From: John Clark <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2014 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy
On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 12:16 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Look at the history of attempts at kerogen extraction. How did all of these
> attempts end?
None of them could make money off of kerogen if oil was selling at less than
$60 a barrel as it is now.
> Perhaps the existence of this string of failures and no corresponding list of
> success stories should tell you that maybe, just maybe those 2.5:1 EROI
> numbers I gave are on the mark.
I'm confused. I think you're using some weird EROI convention because usually
EROI numbers are always compared to 1 and so any EROI number above 1 is a net
energy generator; 2.5: 1 would mean you'd get 2.5 times as much energy out as
you put in and thus would be worth doing, but that doesn't seem to be what
you're saying. I think you mean 1:2.5 or as compared to 1 .4:1 or better yet
just .4 . I need for you to clarify this point because I can't debate you when
I'm not sure what you're saying.
oops, my bad; I inadvertently transposed the positions. I should have said and
meant to say 1:2.5 that is one unit of energy out for every 2.5 units of energy
put in. EROEI -- (often also called: EROI) -- is a handy, calculated big number
ratio that can give a global overall sense of the energetic accounting for some
product or process, but it is not a hard number and its value will change
depending on what boundary conditions one uses for determining how to account
for energy inputs and costs (what gets counted and what conversely does not).
EROEI also does not capture the relative value of different energy sources. For
example the energy content of brown coal is of a significantly lower value --
both market and in terms of overall usefulness -- as an equivalent (in terms of
energy content) amount of say gasoline. For this reason it may (and I repeat
the word MAY to emphasise the case by case need to evaluate each single
scenario) make sense to use more energy to produce less energy, but that is in
a form which is valuable and more useful than -- in this example -- the energy
contained in the brown coal.If one understands these caveats and has access to
the methodology used to calculate the result ratio it is a useful means of
comparing systems and evaluating the profitability (in energy terms) of doing
something one way or another.
John K Clark
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