From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2013 10:18 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Is Earth F**ked?
On 11/1/2013 12:15 AM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
Jesse how much oil is embedded in European renewables? Calculate the energy
budget along the entire pipeline form the original mining of raw materials
all the way through final disposal of obsolete windmills/panels etc. How
much of this energy is fossil in nature
>>If you're trying to spread the urban myth that it takes more energy to
produce and dispose of a windmill or solar panel than it produces over it's
lifetime, you're misguided. For wind the EROI is around 20 (which is
similar to oil). For photovoltaics it's around 6. For nuclear it's about
40.\
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014810900055X
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eroi-behind-numbers-energy-
return-investment
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eroi-behind-numbers-energy
-return-investment&page=2> &page=2
Brent
--
Nope not trying to spread any urban myth here - but thanks anyway for
insinuating that this is what I was doing. Such colorful language really
helps to keep a discussion from turning into a pointless argument. or does
it? The first article you link to is just publishing the EROI figures
produced by the World Nuclear Association (hahahahaha) and the AWEA (much
more credible as far as I am concerned) 40x for nuclear power is a very much
disputed figure and the EROI for nuclear is reported all over the map
including below 1. The EROI of wind - while I think 20X is optimistic (these
are the figures published by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)) -
is probably I believe based on many years of discussing this with interested
people including with Charles Hall - is closer to 8-10 (still a good
number). Comparable to say the EROI of deep water oil rigs.
I believe it was Charles Hall who first proposed that an EROI of 6 is the
minimum return needed in order to maintain an advanced industrial society -
because it would leave enough of an energy surplus to accomplish all the
other things that need to be done beyond provisioning for energy. So
anything above 6 should be considered good. But other considerations besides
EROI also matter - for example J1 jet fuel has a higher value than its
energy content alone would suggest - it is worth a lot more than an
equivalent energy amount in the form of say poor quality brown coal.
EROI figures are notoriously difficult to come up with, depending very much
on where you set the boundary conditions - on what you include in the cost
side of the equation and what you exclude form that side. A good case in
point (because so much money was at stake) are the EROI figures for corn
ethanol - with the corn ethanol lobby publishing one number (with very
optimistic assumptions) that was subsequently shown to exclude for example
energy inputs (and the embedded energy cost of agro chemicals) . So as a
general rule, I do not trust EROI figures that do not also include a
detailed summary of the methodology and a clear statement of the boundaries
used in calculating the ratio. If you are curious about the subject of EROI
I suggest you read this paper on it by Prof Charles Hall, who is a professor
of ecology at SUNY who first articulated this concept:
http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/09_Energy-Return-on-Inv
estment_R1_012913.pdf
If you really want to get into a discussion of this I am happy to, though I
would request that you do not attempt to color my position as presenting
urban myths.
EROI is just a single dimension of the problem. For example even if wind
turbines have a lifetime EROI of somewhere between 10 & 20 - but their
production, distribution, site preparation, etc. still depends on fossil
energy inputs at multiple places in the supply chain then until these
dependencies are eliminated the wind power sector as a whole remains
dependent on fossil fuels in order to be able to deliver its product. Trying
to remove all of these dependencies is no easy task. For example if a blade
is manufactured say in Denmark for delivery to say Oregon or somewhere where
they are building out a wind farm - the ship that moves that blade has to be
fueled with bunker oil (for the foreseeable future). If global trade
collapses because of a fossil energy supply collapse the effects on both the
global solar and the global wind industries will be immense.
The world is highly interconnected and interdependent - renewable energy has
multiple fossil energy dependencies. some easier to get rid of than others,
and these sectors could to some extent begin to start powering themselves.
But I still do not see any polisilicon fab plants running on wind or solar
for example.
Chris
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