Increasing ERoEI*

I have been able to imagine increasing an ERoEI* that is less than 1.0, indicating non-renewable, to a value greater than 1.0, indicating renewable, in only two ways: (1) increasing the efficiency of the collector by virtue of a technological breakthrough, (2) reduce the energy invested by virtue of a political or social change - principally getting rid of people who benefit by the enterprise but do not enhance the principal mission, namely, producing energy.

Feet on the Ground

 I have been reading a lot of posts that make me long for solid ground. Let me tell the story of sustainability as I experienced it: It all goes back to the Yahoo! groups: Running on Empty 2, Energy Resources, and Energy Round Table, where we heard horror stories which would begin when the world reached Peak Oil. Indeed, the post-Peak Oil world is similar to the world just before the advent of civilization, except that, whereas the prehistoric world got better day by day, the post-Peak Oil world would get worse. But we did not reach Peak Oil. As we all know various factors intervened and year after year we did not reach Peak Oil. This fed into a great deal of skepticism. "Perhaps we would never reach it." But this idea wasn't coming from chemical engineers. We knew that perpetual growth in a finite world was impossible. So far, sustainability was always about having a perpetual energy supply in a world neither the population nor the economy of which was growing. People kept talking about ERoEI as the criterion for sustainability or else finding some reason why it wouldn't work.

I understood that every economic action has an associated energy action; therefore, it was obvious that people were not computing ERoEI correctly. I devised the thought experiment with the Autonomous Alternative Energy District to demonstrate that. They didn't understand the thought experiment very well or else they thought I would not be able to analyze multiple energy sources and by-products; so, the new exercise which many of you are reviewing for me is still under development at https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.pdf and https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.html which you might as well defer until last.

The following might be interesting, helpful, or even essential:

https://www.dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html and the section on Sustainability in https://www.dematerialism.net/ and relevant pieces on https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and, finally, https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.pdf . Also, there is an older version uploaded as a pre-print on ResearchGate. I am having ten times the trouble with Microsoft 365 and OneDrive as I am having with the engineering, which is complete. I just started with MS365 and OneDrive.

If you decide that energy is NOT virtually everything, think about a world that has completely mastered all that social science properly applied can offer. but it has only a small amount of energy and that is dwindling. Picture a nightmare on Earth. Think of all the things you'll miss because you have no energy.Nothing else is so important.

I will put together a package beginning with https://dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html continuing with the Sustainability section of https://www.dematerialism.net/ with ancillary pieces in https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and ending

with https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.html that show how one supports renewable energy if it is ever attained.

"Sustainability" Comes from Peak Oil Culture

 

I have been reading a lot of posts that make me long for solid ground. Let me tell the story of sustainability as I experienced it: It all goes back to the Yahoo! groups: Running on Empty 2, Energy Resources, and Energy Round Table, where we heard horror stories which would begin when the world reached Peak Oil. Indeed, the post-Peak Oil world is similar to the world just before the advent of civilization, except that, whereas the prehistoric world got better day by day, the post-Peak Oil world would get worse. But we did not reach Peak Oil. As we all know various factors intervened and year after year we did not reach Peak Oil. This fed into a great deal of skepticism. "Perhaps we would never reach it." But this idea wasn't coming from chemical engineers. We knew that perpetual growth in a finite world was impossible. So far, sustainability was always about having a perpetual energy supply in a world neither the population nor the economy of which was growing. People kept talking about ERoEI as the criterion for sustainability or else finding some reason why it wouldn't work.

I understood that every economic action has an associated energy action; therefore, it was obvious that people were not computing ERoEI correctly. I devised the thought experiment with the Autonomous Alternate Energy District to demonstrate that. They didn't understand the thought experiment very well or else they thought I would not be able to analyze multiple energy sources and by-products; so, the new exercise which many of you are reviewing for me is still under development at https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.pdf and https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.html which you might as well defer until last.

The following might be interesting, helpful, or even essential:

https://www.dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html and the section on Sustainability in https://www.dematerialism.net/ and relevant pieces on https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and, finally, https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.pdf . Also, there is an older version uploaded as a pre-print on ResearchGate. I am having ten times the trouble with Microsoft 365 and OneDrive as I am having with the engineering, which is complete. I just started with MS365 and OneDrive.

 

If you decide that energy is NOT virtually everything, think about a world that has completely mastered all that social science properly applied can offer. but it has only a small amount of energy and that is dwindling. Picture a nightmare on Earth. Think of all the things you'll miss because you have no energy.Nothing else is so important.

I will put together a package beginning with https://dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html continuing with the Sustainability section of https://www.dematerialism.net/ with ancillary pieces in https://eroei.blogspot.com/ and ending

with https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.html that show how one supports renewable energy if it is ever attained.

Addendum to Net Energy and ERoEI* in a Mark III Economy

 I should have given some more explanation for what is going on. The equation is scale invariant. Think of it as "per unit of emergy recovered". So, if there is no energy recovered and ERoEI* = 1.0, it means that the emergy of the output that was used was correct. If ERoEI* > 1.0, emergy of product should be reduced. If ERoEI* < 1.0, the process has an efficiency lower than the industrial standard. The accuracy of the computation is directly proportional to the percent of energy costs due to human effort. I have agreed that we can assume that the p(i, j) data is good enough as is the rest of it, but this is supposed to be an approximation, but it is an approximation of the right thing. It is not necessary to get highly accurate results to do good science.
I worked hard on https://www.eroei.net/emergyunit.html so I feel justified if the users have to work hard too. Transformity is just a little difficult.
I am writing this for you, but I think I will post it on RG. I wish my eroei.blogspot blog would become popular like Gail Tverberg's blog ourfiniteworld which is not much better and maybe a little worse. I do have trouble with the blogger html. I don't even know what the version number is.

Net Energy and ERoEI* in a Mark III Economy

 https://www.eroei.net/Mark-III-Economy.pdf