A Framework for Incorporating EROI into Electrical Storage
The fundamental problem with a transition to renewable energy is that modern society has been structured around demand-based power flows. Any quantity of power is available at any time - the only limit is the circuit breaker in your mains connection. But the major...
Leif Wenar- Blood Oil
From 1807, Britain tried to suppress the Atlantic slave trade until eventual success its 1867. In the late eighteenth century nearly everyone of influence or power in Britain had a direct or indirect interest in the slave trade. In 1805–1806 the value of British West...
The Maximum Power Principle
Lotka and Odum In 1922, Lotka proposed a ‘law of maximum energy’ for biological systems. He reasoned that what was most important to the survival of an organism was a large energetic output in the form of growth, reproduction, and maintenance. Organisms with a high...
The EROI energy multiplier hypothesis
A common narrative in EROI discourse is the energy multiplier hypothesis. The reasoning is that it doesn’t matter what the EROI is, providing it’s greater than unity. From this reasoning, it follows that even very low EROI’s (say 1.2:1) aren’t a problem because you...
Cost-constrained versus EROI-constrained electricity generation
One of the challenges for EROI researchers is explaining in simple terms why EROI matters. I’m planning on doing a series of short posts exploring the relevance of EROI. This first post simply makes the observation that embodied energy (the reciprocal of EROI), and...