the "environment" for everything. #3. A fundamentally incorrect view of "money": the conomist sees "money" as nothing more than a medium of exchange, rather than as social power — or "political power". But even the casual observer can see that money is social power because it "empowers" people to buy and do the things they want — including buying and doing other people: politics. If employers have the freedom to pay workers less "political power", then they will retain more political power for themselves. Money is, in a word, "coercion", and "economic efficiency" is correctly seen as a political concept designed to conserve social power for those who have it — to make the politically powerful, even more powerful, and the politically weak, even weaker. #4. A fundamentally incorrect view of his raison d'etre: the economist sees "Homo economicus" as a "Bayesian utility maximizer", rather than "Homo sapiens" as a "primate". In other words,contemporary economics and econometrics is WRONG from the bottom up — and economists know it. The entire discipline of economics is based on a lie — and economists know it. Moreover, if human behavior is not the result of mathematical calculation — and it isn't — then in principle, economists will NEVER get it right. #5. A fundamentally incorrect view of economic élan vital: the economist sees economic activity as a function of infinite "money creation", rather than a function of finite "energy stocks" and finite "energy flows". Infact, the economy is 100% dependent on available energy — it always has been, and it always will be. See a synopsis of the energy situation at http://www.jayhanson.org/SynopsisPics.pdf . Here is the mitigation http://www.jayhanson.org/America.htm .

Another assault upon logic to justify capitalism

Douglas Weiskopf writes, "Have any of you read this?" Here's an excerpt: "Capitalism works because, under a specific set of conditions in a well-governed market, capitalists need increasingly productive workers to achieve increasing profits, and workers need access to capital to achieve increasing wages, and in their mutual dependence both find it in their interest to act in ways that deliver good outcomes for themselves and for consumers as well. Capitalism locks everyone in a room together and encourages them to find a way out. This system of mutual dependence between capital and labor, not mere “economic freedom,” is what Adam Smith so ably described. Globalization destroys it, instead urging the owners of mobile capital to forsake the interests of their fellow citizens and search for higher profits through labor arbitrage abroad. A democratic republic’s vast working and middle classes will rightly reject such an arrangement, forcing elites to choose between restoring capitalism by constraining capital or entrenching their own economic prerogatives by subordinating the democratic process. That’s as good a description as any of the precipice at which America now stands." ***** To a certain extent and in so far as propaganda achieves widespread belief in this sort of capital-labor cooperation, the final statement has merit. However, the initial premise that capitalism works is true only in the sense that Ponzi schemes work. (to be cont'd)

Install climate change into public policy

I wonder if we need to enclose what we have learned from climate science in a sort of meta-science. For example, we can probably establish a number to represent the smallest probability of each category of damage due to climate change. Let us agree that Category II represents the extinction of many species according to their habitats and the displacement of many humans depending on their location. Let the probability of Category II be not less than 0.14. If we have complete tables of such data, we can easily decide how aggressively we wish to mitigate these circumstances. Personally, I would not tolerate any of them, as I have often dreamed of the Earth as a Garden in which industrial activity is sharply curtailed and fossil fuels are no longer used. I have written voluminously on the social changes I consider necessary and desirable. I would actually like to see the end of the automobile culture with the beautiful autos of yesteryear in museums.

Best wishes to all,

Tom

 

My answer to complaint about the election of Joe Biden

It strikes me as an opportunity to get rid of this absurd idea of a president and this corrupt and obsolete practice of elections. I have noticed that many people, regardless of education, demonstrate remarkably good sense in ordinary conversations. It occurred to me that democracy could be preserved if the old-fashioned town meeting could be revived with membership extended to every adult citizen who chose to attend such neighborhood or town meetings. Then, when a special representative was needed to convey the consensus of the neighborhood to the next highest collection of neighborhoods, whether it be the city or the county or whatever is convenient, the practice of sortition should be employed. This is the way we choose jurors, except that people who have served recently are excluded to avoid the rise of demagogues. Elections may still be employed to recall a representative who does not carry out the will of the council that chose him.

How to construct the man-made portion of the world to achieve a universally desired moral outcome

Claudio Schuftan: Among many other desirable outcomes of political reform you have written "To live a life without malnutrition is a fundamental human right…" You have listed many other outcomes that will reduce the death rate without explaining how you will reduce the birth rate sufficiently that the world becomes less populous. But it is unclear just how the energy requirements of a world without malnutrition will be met. I hope it is understood by everyone who answers this question that currently we do not have adequate renewable energy technology to sustain a civilized society without damaging the Earth. In short we do not yet have renewable energy. (Hydroelectric plants provide comparatively little energy.) I think it is better to state the technological requirements of a healthy world and state some options as to how they might eventually be satisfied rather than state the outcomes as moral requirements without giving a hint as to how they will be achieved.

How can you?

I too worry that there might have to be a strong tyrannical government to overcome the decades of anti-wealth-sharing propaganda that has good people like you accepting harmful ideas. Dematerialism has no way to create such a government; so, it must seek another, presumably democratic, way. Tonight I ran into a computer pop-up that said merely “Press here to get rid of ads” This shows that the purveyor knows I may not like the ads which offend my taste and which promote destructive consumerism. If I press that radio button, they will immediately charge my google account, though they don’t say so. An honest person might be ashamed to say “I will not annoy you with ads if you pay me”; so, instead, in the normal exercise of capitalism, he charges me according to dishonest and deceptive practices. How can you support an economy that inculcates such wicked deeds?  In my passages on axiomatic morality, we are left with a dilemma as to how to formulate morals or laws; but it's probably safe to say that any system that is chosen will discourage dishonesty and deception.

How to eliminate political corruption

 Hi Carroll, it’s me again. I do not support the Democratic or Republican parties or, for that matter, any other party. I suggest that we need a new Constitution as our present Constitution has never been satisfactory. It was written with injustice in mind. Now, I should not have to explain fractal government, democracy or demarchy, as I have written sufficiently. By now you should have read Dematerialism: . There is a link to my discussion of physically based vector currency. I expect that you will apologize to me for assuming I am the victim of some sort of indoctrination. I wish to emphasize that although I have thought of everything, I hope that others will do their share of creative thinking and discover even better ideas than those proposed by me.

Characteristics of new political economic system

 Pure democracy. The representatives of the neighborhood councils to which everyone belongs should be chosen by sortition (like juries). County councils composed of representatives of every neighborhood should choose a representative to the state council by sortition. The function of the popular vote is recall of representatives that do not carry out the council’s mandate.

The means of production are owned by workers cooperatives who are capable of selecting their own managers according to who exhibits the most talent. Managers do not receive higher pay.

In fact, a new monetary system is needed, the sole purpose of which is to ration excess resources equally without weakening sustainability. Each person is entitled to an equal share wheteher he works or not. However, he must replace only himself by procreation, assign that right to another, or not reproduce in order to share the community sustainable dividend.

That’s enough for now. In the meantime, familiarize yourself with the term chrematistics. (See the Wikipedia.)

This system prevents the rise of demagogues. A workman should own his own tools. All power resides in all people. Now work out the details. Quit whining about socialism, communism, syndicalism have this or that problem. Think about how to fix the problem. If something doesn’t work, figure out why and fix it. We have no choice. Systems that retain private profit are doomed and must be replaced. Think about what you want and how to devise a system that achieves it. That goes for conservatives too. Please realize you are not going to get rich or make a killing in the stock market. That’s over. Stock markets cannot be allowed to live on. They are nothing but gambling dens in which the house takes all. Pundits and radio talk show hosts that preach endless growth and hatred are not your friends.

Enough Is Enough

 What the world needs now is to produce fewer objects (except food). We no longer need to worry about “no one will work”. For example 2% of the people work in manufacturing. Even when outsourcing is repatriated that number probably will not exceed 4%. Men will compete for those jobs even though they entail no salary in the old-fashioned sense. People will compete for prestige, even though everyone needs to be effective to be happy, they can be happy doing what they please, which is, after all, the purpose of education.

Note

The importance of the ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Invested cannot be overstated; however, different researchers have included different items in the energy invested term. This may be satisfactory depending upon the use to which the concept is to placed; but, only the method recommended on this blog results in a ratio that can be used to determine sustainability of the technology*. 

 

* To establish sustainability, it is necessary to include some items in the energy-invested term that are normally not thought of as investments. For example, the cost of sequestering such carbon dioxide as will be produced by the energy technology under investigation should be added to the energy-invested term because sustainability requires that our society survive (until astronomical events intervene). In this thought experiment, the living expenses of every citizen who is working to keep the energy flowing and his dependents must be added to the energy invested. If his contribution is something like playing the cello in an orchestra, it may be a little hard to see the connection; but it is relatively easy to distinguish freeloaders, especially those who do nothing the purpose of which is not to get a larger piece of the pie for himself, his family, his friends, or his employer.  The cost of living of freeloaders expressed in energy units must be taken from the net energy, EX, not added to the energy invested, EI. This will be made much clearer in terms of a scientific thought experiment.

Sine Qua Non

Inasmuch as we are at the limit to growth or near it, we are now forced to adjust our lives merely to survive. Here is a rough list of the minimum that we must do.

Solve population problem.  Population de-growth is most important.

Economic de-growth is necessary too as follows:

Put an end to predatory imperialism and render assistance to those nations that need economic growth and to which a modicum of our shrinkage should go to compensate them for our misdeeds until a new equilibrium is established, after which the entire world should strive for  nearly equal sustainable economic performance globally.

Close stock markets, which will have become zero-sum games at best.

Ban fractional reserve banking.

Government must cease telling lies, which means no more propaganda especially in schools.  Instead explain to students why major changes are absolutely necessary.

Solve inequality crisis.  Replace fiat currency with resource credits distributing equal shares of the sustainable community net harvest or production with proviso about replacing oneself only, transferring that privilege, or not reproducing.   Devise reasonable way to discourage cheating.

Establish true democracy such that all the power is held by all of the people.  Prevent the rise of demagogues and natural leaders.  Sortition and fractal government are suggested.

Since reaching the limit to growth means that economy behaves like game of Monopoly, one person might own everything.  G. B. Shaw explains why anything approaching this is undesirable. So eliminate private profit by mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.  Make it easy for addicts of acquisition to quit by removing mechanisms by which they could indulge themselves.

Solve energy problem.  Establish steady state stockpiles of vital resources and regulate draw down of residuals from which the stockpiles are maintained as described in article on sustainability.

Solve resource scarcity problem. End consumerism.  In particular, end automobile culture, advertising and marketing.

Prevent pollution. Prevent waste, including waste of talent and beauty.  Prevent wage slavery.  

Establish true renewable energy technology.

Devise methods to achieve the aforementioned.

Sustainability Checklist

Sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable renewable energy technology, a technology that harvests energy (corrected for entropy) from the sun in real time and that returns more energy than is consumed to manufacture it, install it, operate it, maintain it, maintain its storehouses of natural material capital, prevent or repair environmental damage including aesthetic damage, uninstall it when its life cycle ends, restore the plant site, and support the community that serves the renewable energy installation both directly and indirectly throughout its life cycle.  If the technology must pay the energy cost of a substitute technology in cases where a substitute technology is necessary to satisfy contractual obligations, this cost must be added to the energy invested.  I reserve the right and privilege to add to this list if appropriate or necessary.

Renewable energy technology

manufacture
installation
operate
maintain
maintain steady-state storehouses with 1000-year-half-life residuals
prevent or repair environmental damage
uninstall
support community of stakeholders
overcome space and time contractual failures

Sustainability

 A researcher recommended your answer:

What is sustainability? How can we make sustainable development a reality? How sustainability  can be measured?
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What-is-sustainability-How-can-we-make-sustainable-development-a-reality-How-sustainability-can-be-measured?pli=1&loginT=JDxs0zJUao_GWJ1lz4hihlaSaUNvw9VtrNpABDkYzRNB19Oe6o0rw_Kn_4XFtMOXU95OvconXUy4&uid=K9Q6AqoYdsJfB0R0ckZQ1ThaPY6xUy18svaT&cp=re68_x_p3&ch=reg&utm_medium=email&utm_source=researchgate&utm_campaign=re68&utm_term=re68_x&utm_content=re68_x_p3#view=60bbfe819ecdbc50d16a9045

Human Nature changes much faster than natural selection

 I never regret listening to Richard Dawkins and tonight is no exception. I can't imagine why this has not occurred to me earlier but many deep thinkers believe that the slow change due to natural selection does not apply to our moral progress which takes place relatively quickly. For example, only a couple of hundred years ago most people accepted slavery as normal. And just a little earlier practically no one would criticize the conquistadors. Truly it is as Oscar Wilde stated it: Human nature is changing constantly. Earlier I stated that morality was related to convenience. Apparently, what is convenient is changing too. This is very important and will be repeated on my homepage. It is the final argument for dematerialism, as it refutes the objection that dematerialism is contrary to human nature.  It  remains only to explain the effect of morality upon human nature. Put another way, morality dominates human nature.

The Open Conspiracy

I see that we do have a difference of opinion as to the permanence or long-time stability of human nature. We know by now that morality is principally a matter of convenience. We would be doing very well if morality were congruent with legality. How quickly can we alter human nature if we recognize the dire necessity of "mutual restraint mutually agreed upon."

Now, perhaps, is the time to raise H.G. Wells' idea of an open conspiracy to seize power (yes, I know what I said) in the chaos that is likely to follow the collapse. There will be a window of opportunity for a group of people with a plan. It would be interesting if we - now - were discussing the plan - not secretly but openly. 

Adaptive and Maladaptive Traits

My own take on procreative advantage is that sexual attractiveness is adaptive and resource dominance is maladaptive. In fact, we have a pejorative term for attraction to resource dominance, namely, golddigger. Maladaptive tendencies can be overcome in much less than evolutionary time. Let us suppose that only a few wife beaters are left and that cigarette smoking is nearly extinct among our youth, although it's a little hard to tell just what maladaptive tendency cigarette smoking represents if not the death wish.

That said, we know from experience that we can drive out some maladaptive tendencies. Does the absence of a maladaptive trait from some individuals in our species indicate that it can be overcome by everyone? I have run across that idea in my reading lately and it gave me hope. It's resource dominance I had in mind of course; and, the big question is "Is it really absent from myself?" This is no time for fooling. I am betting that it's gone or nearly gone and whatever is left can be suppressed.

Tom Wayburn

"Human nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put here to rise above." - Kathryn Hepburn's character in The African Queen

I like the line but the philosophy won't do.

Dematerialism explained briefly to ResearchGate

Barry Turner has made some excellent observations; however, I need to adjust one or two of his points. Nowadays, we would not expect physical ration books; nevertheless, a computer-based rationing system for each eligible citizen is 'fraught with peril' and lots of problems that would have to be solved. The important safeguard in egalitarian economics is that significant deviations from equality are noticeable to friends and neighbors, not all of whom will tolerate such deviations.

The second thing is the determination of freedom and rights. From my perspective, no political system protects individual freedom and reasonable rights so well as Dematerialism - not even close. Also, it is important to note that, because of sortition and fractal government, all political power is retained by the people and natural leaders and demagogues cannot arise, except in ways that have not occurred to me yet and will have to be defended by others.

Oh yes, there has to be a trade-off. Somehow the ability to acquire an excess of the sustainable dividend (explained elsewhere) and an unfair share of posterity must be thwarted. This conflict with my general rejection of punishment as a response to disorderly conduct should occasion a great deal of thought by people who are likely to be much closer to the problem than am I.

But, think of all the coercion and forced responses that are avoided. One doesn't even have to go to work at anything that is not interesting or enjoyable. Work assumes its correct role as a privilege and a pleasure. The present system is practically all tyranny. People think that it's a pleasure to own a Ford 150. They have been forced to own that or another with which to compete with ownership of the Ford 150.

According to Dematerialism, rights are based on three principles that can be rendered in slang thusly: (i) Live and let live; (ii) Tell the truth to those who have a right to know it (Hemingway - who might be able to tell us who has a right to know it); (iii) Protect the environment.

Isn't the harm done by competition for wealth and power obvious? A man with a wife and children will do anything for money. By now we should be ready to cut all of that out of our lives. Moreover, the Earth can't stand it.

Don't waste time thinking up reasons why this won't work. Think of solutions to problems that are bound to arise.

Introduction to Ration Book Points

I am thinking of something a little different reminescent of World War II in the US. We all had ration books aided and abetted by agressive propaganda that kept most people out of the black market. That is, the house was kept at no warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The bathtub was filled no higher than 4 inches.

Now, suppose there were ration books but no money. One could "spend" land-use points, human-labor points, fresh-water points, and most important of all eMergy points. If I want a new towel, there may not be any fresh water in the towel but there was fresh water used to irrigate cotton of which I must use no more than my fair and equal share.

This is a subtle way of establishing equality and relieving the super rich of their excessive wealth since US dollars may no longer be used. [snip]

More from ResearchGate

This is a very old idea that came from someone on Energy Resources or Running on Empty 2: Suppose the leaders of the world continue to advocate economic growth and do very little to reduce population, then conservation and other green gestures are not only futile but positively harmful inasmuch as the additional lifespan of the world will be used to increase the population and worsen the catastrophic Die-Off when it comes.

 

*********************************************

 

I see the definition of sustainability and the establishment of enough renewable energy technology and the reduction of recycle losses and pollution below agreed upon limits as easily understood. Implementation is unlikely before a catastrophic collapse and die-off. Afterward the survivors must be prepared to act quickly and suddenly if they want a sustainable social system like the natural economy toward which dematerialism is directed. Perhaps, by that time, something like dematerialism will be widely accepted and whatever battles must be fought will have ended. We need an open conspiracy now.

 

Of course it matters what people like us think sustainability should look like and how it will be achieved; but, according to what I just said, what we think won't matter very much. I hope our offspring are all on the right side.

The open conspiracy and the seizing of power after the collapse need elucidation.

ResearchGate

 Just because it can be shown scientifically (or not depending upon how you define science) that capitalism cannot be sustainable or even nearly sustainable, I am unwilling to say that sustainability is political. The question of whether or not sustainability is political or BS or something else is a waste of time and best left to experienced timewasters like Phil.

I, for my part, have been trying to include in the definition the case where the inevitable deficits in the steady-state storehouses of vital materials are made up from the repositories of such materials found on Earth in such a way that the occurrence analogous to Peak Oil does not occur for 1000 years. I am ready to change my tune and call that circumstance "near-sustainability" while admitting the impossibility of perfect sustainability even though I don't believe the scatter of small amounts of vital materials over the Earth and beyond will ever become a major problem.

It now becomes necessary to outline the method I will use to determine ERoEI* from the outside in, thus avoiding the enumeration and evaluation of indirect energy investments. I do not expect this work to be interrupted, but I am unwilling to leave that to chance. [snip]

Tellurium

I am not certain about placing this here. However, it represents the two principal obstacles to sustainability, namely, providing a truly renewable energy source of sufficient scope and maintaining steady-state storehouses of strategic materials.

For some time, I have been hearing about cadmium-tellurium photovoltaic cells with the warning that tellurium is rather scarce here on Earth although not particularly scarce in the universe. I hope against hope that this does not provide at long last a valid excuse for space travel. How scarce is it?

It is estimated that there are 24,000 metric tonnes of tellurium. The exact number isn’t needed. By rule of thumb, we use 100 metric tonnes of tellurium per gigawatt of electricity in the rest of this exercise. We decide to use no more than half the world supply of tellurium, which gives 120 gigawatts or 0.12 TW of electrical power. The world electrical budget is 2.73 TW of a world total of 17.7 TW. Only 15.4% of the world energy budget is electricity, and cadmium-tellurium solar is estimated to supply 4.4% of the world electrical budget or 0.7% of the total energy budget.

If we can expect 435 kilowatts from an acre of cadmium-tellurium. We will need 2300 acres per gigawatt or 17.6 million acres in case half the tellurium in the world is in play.

On Racism

 I am not sure this the right place for this old thought newly transcribed. Probably “racism”, which is nearly universal due to our evolutionary past and the ancient advisability of avoiding people of other families and tribes, is on the verge of becoming a distraction along with pro-choice, same-sex marriage, legalized pot, religion, prayer in school, standing for national anthem, gun control, obesity, … along with other hot buttons designed to trick people into voting against their own interests and ignoring over-population and inequality of wealth. [I said, “on the verge”.] A few dozen people have all the money. That’s the elephant in the living room.

Posts to CASSE

Thomas Wayburn, PhD says:

April 6, 2021 at 9:19 pm

Markets require growth. Self-employment requires  thinking about money differently; but, there is no such impediment as Herman claims. He’s right about markets as the Monopoly Game.
Take a gander at this.
https://www.dematerialism.net/#mozTocId283585
Markets are not efficient.

Pareto optimum is la la land and a fundamental error in neo-liberal economics. Equality is the only thing that cuts it logically, scientifically, and garden-variety morally. A new constitution is absolutely necessary. Brian you are drifting into a bunch of silly book learning.  You still gotta bell the cat!!!!!!!

I’ll show you how to make equality work. Herman is wrong about equality.   Nevertheless, equality is devilish too. (The devil is in the details.)

Equality implies thinking about what's important - honorable - interesting - and fun to do.  Even a little inequality turns the head back to the "dark side" and reminds us of the camel who asked to put his nose under the tent.  Intrinsic motivation is the road to freedom.   Think of doing what the community needs and do as you please with the least environmental cost. You will get your equal share regardless.  

Herman spoke of the environment as though it were PART of the economy.  The economy is IN the environment.  Environment  BIG.   Economy SMALL.  

Herman was right when he said I made him look like a moderate. 

Sustainability

 

* To establish sustainability, it is necessary to include some items in the energy-invested term that are normally not thought of as investments. For example, the cost of sequestering such carbon dioxide as will be produced by the energy technology under investigation should be added to the energy-invested term because sustainability requires that our society survive (until astronomical events intervene). In this thought experiment, the living expenses of every citizen who is working to keep the energy flowing and his dependents must be added to the energy invested. If his contribution is something like playing the cello in an orchestra, it may be a little hard to see the connection; but it is relatively easy to distinguish freeloaders, especially those who do nothing the purpose of which is not to get a larger piece of the pie for himself, his family, his friends, or his employer.  The cost of living of freeloaders expressed in energy units must be taken from the net energy, EX, not added to the energy invested, EI. This will be made much clearer in terms of a scientific thought experiment.

The Autonomous Alternative Energy District

It is essential to realize that energy is the life blood of a society.  Sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable renewable energy technology, a technology that harvests energy (corrected for entropy) from the sun in real time and that returns more energy than is consumed to manufacture it, install it, operate it, maintain it, maintain its storehouses of natural material capital, prevent or repair environmental damage including aesthetic damage, and support the community that it serves.

If we wish to define a ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Invested (ERoEI*) that will indicate a sustainable alternative energy technology if and only if it is equal to or greater than 1.0, we must begin to think of society as a system the purpose of which is to maintain the flow of high-grade renewable energy.  Let us begin with a thought experiment that will make perfectly clear what should be included in the energy investment term (EI*) in ERoEI* = ER/EI*.  Suppose that a group of people representing all of the trades and professions wishes to support itself completely by relying on a single alternative, renewable energy technology for all of its energy needs. Let us suppose further that all of the natural resources necessary to do this are available within the AAED [and the repositories of such natural resources can be retained at steady state from the detritus of the AAED including superannuated installations of the technology].  Aside from low-entropy photons entering when the sun shines and high-entropy photons radiating to deep space, nothing is imported from outside the District whereas energy and only energy is exported. The energy referred to as exported is not the junk heat referred to above but rather electricity or some other valuable energy product.  The value of energy products is given by the eMergy, which is the energy multiplied by the transformity as described in https://www.eroei.net/emergyunit.pdf 

If a man needs a car to drive from his home (in the District) to his job (in the District), the car is built, maintained, and fueled in the District. If his wife is sick, the doctor in the District will treat her with medicine made in the District from chemicals produced there from raw materials mined there and subsequently recycled aggressively. The ERoEI of the new energy technology is the total energy produced, ER, divided by the quantity ER minus the quantity EX, where EX is the energy exported; i. e., EX = ER – EI*.   If the District is able to export any energy at all the ERoEI ratio exceeds one and the technology is sustainable – at least.

The actual situation in a self-contained US economy would be virtually identical to that of the AAED if the economy were to run exclusively on the alternative, renewable energy technology under investigation and there were precisely as many physicians, for example, as are needed to supply the needs of those whose purpose in life is to provide energy. The energy-returned term must be adjusted to account for defective receptors and other mishaps, and every ancillary and indirect expense of producing energy including the support of the workers and their dependents must be counted in computing energy invested if the ERoEI methodology is to be used to determine sustainability. 

In the broader economy, different types of workers are accounted for differently:  

If a worker is engaged in economic labor that benefits the candidate for renewable energy either directly or indirectly and is in no way engaged in chrematistics, that is, the business of getting more goods, service, money, or share of posterity for his employer, friends, relatives, or himself without producing anything that is useful to the community, all of his livelihood and the livelihoods of those whom he supports must be charged to the energy invested term of the renewable energy technology.

If a worker is engaged in chrematistics his livelihood must come from the emergy exported term if he is allowed to live at the expense of useful members of the community.

In some cases, the mission of the worker may legitimately be distributed among a number of projects such as a renewable energy project, a fossil fuel extraction and distribution project, and the manufacture of something for export. In this case, the analyst divides his support in the obvious manner.

If the worker is employed in both economic and chrematistic projects, his support is divided on a pro rata basis between energy invested and energy exported terms.  Since, in addition, the fraction of personal energy and work-related energy served by each technology is usually known, one knows how much to subtract from the cost of support of those who do no useful work.

After all appropriate adjustments have been made, let us call this ratio ERoEI* (pronounced E-R-O-E-I star) to distinguish it from the superscripted ERoEIs in “Energy in a Mark II Economy” and to indicate its importance as the only ERoEI that determines sustainability.

Heretofore, I have used the terms “feasible’ and “sustainable” interchangeably.  I think it may be useful to draw distinctions between sustainability and feasibility – and to define a new concept, namely, quasi-sustainability: 

An energy technology is sustainable if and only if ERoEI* (E-R-O-E-I star) is no less than 1.0.  An entire society is sustainable if and only if the compound ERoEI* of its entire mix of energy technologies is no less than 1.0.   Early on, recognizing that a community can persist for quite a long time if most of the characteristics of ERoEI* are satisfied, we considered quasi-sustainability; that is, during a transition period between fossil fuels and renewable energy, we must tolerate some slight environmental destruction and diminution of our storehouses of essential natural resources because of the large proportion of the energy investment for most renewable energy technologies that must be paid before any energy is returned.

Let us agree that a renewable energy technology is feasible if no more characteristics of ERoEI* are relaxed than are consistent with the community standards and laws of the land currently. 

Given de-growth of both population and the economy, sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable renewable energy technology¹, a technology that harvests energy (corrected for entropy) from the sun in real time and that returns more energy than is consumed to manufacture it ², install it³, operate it⁴, maintain it⁵, maintain its storehouses of natural material capital⁶, prevent or repair environmental damage⁷ including aesthetic damage⁸, and support the community that serves the renewable energy installation both directly and indirectly⁹. It might help understand the central role played by energy if the Sun is recognized as an entropy reducer. Low entropy photons concentrated into a ray enter the Earth's atmosphere. High entropy (low frequency) photons leave in all directions.

If we wish to define a ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Invested (ERoEI*) that will indicate a sustainable alternative energy technology if and only if it is greater than 1.0, we must begin to think of society as a system the purpose of which is to maintain the flow of high-grade renewable energy.  Let us begin with a thought experiment that will make perfectly clear what should be included in the energy investment term (EI*) in ERoEI* = ER/EI*.  Suppose that a group of people representing all of the trades and professions wishes to support itself completely by relying on a single alternative, renewable energy technology for all of its energy needs.

Suppose further that this very special community occupies a portion of the Earth's surface where repositories of every element needed for the manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and replacement of an alternative energy installation.  In addition, it has whatever additional repositories are needed to feed, clothe, shelter, keep healthy, preserve from drudgery, entertain, and elevate spiritually the community and to protect the environment.  These are finite repositories although most of them are extremely large.  Out of each repository a reasonably sized storehouse is kept at steady state, making up for such deficiencies of recycling as are bound to occur by drawing from the surrounding repository sufficiently slowly that the repositories will not reach the analogy to Peak Oil for some agreed upon length of time in excess of 1000 years certainly and maybe much longer under NO GROWTH.  

 

Figure 3.  AAED with associated storehouses at A, B, C, D, & E, repositories at A through E, and recycle installations at ae, bc, cd, and de serving the Autonomous Alternative Energy plant

Nothing is imported from outside the District (other than natural sunlight) whereas net energy for export and junk heat radiated to deep space are the only outputs. If a man needs a car to drive from his home (in the District) to his job (in the District), the car is built, maintained, and fueled in the District. If his wife is sick, the doctor in the District will treat her with medicine made in the District from chemicals produced there from raw materials mined there and subsequently recycled aggressively. The ERoEI of the new energy technology is the total energy produced, ER, divided by the quantity ER minus the quantity EX, where EX is the energy exported; i. e., EX = ER – EI*.   If the District is able to export any energy at all the ERoEI ratio exceeds one and the technology is sustainable – at least.  

The community must be dedicated to the production of energy.  Nothing produced by the members of the community including art, music, science, spectator sports as well as building maintenance and healthcare, serves any other ultimate purpose than the production of energy.  Since every worker does work that is useful to the community and the community produces only one product, namely, energy, all of the goods and services produced within the community must be overhead for that one product and should be added to energy invested, EI.   Every item that would be in the monetary budget has a counterpart in the energy budget. Let us go over the checklist once more:

1.   Main List 

a)     Manufacture

b)     Installation

c)     Operation

d)     Maintenance

e)     Storage of energy

f)      De-Installation  This usually amounts to merely building another installation after retiring the previous one; but, in the odd case, it is necessary to restore the plant site to its original natural condition.

2. The steady-state condition of the managed stockpiles of vital materials is met by solving the recycle problem as discussed in the appropriate section of https://www.dematerialism.net/ . The inevitable deficits due to imperfect recycling are made up from the residuum of the resource, by which I mean the world supply minus the stockpiles, in such a way that the half-life of the residuum is not reached during the first one thousand years, after which time other arrangements must be made.

Take the Repository of A, which could be a rare earth that is used in solar cells.  It is very large whereas the Storehouse of A might better be called the Box of A inasmuch as we are pretending that only a few molecules go into each cell, The repository might take in one half of a continent, whereas the Box might be a shoe box.  We might be sure that the residuum of A will last 10,000 years at the present rate, which we have a right to assume under a de-growth regime.  We do not replace solar cells unless the user brings back the corresponding retired solar cell.

The pollution prevention requirement must be dealt with in a similar manner.  We must account for the inevitable small quantity of undesirable effluent that leaks through our pollution control equipment regardless of its quality.  Let us exaggerate the realistic operation of a steady state system with the term sustainable steady state by which we mean something less ideal than the absolute steady state. The following was written earlier:

I need to add one more condition to the definition of "sustainable steady state". We understand that insofar as pollution control is concerned there is bound to be some leakage into the atmosphere. The atmosphere can digest a small part of many things however we must set a rule as to how we will deal with the portion that is not digested (turned into something that is not harmful and, therefore, does not constitute pollution). Let us handle material additions to the atmosphere as we have handled loss of vital materials, except in reverse. We must allow no more foreign material to enter the atmosphere than we can no longer tolerate after 1000 years.

With these small variations from absolute steady state, we refer to our system as a sustainable steady state system. Actual experience will determine the practicality of this definition.

It strikes me as not perfectly honest to refer to the nearly sustainable steady state as the sustainable steady state.  Let us drop that pretense and refer to our avowed goal as the nearly sustainable steady-state system (~S⁴) or, in case of shrinkage, nearly sustainable system (~S²).

 3. The maximum sustainable community dividend (MSCD) is the emergy returned (conservatively estimated and harvested on schedule) (ER) minus all of the emergy budget items in this list except this one (EI’). The net emergy, EX, must be subtracted from the MSCD to get the actual dividend, ED*. Then, ERoEI* = ER/EI* where ER is emergy returned and EI* is the emergy invested, which is the sum of all the budget items in this list except that, instead of the MSCD, add in the actual dividend, ED*. EI* is the emergy returned minus the net emergy, that is, EI* = ER - EX.

In a community based upon dematerialist principles the actual dividend, ED*, is divided by the number of economic actors in the community. This determines maximum community consumption. The individual economic actors determine the final disposition of the actual distributed dividend. Does it satisfy the technical pre-condition of happiness? The net emergy is the MSCD minus the actual dividend. The community must decide what to do with the net emergy. It should be obvious how to include foreign trade in the balance sheet and not so obvious what might go wrong with it.  In a contemporary economy the maximum sustainable community dividend may be divided in any manner whatsoever whether it makes sense or not.  In any case, we will know the energy cost of labor and the remuneration of other stakeholders if they exist.  This is the principal difference between ERoEI* and every other methodology.

ER = Emergy Returned

EI’ = Energy Invested except the actual dividend with which the stakeholders support themselves and those who depend upon them

ED* = Actual dividend

MSCD = Maximum Sustainable Community Dividend = ER – EI’

EX = Net emergy for export

EI* = EI’ + ED* =  ER – EX

EI’ + ED* + EX = ER

4. Prevent pollution altogether regardless of environment’s self-healing capabilities.  Don't forget sound and light pollution and the intrusion of ugliness where formerly there was beauty.  Finally, there is motion pollution and the filling up of space that was formerly empty.

5. Sustainability amounts to providing a sustainable renewable energy technology, a technology that harvests energy (corrected for entropy) from the sun in real time and that returns more energy than is consumed to install it, operate it, maintain it, store enough energy to complete its mission, maintain its storehouses of natural material capital, prevent or repair environmental damage including aesthetic damage, and support the community that serves the renewable energy installation both directly and indirectly.   It's one thing producing enough computer chips for half of the world.  This may indeed require a non-stop cyclical operating schedule.  But to make one or two chips every ten years for only the economic actors in the autonomous alternative energy district (AAED) we can use a slightly more primitive batch process, which might run only when the sun shines.

The actual situation in a self-contained US economy would be virtually identical to that of the AAED if the economy were to run exclusively on the alternative, renewable energy technology under investigation and there were precisely as many physicians, for example, as are needed to supply the needs of those whose purpose in life is to provide energy. Thus, every ancillary and indirect expense of producing energy including the support of the workers and their dependents must be counted in computing energy invested if the ERoEI methodology is to be used to determine sustainability. Let us call this ratio ERoEI* (pronounced E-R-O-E-I star) to distinguish it from the superscripted ERoEIs in “Energy in a Mark II Economy” and to indicate its importance as the only ERoEI that determines sustainability.

Inasmuch as workers ought to have a life of their own, the enterprise, in this case the production of energy, must pay all of their living expenses. In fact, the energy enterprise must pay the living expenses of all those whose work supports energy production either directly or indirectly. If a job holder within the very special community described earlier with nothing crossing the boundary except exported net energy is employed in a way that does nothing to support the production of energy, he should be furloughed to save the cost of doing his job and to permit him to pursue worthwhile activities to which he is naturally attracted and for which his education prepares him. Until he is furloughed, he will have to be considered a freeloader, the cost of whom is subtracted from the net energy rather than the energy invested. Clearly, among the jobs that support energy production are all the jobs that make things or do things we need to live including a few activities that do nothing but take the drudgery and tedium out of life, like entertainment, art, and sports. The only distinction we should make between people who work at nothing except acquiring a larger slice of the pie for themselves or their employers and people who are idle is that the people who are idle do less harm.

Heretofore, I have used the terms “feasible’ and “sustainable” interchangeably. I think it may be useful to draw distinctions between sustainability and feasibility – and to define a new concept, namely, quasi-sustainability: An energy technology is sustainable if and only if ERoEI* (E-R-O-E-I star) is no less than 1.0. An entire society is sustainable if and only if the compound ERoEI* of its entire mix of energy technologies is no less than 1.0. Early on, recognizing that a community can persist for quite a long time if most of the characteristics of ERoEI* are satisfied, we considered quasi-sustainability; that is, during a transition period between fossil fuels and renewable energy, we must tolerate some slight environmental destruction and diminution of our storehouses of essential natural resources because of the large proportion of the energy investment for most renewable energy technologies that must be paid before any energy is returned. Let us agree that a renewable energy technology is feasible if no more characteristics of ERoEI* are relaxed than are consistent with the community standards and laws of the land currently.

 

 

Notes

In a community that can subsidize a renewable energy technology with fossil fuel, it is especially important to use ERoEI* as discussed at http://dematerialism.net/eroistar.htm because the lifestyles of the participants can be supported by fossil fuel. Thus, the alternative energy technology might be able to produce energy, but the total amount of fossil fuel used by the community would be increased rather than diminished. And, no one might ever know – until it’s too late.

The cash price of energy should reflect the cost of preventing or repairing any changes to the environment that diminish the quality of life of mankind and other species or that compromise the sustainability of the relevant ecosystems including the magnitude of the storehouses of natural resources. The quality of life depends upon aesthetics as well as pure material circumstances.  There should be an energy item for every cash item in the price of energy and the technology that harvests it.

The energy-invested term should have an energy contribution corresponding to every monetary item that affects the price even if this reduces ERoEI* to less than 1.0. Research should continue until technologies with ERoEI* greater than 1.0 are found. This approach is much more  rigorous than other approaches that merely state that an ERoEI must be greater than some unsupported number such as 3.0 to support the operations of civilization.

 

Comment on Computing ER and EI

It's easy to compute the quantity of energy (really availability, which is energy corrected for entropy) we expect to be produced over the life of the project for any energy production installation we wish to investigate  ̶  in particular, to determine whether or not it produces more than it consumes. We consider energy spent to prevent or repair environmental damage caused by the installation, embodied and direct energy purchased with money paid to the stakeholders in the system, and the many other direct and indirect energy costs discussed in eroeistar.htm all to be part of the energy consumed by the process over the life of the installation. The energy produced is denoted ER for Energy Returned and the energy consumed to produce it is EI for Energy Invested. Clearly, if ER/EI < 1.0 (ER < EI), the installation should not be built. In a fossil-fuel economy, if the installation is built  ̶  usually because subsidies hide its true nature from analysts who go by monetary costs, it will result in the combustion of more fossil fuel not less. Thus, the computation of ERoEI* should be done before the installation is built using our best estimates of things like the amount of energy required to hold the supply of materials in steady state, the energy costs to rehabilitate the plant site to a pristine condition if the plant becomes obsolete, demographics change, or for some other reason the installation abandons the planned plant site, etc. If you do this computation for any given nuclear plant taking proper account of every negative effect, you will probably determine that ERoEI* for nuclear is less than 1.0. If it is less than 1.0 for solar, it shows that more research should be done, as we have not reached our goal yet of a sustainable renewable energy technology. But, we must eventually succeed and we will.

 

Why We Need the Concept of Emergy

The input to the production facility that produces solar cells and their ancillary equipment consists of energy (availability), material streams, and human effort.  The embodied energy or emergy of the material inputs must be added to the Energy Invested term.  Thus, a definition of renewable (sustainable) energy must employ the concept of emergy. 

 

Definition of Emergy 

This paper is too long to enter here.  Serious readers should download the paper or read it on-line.  Definition of Emergy

 

Missing Components of ERoEI 

Let us recall once more that, in a sustainable society, the store houses of natural resources with which the earth and our species are blessed must be retained at more or less steady-state accumulations.  The atmosphere and the land are natural resources as well as the repositories of iron and other metals, the nutrients in the soil, and the atmosphere itself.  This means air and water quality and the infrastructure of primary and recycle processes must be maintained.  Therefore, let us add to the list of energy expenses that must be met to achieve sustainability. 

1) Sequester carbon, in case fossil fuels are involved in the process - even if only in the start-up phase.  But, in the case of shale oil and gas, the energy costs of carbon sequestration that must be borne by the consumer should be added to the energy-invested term to calculate ERoEI.  Probably, under present-day economic conditions, this can be thought of as a tax, which should be levied.

2) Maintain storehouses of materials that are used to build and maintain the principal process and the secondary processes such a tax preparation, healthcare, etc.

3) Mothball process equipment at the end of its life and restore the plant site to the pristine conditions in which we found it.  Let us maintain Earth as a garden.

4) Desalinate sea water to replace the fresh water used and decontaminate such water as the process renders unfit to drink.

5) To the energy costs of 1 - 4, add the energy budgets of the employees and the appropriate pro-rata portions of those whose services must be charged to the process such as the health services that keep the workers healthy.  If there are stockholders or venture capitalists who take profits from the process, an appropriate portion of their energy budgets must be charged to the energy-invested term (EI).  Recall that every item that adds to the (monetary) price the consumer must pay for the product has an associated energy cost.  Clearly, salaries, fees, profits, and taxes add to the price.  All computations of ERoEI and/or emergy must be carried out just as they would have been carried out if government subsidies had not existed.  Quite frankly government subsidies are not the best way to defeat market intransigence and they make our job as analysts harder. Quite possibly there is an energy cost associated with subsidies that should be added to EI.

6) If there is an energy cost due to withdrawal of the land from other uses, it should be added to EI.  I am not quite certain how to calculate this term if, for some reason, the value of the insolation on that is not acceptable.  Perhaps the reader has some ideas.  If you do, please write to me at wayburn@eroei.net. (It should be noted that setting the value of the land equal to the value of the insolation intercepted by it accounts for the disqualification of ownership of land.  Rental only is permitted, as the total insolation in perpetuity is infinite.)

Additional objections are as follows:

ERoEI in even the sound form that Wayburn has promoted does no more than provide a measure of the effectiveness of an energy supply process. It does not take into account

1.    Whether the energy supplied is used for a useful purpose or otherwise. Is all the fuel used by cars serving a useful purpose?

2.    That the supply process produces waste material that has caused such deleterious consequences as climate change and the accumulation of stores of radioactive materials

3.    That the supply process irreversibly divests limited natural material resources, including fossil fuels and uranium

Here are my comments on these three points:

1.    How the energy is used is not the business of the analyst and it should not be.  Can you imagine what most people would say if I told them that the energy they use to conduct their lives or businesses is wasted because I do not approve of what they are doing?

2.    This is included in the energy-invested term by including the cost of sequestration.  Even the loss of space to sequestration can be given an energy value by counting the insolation that might have been harvested but could not be because the space was otherwise occupied.

3.    If the process does consume material resources, the energy-invested term can be increased by the energy cost to recycle not consume, which is always possible except for an insignificant trace amount.  In some cases, this expense is unbearable and must be avoided by choosing different technology. 

Additional Concerns about Recycling

In Item 2 of "Some Important Components of the Energy-Invested Term that Are Generally Neglected" (http://eroei.blogspot.com, Dec. 6), I imply without proof or explanation that the repositories of materials needed for the main process under investigation and the essential ancillary processes can be maintained at their original levels. I wrote as though the recycle problem had been solved and a steady state could be achieved without further ado. That is not the case. Recycling the material in the infrastructure is a tricky business. More research is needed. Here is what I wrote to the critic who raised that point and, in addition, was concerned about the effects of friction:

Friction is not a problem. In general, the principal effect of friction is overcome by pushing harder. Let us weigh an engine with serious friction, like the gas turbine on a 747, when it’s brand new and after it is ready to be replaced. I would be surprised if the two weighingsgave very different results, that is, I am under the impression that the slight loss of material will not affect sustainability.

In other cases, the problem should be categorized thusly: (a) Separate the materials that we need to carry out the activities we consider important to our civilization, i. e., the materials we need to produce food and clothing, maintain shelter, render health care, and provide art, music, literature and a few luxuries to take the drudgery out of life, e. g., computers; divide the useful materials into two categories: (b1) the materials that can be recycled and devise the most energy efficient techniques to recycle them; (b2) find substitutes for the materials that cannot be recycled in any way, shape, or manner. (Remember that, even if only the elemental species can be recovered, with enough energy the original substance can be synthesized at the expense of our supply of available energy (enthalpy minus the lowest temperature reservoir to which waste heat can be rejected times the entropy).)

I expected that you might prove the impracticality of recycling pharmaceuticals. I gave it a lot of thought. For now, I am satisfied that pissing on the ground might have to be forbidden. This was done by the Freemen on Frank Herbert’s Dune, a desert planet. Useful chemicals can be extracted from sewage by chromatography for example. Materials that are deemed essential and cannot be recycled for one reason or another will remain a challenge for the time being.

 

What Is the Energy Cost of Pollution? 

This is an easy question to answer:  The energy cost of pollution is the energy cost of whatever has to be done to prevent pollution whether it be (i) the alteration of the process to avoid the pollution step, (ii) the decontamination and temperature normalization of process water for recycle or discharge, where the discharge of fresh water effluent to the  environment must be accompanied by the transport and desalination of sea water, (iii) the treatment of gas phase effluent to remove all contaminants such that only air and water at normal temperature is discharged.  The discharged air may be oxygen-rich provided it does NOT contain ozone, and (iv) whatever else must be done to prevent air, earth, and water pollution. 

In cases where the process pollutes, the fine shall be sufficiently great that it is cheaper to prevent pollution than to pay the fine.  The fine shall be used to further the agenda of the most sincere environmentalists and to partly compensate the victims. Someone should implement some sort of plan to make it uneconomical to cheat.  Photovoltaic cells do not pollute, but the factory that makes them does.  It is the responsibility of the purveyors of solar energy installations to make certain that their vendors and suppliers do not pollute and/or add the cost of the appropriate process equipment or the principal of the fine to the energy-invested term. 

Time Delay and Distance between Production Facility and Consumers for ERoEI 

It strikes me as too arbitrary to piggy-back the time value of energy on the current time value of money. We would much rather use something with a physical basis that would remain constant throughout most periods of interest. Suppose that the consumer of the Energy Returned has to wait 24 hours for the delivery even though he is obliged to consume energy constantly at the rate contracted for. The value of the Energy Invested over the life of the project should be increased by the value of the energy from the best available replacement technology adjusted by the appropriate transformity as discussed at https://www.dematerialism.net/ops.htm#_Toc173388355; however, the life of the project must be increased by one day. Suppose that a crucial part in an energy installation like an electric turbine generator is not available until one year after the time it was needed by the builder of a wind power installation. The Energy Invested should be increased by the value of the substitute energy just as in the previous example with the life of the project extended by one year. Presumably, the energy cost per unit of energy recovered of the substitute technology exceeds the energy cost for the planned technology, which is why the new technology is contemplated provided they are both renewable. Other similar cases require similar consideration; however, nothing relieves the analyst from the intelligent and judicious application of the principles of his craft. The fundamental principle of dealing with all departures from ideality, such as intervals in space separating the locations where the energy is produced and consumed or emission of greenhouse gases, is adding all energy costs of such additional equipment as would restore ideality. It is clear that the energy embedded in any material that must be considered in any analysis can be computed properly by making as many adjustments as are required to the straightforward cost of production by the method of judicious substitutions. 

Renewable Energy 

Here is a letter to Energy Resources:

An appreciable number of people on the Yahoo! Energy Resources (Peak Oil) forum do not want to admit that solar and wind energy either are renewable or would be if it were not for the ridiculous energy cost of supporting a market economy*.  In a debate with Dave Kimble of Running on Empty Oz, who argued that the front-loaded investment costs of photovoltaic solar installations disqualify PV solar as a way to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil even in Australia, I conceived of a plan to bootstrap solar by purchasing abroad solar energy equipment to start up with.  Now, renewable energy technologies came into a world dominated by coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission; so, it is understandable that the first front-loaded energy invested in “renewables” probably came from fossil fuel and nuclear, but possibly hydroelectric.  Let us assume, though, that the solar installations purchased abroad to get started in a solar economy were produced without the application of any energy that could not be termed “renewable”.  Then, the first wave of solar energy installations slated for Australia would be completely renewable.  That is, they would produce enough stored energy such that no fossil fuel at all need be used to maintain the infrastructure and build replacements for it when they were needed, to maintain the stockpiles of materials used in the maintenance and the construction of replacements – and, for that matter, to restore such portions of the earth as were occupied by solar installations to Earth-as-a-Garden ideality.  If the ratio ERoEI*, as defined at https://dematerialism.net/eroeistar.htm and, in greater detail, on my new blog at https://eroei.blogspot.com/, is greater than 1.0, this can be done, although ERoEIs very close to 1.0 will be poor investment risks because of long payback times and because a very slight change in circumstances could render them infeasible or because ERoEI* is actually less than 1.0 except for minor computational inaccuracies.  In the spreadsheet analysis done by Dave Kimble and me, we used an ERoEI equal to 3.0.  I assumed that ERoEI*PV = 3.0.  Both Dave and I included construction, maintenance, and eventual replacement energy costs in perpetuity in EI.  In any case, if solar and wind are not strictly renewable, a competent energy analyst would compute ERoEI* < 1.0 and be forewarned.  See https://dematerialism.net/pv.htm.

The reason investors are bailing out of renewables is that they have become convinced by investment bankers that the ERoEI for shale plays is greater than 1.0 if, in fact, they know what ERoEI is or should be.  To their sorrow, they are about to find out that ERoEI for shale is less than 1.0 even if operators neglect their responsibilities toward Earth.  When the shale bubble bursts, there will be much gnashing of teeth here in Texas. I feel sorry for all the new Houston citizens who are about to be left high and dry except for submergence in unmanageable credit card debt based upon false hopes for a prosperous future.  It’s too bad that they didn’t invest their futures in solar and wind and political change.  

By the way, Denis Frith has been most helpful by suggesting various concrete problem areas in energy production that have to be addressed to calculate ERoEI*.  The difficulty of finding a new recycling methodology or a substitute material resource in case a material is encountered with no known substitute for which recycling is impractical remains a tough nut to crack; however, we shall cross that bridge when we come to it – and perhaps we never will, as, in contradistinction to the Second Law of Thermodynamics that provides an absolute upper bound for energy efficiency, we have the Conservation of Matter governing material balances.  I am certain he will continue to be of service by suggesting problem areas in establishing renewable energy technology.  It is, of course, the component of energy input that comes from the sun that suggested the term “renewable” to earlier workers.  Although we intend to “pay” Mother Earth, we have no such intention to “pay” Papa Sun.

The Fundamental Principle of Ecology 

The fundamental principle of ecology ought to be "Leave it alone".  It is not necessary to solve systems of equations to manage an eco-region; i. e., a connected area of the face of the earth all of which drains into a large body of water – usually an ocean – with no part of the drainage region omitted, although systems of millions of equations of all types, even, can be solved if necessary. What is really needed is a general powering down, i. e., much less economic activity and a much smaller population.

 
Mankind has discovered that he may harvest energy, as well as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries, from Nature.  He presumes that he is entitled to exploit these resources with no thought of paying Nature, putting anything back, or cleaning up. Now, he is in a bind.  His life is filled with feverish activity.  He knows that he has much too great an impact on the environment.  But he can't stop.  He has credit card debt.  He just barely avoided the last big lay-off at his job.  His wife has been bugging him to earn more money, in keeping with the normal measure of worth in his society, usually referred to as status.  He has a brokerage account; but, he has been unable to earn extra money by trading stocks, options, and other securities.  This man's troubles will be recognized as instances of the modes in which capitalist economies achieve the economic growth they require.

But, all of this activity, from which capitalism will not let up but demands more of the same is in violation of the Fundamental Principle of Ecology (now promoted to initial caps).  Thus, the harm done  on capitalism's route to inevitable collapse is worse than its most brutal critics are willing to admit.

https://dematerialism.net/
https://eroei.blogspot.com/
https://dematerialism.net/dematerialism.wikispaces.com.htm

* The following three papers go a long way towards disqualifying market economies:  (In addition, as shown by David Delaney <https://eroei.net/growthtrap.htm>, market economies usually have a number of characteristics that necessitate economic growth whereas economic shrinkage (or de-growth) is necessary for sustainability.)

https://dematerialism.net/CwC.html
https://dematerialism.net/ne.htm
https://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html