Andy_in_Hawick wrote:
Rev Malthus was incorrect in his analysis and the problem is not the number of people on the planet, it is the consumption and waste of [some] people.
Check out: https://overpopulationisamyth.com which robustly analyses the various arguments around overpopulation and debunks them.
Until we are all thinking more carefully about what we eat (whether it embodies fertiliser and fossil fuels), buy, how we work, travel and live, we can't be pointing the finger at others saying that they shouldn't exist.
Seems we are just scratching the surface of a very important topic. The difficulty with such the subject of how we should be living our lives and what the future holds for us, is that everybody has strong opinions, yet the amount of information collection and processing needed to draw definitive and accurate conclusions is nothing short of mind boggling. This is certainly not the beginnings of an argument that the future is unknowable at any level, but that the belief that we can know the texture and timing in detail of future events is somewhat absurd (Thank god that is true, imagine an existence where the future is already known).
Most often opinions about future events seem to be driven by justified anger and frustration about the current state of affairs and the future retribution we would like to see, rather than an objective view of what facts we can manage to assemble and digest to create a series of possible scenarios. That is certainly a forgivable sin, one which I have been guilty of many times. Worse though, I think, are those who are to lazy to think deeply about life and the future consequences of current actions, who rely on the accuracy of others prognostications to determine what might be around the corner waiting for us. Or perhaps more likely, may feel guilty about the message some prognostications carry, and use the inaccuracy in timing to justify their own inaction.
And why all the emphasis on the timing of events anyway? Have we all turned into bankers, sitting on the sidelines, trying to connive a way to profit form events, regardless of what happens? Do we believe in anything any more? What about fighting for a lost cause, that may never come to pass, because it’s the right thing to do in our own opinion? Is that a waste of time?
I do believe that modern industrial agriculture is one of the most destructive inventions human beings have ever come up with. Its EROEI is definitely in deeply negative territory, forget about 0.8, its probably way south of 0.1. The idea of taking a large swath of the biosphere and trying to run it on nonrenewable energy to produce food is the definition of insanity, especially when we have models that are much more productive and sustainable to boot, without exploding human health consequence driven by the current system. Talk about an elephant in the room, that is the biggest one in the room by a wide shot. If I made a prediction that half of all food produced by the year 2050 would be coming from smaller scale farming operations that were founded on sustainable principals and was wrong would it mean that sustainable farming was a bad idea?
Which gets me around to the topic at hand. The needed EROEI of any technology is deeply dependent on the society in which it is embedded. If large swaths of the population are living in McMansions, driving long distances in SUV’s to destructive nonprodcutive (in the true sense of the meaning productive, not just income producing) jobs, and the rest of your population have the consumptive habits, trying to mimic that same lifestyle, then your energy producing technology better have a pretty high EROEI, probably north of 10 (that’s a wag of course). You’ll have of host of other problems that energy will not solve of course. But if you have a population that aspires to live sustainably and gets close to that goal, then EROEI’s just north of 1.0 may be just fine, even less than one in some limited instances. Think about a small rural farming family that is a net producer of energy, maybe at a ration of 5:1, then perhaps reducing their net output to 4:1 and having excess energy investing in electrical energy generation, even at a loss may make perfectly good sense.
And how this transition will play out, who knows, and how important is that knowledge anyway. We all have plenty to do right now. Anybody sitting around because you don’t know what’s going to happen in ten years? And if people are living a frivolous life without meaning, is scaring then about the future going to work, I’m not so sure. Those who think that population is a problem, well you can always take the problem into your own hands
Lets debate how we get rationally to next month, to next year and then beyond, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And any step in the right direction, is well, a step in the right direction, lets celebrate that, and motivate each other to do more.
So just where did the numbers come from that are in the CC? Seems like a huge disparity to me. Did things get that bad in such a short time or were the numbers bad to begin with?
https://www.pop.org/simple/our-mission/
Overpopulation is a Myth is run by Population Research Institute. These guys seem to be a Catholic-based group with a pro-life mission. I have plenty of sympathy with their aversion to governments meddling in people’s lives and that seems to be much of their concern (China’s one child policy etc).
However, I am not aware of any of the major religions being concerned with overpopulation or carrying capacity of the planet etc. Genesis speaks about, go forth and multiply…fill the world etc. When this was written in the Bronze Age that would not have been much of a problem, as nature kept populations in check. The math today is completely different with 7.6BN people in the world.
Dr. Hall stated “Now, some people have argued, some people I respect, have argued that we should multiply the electricity by three because if you’re putting in fossil fuel to make everything that you use – oil and gas and coal – and you’re producing electricity, then you should weight the electricity accordingly.” I don’t quite understand this argument.
Can someone kindly elaborate and explain? I would highly appreciate it. Thanks.
fkhalichi wrote:
Dr. Hall stated "Now, some people have argued, some people I respect, have argued that we should multiply the electricity by three because if you're putting in fossil fuel to make everything that you use – oil and gas and coal – and you're producing electricity, then you should weight the electricity accordingly." I don't quite understand this argument.
Can someone kindly elaborate and explain? I would highly appreciate it. Thanks.
When you consider a ton of coal has about 7500 Btu’s in it, which will be converted into electricity at, on average, 33%, that works out to around 2200 KwH’s (if I did my math right). Now add in all the associated costs of getting it to the power plant and you will scratch your head when you realize how blest we are having the abundance of cheap energy to power our electric tooth brushes! (Sorry for the sarcasm).
Chris, did you link to the wrong study? This one tears up the analysis that says EROI is <1, and puts it at 7-8. In any case, it shows how complicated this all is, and how there is not good agreement between experts.
Cariolian Starfighter wrote:
Chris, did you link to the wrong study? This one tears up the analysis that says EROI is <1, and puts it at 7-8. In any case, it shows how complicated this all is, and how there is not good agreement between experts.
Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation July 2016 (Lots and lots of geeky math and explorations of study boundaries removed here…) Conclusion The calculated value for ERoEI is dimensionless, constituting the energy return (2203 kW he/m2) divided by the energy invested (2664 kW he/m2) – a ratio of 0.82. It is estimated that these numbers could have an error of ±15%, so that, despite a string of optimistic choices resulting in low values of energy investments, the ERoEI is significantly below 1. In other words, an electrical supply system based on today’s PV technologies cannot be termed an energy source, but rather a non-sustainable energy sink or a non-sustainable NET ENERGY LOSS. The methodology recommended by the expert working group of the IEA appears to yield EROI levels which lie between 5 and 6, but which are really not meaningful for determining the efficiency, sustainability and affordability of an energy source. The main conclusions to be drawn are:I have literally zero idea where you got "EROI 7-8" from. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to quote the appropriate text?
- The result of rigorously calculating the “extended ERoEI” for regions of moderate insolation levels as experienced in Switzerland and Germany proves to be very revealing. It indicates that, at least at today's state of development, the PV technology cannot offer an energy source but a NET ENERGY LOSS, since its ERoEIEXT is not only very far from the minimum value of 5 for sustainability suggested by Murphy and Hall (2011), but is less than 1.
- Our advanced societies can only continue to develop if a surplus of energy is available, but it has become clear that photovoltaic energy at least will not help in any way to replace the fossil fuel. On the contrary we find ourselves suffering increased dependence on fossil energy. Even if we were to select, or be forced to live in a simpler, less rapidly expanding economic environment, photovoltaic technology would not be a wise choice for helping to deliver affordable, environmentally favourable and reliable electricity regions of low, or even moderate insolation, since it involves an extremely high expenditure of material, human and capital resources.
- Research and development should however, be continued in order in future to have more efficient conversion from sunlight to electricity and a cheaper, more reliable PV-technology offering increased efficiency and a longer, failure-free lifetime. The market will then develop naturally.
I see - I read the wrong article at your link! But this goes to show how complicated this all is, I think I would have to be an expert in Solar PV ERoEI to really be able to tell which paper I feel is correct (I said “feel”, because despite being an electrical engineer, this is not my field). It used to be very important to me to understand if solar can “save us” - but I’ve gradually moved into the doomer camp (I feel Alice Friedemann does a fantastic job of explaining this), and am (slowly) preparing my family for the future.
I was reading: Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation: A comprehensive response
Conclusions:
Our revised EROI and EROIEXT values for PV systems in Switzerland,3 calculated according to the formula adopted by Ferroni and Hopkirk (i.e., as the ratio of the total electrical output to the ‘equivalent electrical energy’ investment), but based on the arguments and numbers presented in this paper are, respectively, EROI≈9–10 (when adhering to widely adopted ‘conventional’ system boundaries as recommended by the IEA (Raugei et al., 2016)) and EROIEXT≈7–8 (when instead adopting ‘extended’ system boundaries that also include the energy investments for service inputs such as ‘project management’ and insurance). It is especially noteworthy that even the latter EROIEXT range is one order of magnitude higher than 0.8 which was obtained by Ferroni and Hopkirk.
I see - I read the wrong article at your link! But this goes to show how complicated this all is, I think I would have to be an expert in Solar PV ERoEI to really be able to tell which paper I feel is correct (I said “feel”, because despite being an electrical engineer, this is not my field). It used to be very important to me to understand if solar can “save us” - but I’ve gradually moved into the doomer camp (I feel Alice Friedemann does a fantastic job of explaining this), and am (slowly) preparing my family for the future.
I was reading: Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation: A comprehensive response
Conclusions:
Our revised EROI and EROIEXT values for PV systems in Switzerland,3 calculated according to the formula adopted by Ferroni and Hopkirk (i.e., as the ratio of the total electrical output to the ‘equivalent electrical energy’ investment), but based on the arguments and numbers presented in this paper are, respectively, EROI≈9–10 (when adhering to widely adopted ‘conventional’ system boundaries as recommended by the IEA (Raugei et al., 2016)) and EROIEXT≈7–8 (when instead adopting ‘extended’ system boundaries that also include the energy investments for service inputs such as ‘project management’ and insurance). It is especially noteworthy that even the latter EROIEXT range is one order of magnitude higher than 0.8 which was obtained by Ferroni and Hopkirk.
Chris,
Nice interview and very relevant to get Dr. Hall on the podcast. I have been following his work since 2013 and also the development of EROI on energy systems. Two things from the interview.
- I was happy to hear about a new book from Dr. Hall. He mentions early in the interview:
“and I’ll put in a plug for my new book, Energy and the Wealth of Nations; An Introduction to Biophysical Economics that’s available from Springer. And it will be out almost as we speak. And all of these concepts are developing in excruciating detail there.”
I cannot find a new book recently out. I already own and bought his book about Energy which came out in 2011. Great if you could clarify since I would like to check the “new” book out? - The information on EROI on solar I think should be read with caution. The Spain experience should be looked into with new eyes since the panels and systems have improved significantly since then. The efficiency of panels has tripled and continues to do so. Additionally, the new type of panels called Perovskite is developing that use one-tenth of the energy to be produced. Fair enough they do not work yet in industrial settings, but looks promising.
So, to be fair to your audience I think it is important to not only talk about doom and gloom since there are technologies on the horizon that could be feasible in a future energy system. All these systems should be looked at through a lens of EROI testing. We must manage to use the limited fossil energy resources (with high EROI) we have left and invest them a renewable energy system that can function on a more limited EROI.
Thanks!