Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI)

Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) shapes our lives.  ERoEI says it takes energy – mining, drilling, refining, transporting – to get the energy we use.  In simple terms, EROI is a commonly-used calculation of how much energy is needed to locate, extract, and refine an output of energy - in this case, oil from shale. In more technical terms, EROI is the ratio of the energy delivered by a process to the energy used directly and indirectly for that process. An EROI of 1:1 means no energy is gained from producing the energy resource.

A paper recently published in Energy Policy by Ferrucio Ferroni and Robert J. Hopkirk and titled Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation. They used a similar methodology thart Charles Hall and Pedro Prieto used in their study for 4 GW in Spain. That is, they considered not only the usual energy inputs for modules and its components and/or some immediate accesories to them, but also some societal sine qua non energy input expenses for solar systems and concludes that in these regions (countries like Germany and Switzerland), the EROI is 0.85:1.

Scientific studies show it takes years to payback the energy used in solar electric devices. EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) says it takes energy – mining, drilling, refining, transporting, installing, maintenance, and replacement parts – to make the devices necessary to capture solar energy.

Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment by Prieto, Pedro A., Hall, Charles  2013.

http://www.springer.com/energy/renewable+and+green+energy/book/978-1-4419-9436-3

and  http://energyskeptic.com/2013/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/

and Book Review:  Energy in Australia - Peak Oil, Solar Power, and Asia’s Economic Growth by Graham Palmer http://www.springer.com/energy/renewable+and+green+energy/book/978-3-319-02939-9

Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution presents the first complete energy analysis of a large-scale, real-world deployment of photovoltaic (PV) collection systems representing 3.5 GW of installed, grid-connected solar plants in Spain.  Prieto and Hall conclude that the EROI of solar photovoltaic is only 2.45, very low despite Spain’s ideal sunny climate.  Germany’s EROI is probably 20 to 33% less (1.6 to 2), due to less sunlight and efficient rooftop installations.

“Solar advocates can learn from this analysis . . . “  Not looking at the reality of EROI “is not good science and leads to wasted money and energy that could have been better spent preparing more wisely for declining fossil fuels in the future.”

This study does not detail the environmental destructive mining, toxic chemicals or air and water pollution necessary to get the materials for manufacturing and installing solar devices.  It is the sun not the devices that is renewable, green and sustainable.

Here are some ERoEI calculations for selected energies.

EROI (for US)    Fuel

1.3          Biodiesel

3.0          Bitumen tar sands

1.3          Ethanol corn

6.8          Photovoltaic

5.0    Shale oil

1.6    Solar collector

1.9    Solar flat plate

18.0 Wind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested

This study puts photovoltaics much lower and is the most recent and peer reviewed.

http://energyskeptic.com/2013/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/

It is important to understand that the “renewable” energies like wind use lots of fossil fuels to mine, process, manufacture, transport, assemble and do multiple maintenances during the year.  They have an estimated 20-year life span.  Where will the energy come from to manufacture the next batch?  They do not reproduce themselves like a horse or an oak tree.

See:

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/01/energy-in-real-world.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/thruanotherlens.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-small-fan.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-make-light-bulb.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-hammer-looking-for-nail.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/11/to-die-for.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-step-beyond-business-as-usual.html

The way it works is you give me $20 and I give you $1 in return for 20 years.  Of course, if there is inflation (part replacement) then I must adjust my payment to you accordingly.

We must aim for a simpler lifestyle.  I know I am whistling into the wind but it is not my world but yours and if have children, your children's.  

Even the electricity from the Becker, Minnesota, plant requires not just coal but diesel to run the huge trucks, scoops for mining and three 100 car trains to bring the coal. 

http://www.xcelenergy.com/About_Us/Our_Company/Power_Generation/Sherburne_County_%28Sherco%29_Generating_Station

Here is just one of the trucks used for coal and copper.  Copper being critical for the way we live.  It is one of the smaller ones.
See:http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html

MT5500 statistics include a gross vehicle weight of over 1,100,000 pounds. The truck

is 46 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 24 feet tall. The MT5500 house's a 16 cylinder,

3000 horsepower engine requiring 264 quarts of oil and consumes fuel at the rate of

137 gallons per engine/hour. 21/2 Gallons a minute or over 1 Gallon every 30

seconds !

“The EROI for oil in the US during the heydays of oil development in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana in the 1930s was about 100 returned for one invested.  .  .  . declining to about 20:1 in the first half decade of the 2000s.”

http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/6318?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theoildrum+%28The+Oil+Drum%29

The shale oil ERoEI is around 1 to 5; this is the minimum needed to maintain life as we know it.  However, the decline rate of an individual well in the region is very high, and thus the industry has to continue to drill wells at a rapid rate, just to replace the decline. 

“From Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: Red Queen ‘It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place’ "

Presently the estimated breakeven price for the “average” well in the Bakken formation in North Dakota is $80 - $90/Bbl.   In plain language this means that presently the commercial profitability for new wells is barely positive.

The “average” well now yields around 85,000 Bbls during the first 12 months of production and then experiences a year over year decline of 40% (+/-) 2% .

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9748

Easily accessible oil peaked in 2005.  We now are finding only the hardest to retrieve and lowest ERoEI in the oceans, the artic, in shale, in tar sands.  It endangers the environment now and for your grandchildren’s future.

We will do anything and everything to maintain our present personal level of energy use and the comfort it affords us.  We will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people, and even to ourselves to continue on this path. The proof of this assertion is simple; we are doing it.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/02/curmudgeon-report.html

AERIAL SHOTS OF FARM AND HOME

Got these off Google Earth.  May 2003.

Click on the pictures for an enlarged view

THIS IS THE 40 ACRES

AREA WE ARE USING NOW.

OUR HOME ON THE LAKE 

SOLAR COLLECTORS AND GREENHOUSE

Serious Overcharge

 

In September, I went for a stress test at St. Joseph Hospital in Brainerd, MN.  My breathing is poor because of previous lung cancer so my performance was poor.  I had told the doctor this but he insisted on the stress test.  I didn’t last long. The nurse gave me a nitro pill.  She walked three paces to a cabinet, got the pill, put it in a little white cup, came back and gave it to me.

I later received a bill for $41.50.  Trusting the hospital and my insurance, I paid it.

A month later, I received another bill for $220 for medication that Medicare and Medica would not pay.

So I got a list of the medications and what the hospital was charging me.  I found out that the charge of $41.50 was for the nitro pill. The charge for the ONE pill was $41.50.  At my regular pharmacy, they cost me $1.25 a piece.  I am sure my pharmacy is making a profit at $1.25.

This is atrocious. There is simply no way that there is $40 worth of effort to get that pill.  Unless of course that was a very expensive little, white cup.

So, as I said, I got a list of the medications that I was being charge $220 by the hospital.  I developed an Excel spreadsheet with their charges, the charges at the local pharmacy and the percentage difference.  At the pharmacy, it would have been $7.55.

I sent all this information with a cover letter to the hospital administrator along with a check for $15.10 - wanted them to have a profit.   I figured the hospital would simply ignore my concerns.  They would dog me with collections. They have all the power.

I received a call from the chief financial officer.  They were accepting my check as payment in full.  He apologized for the cost of the meds and explained that the price I found from my retail pharmacy was the price they paid also.  He said they were looking into how to reduce their charges.    Hummmmmm.

I was pleased.

This is one of the reasons why our insurance is so high.  It is time our elected state and federal senators and representatives do something about this.  They still are working for us, aren’t they?

It is tough enough having to go to the hospital.  Going to the hospital should not involve me having to battle for reasonable prices.  It is stressful for any of us.

A Hammer looking for a Nail

A local man and friend wants to bring “Gardening for Decades” to the schools along with a mock up of a solar home with panels of various kinds.  He works for a local organization that has as an auxiliary a manufacturer of solar hot air panels and an installer of solar electric panels.  The main man funding all this made big money with an invention.  He is now working on fusion. 

I told my friend whom I have known for many years that I was afraid he was creating false hopes among the young.

John,

Thanks for your honesty and concern.  "Gardening for decades" I feel has value.  The reality is that very few small and medium farms are making a profit, let alone a living wage, yet many continue to try. False hope is definitely not what we are looking to create, but your knowledge of whole systems could be very valuable, I believe.

Maybe we can get together and discuss.

Jim

**********************************************************

My Answer

I have several essays that I would suggest you read since I have covered some of this material already. (see end of this message)   I don’t believe it will make any difference.  There are those who believe technology will “save us”.  To me they are simply “business as usual” proponents who do not look at the whole system of energy and other resources necessary for the “saving”. 

This is the tale of the technologist/cornucopian.  

  “.   .   .   Abraham Kaplan’s.  .  . : "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."  .  .   .  also been called the law of the hammer, attributed both to Maslow and to Kaplan.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument

I heard it, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

In the 70s, I was at a debate where Dean Abrahamson, a physicists and physician at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, trashed the proponents of nuclear power.  A man sitting next to be was actually crying.  I asked him what was the matter.  He said, “I work for GE making nuclear power plants, this is how I feed my family.” http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2012/02/get-job.html

There is much to be addressed in the unintended consequences of technology and in the blind use of technology without total system consideration.  Having said that I continue to tilt at windmills.

I agree, "Gardening for decades" not only has value; it is a necessity.  I do not see this as “business as usual” simply absorbing gardening as another activity like golf or travel agent or wind generator technician.   For me, sustainability means the majority of us (globally) will need to be horticulturalist and practice animal husbandry.  

However, if “gardening for decades” is high towers and hydroponics and solar collectors heating the ground – then, to me, this is industrial gardening and not in anyway, shape or form sustainable.  This could be among my concerns of creating false hope.

It is the sustainability that I challenge.  How we live now is not sustainable – not physically and not psychologically.   It is a finite earth.  The present bright light - both literally from fossil fuels and metaphorically from human creativity - is simply too glaring in its need for resources and continued consumption.  Not only is this not sustainable; it threatens the very ecosystem that sustains life including our own – oceans, rivers, underground water, air, nuclear releases, human made chemical envelopment, overpopulation fostered by fossil fuel energy and its products (overshoot), invasive genetic manipulation, warming climate to name a few of the converging harms. 

As an aside, if fusion should be developed, what will stop it from continuing the trashing of the earth?  How will we assess the unintended consequences? This is more “business as usual”  (BAU)  For me the best place for fusion is 93 million miles away on the sun. 

Most looking at sustainability would address the physical needs -daily, seasonal and generational - to arrive at a sustainable way of being.  This is a question of materials and technology.   My belief is that we must also address the social/psychological questions, or all the technological adjustments in the world will only result across time (considered in generations not millenniums) with “same old, same old”. 

We are the biggest hurdle we face.  Without a resolution, I address this at the end of the essay.

Physically, our lifestyle/lifeway will need to be at a lesser level of energy consumption; a lesser level of nonfuel mineral consumption such as copper, iron, aluminum, rare minerals, phosphorus and many others for a non-brutish, yet simple lifestyle.

Envision this gardeningway - what physical tools are needed?  Hoes, shovels, cultivators, wagons, pumps, .  .  .  .

For each of these tools, we need to be able to answer the questions about what resources and energy sources are available to make them?   We need to ask the question what is the infrastructure that makes these tools available?  If you have steel, is it straight from ore or is it recycled?  Is that recycling via remelting and fabricating?   Or is it recycling by mining today’s trash and adapting the given shapes to needs?   What energy is needed to accomplish either of these approaches?  What quantity can be made?  Quality? 

How will the land be replenished?  If it is three-field rotation, how much land per person, family, group is needed for long term sustainability?  There must be a community of people to trade and interact.  Even more important, there must be many communities that are not human or human dominated.  In space and time, these need to be multiples of each human community.  We must not mine them for food, other energy or other minerals. 

What animals will be incorporated in the whole system as was done on farms of old?   All the questions of similar ilk for animal husbandry.   

How will we transport things?  How will we work the land?  How fast do we need to go?  A human and a horse walk around 3 mph.  How much “horse power” do we need?  What is the motive force?

Water???   How – a well?  Irrigation for the garden? 

There is one study out of Stanford University that says we can meet all our energy needs with “renewables” by 2030.  They do not really look at the whole system – infrastructure to make and continue making.   They also propose 50% from wind by 2030 which would entail if started in 2012 – 24 massive wind machines built and installed every hour, 24 hours a day for 18 years.  They argue (I had a lengthy email discussion with one of the authors) that we do that with automobiles.  Talk about more trashing of the environment.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

If all of these concerns are not part of the equation, then technologically, I believe you are selling pipe dreams (not necessarily with a pipe but for me certainly myopic and a fantasy for the future).

However, the technology for the future is not our main problem.  The conundrum facing us is our own human/natural selves. There are at least five natural factors that determine and will continue to determine our history and future.

* All life reproduces to the maximum that their environment allows (this is population density).

* All life will use all the resources in its environment to promote its present living (this is population pressure).

* Much of life manifests an ‘us against them’ protectionism (even plants release poisons to the soil to protect their territory).  This is not conflict for physical resources but also political and religious beliefs.  This is the convergence of territoriality (which is manifest by all life) and the need to belong for this dependently social animal called human.

* We are immersed in an environment of our own making and our "brilliance" threatens us with unintended consequences (whether agriculture, human-made chemicals in the water or nuclear power).

* Groups larger than the small group of 30 to 200 people, which is the social environment in which we evolved for a million years, creates power-over and inequality.

These five factors are a natural part of life and being human. For more detailed exposition:  http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/we-are-here.html

As a psychologist, I must add – once we deal with these five issues, we must then deal with the idiosyncrasies and “wounds” of individuals because family and culture inevitably shape us.  To paraphrase Arno Gruen, “to be born human is to be born into a dangerous situation because no one knows what they are doing.”  From Betrayal of the Self.

Here is a piece I wrote several decades ago:

If humanity were seen as a person who is 100 years old, the first 99 years of her life would have been spent as gatherer and hunter.  She would have only one year to adapt to the changes in family structure, living arrangements, child rearing and all the other pressures and stresses that the shift to agriculture brought.  This same 100-year-old person would have five or six days to adapt to the enormous changes brought about by the industrial revolution.   And less than a day to adapt to the mass of information made available by electronics.

Each adaptation moves us further away from the original social and physical environment of our emergence.  Is it bad or wrong?  This is not the criterion.  There is no fault.  Each accommodation comes from necessity and is the best we know at the time.  At the leading edge of human history is an accumulation that expands and deepens the knowledge of our travels.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2010/05/superman-plays-with-kryptonite-dice.html

“.  .  . it is easy to take up technics; it is almost impossible to lay them down.”

Introduction written by Frederick Wilhelmsen to The Failure of Technology by Frederich Jueger.  1956. pg. Viii.

“How you gonna keep them down on the farm once they have seen Paree?”

This is my concern – it is the hammer concern.  If you teach the young people that this technology will allow them to live a certain way, for me you are inadvertently and without malice misleading them.

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/thruanotherlens.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-middle-ages.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-confuse-me-with-facts.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/01/energy-in-real-world.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-make-light-bulb.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2012/06/willful-blindness-willful-hypocrisy-you.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/01/industrial-gardening-high-tunnels.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-small-fan.html

http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/11/to-die-for.html

To Die For

Many parents work hard to assure their children’s future.  Many if asked would give their lives for their children and grandchildren. If a culture/society is at threat from outside forces, starvation or environmental stress, this support for the next generations falls by the wayside.  However, in general, mothers, fathers and grandparents will protect the future of their offspring.

We are surrounded by a litany of threats to the future - fracking, deep ocean drilling, tar sands; pollution from mountain top removal, destruction of natural resources, dying oceans, climate disasters of epic proportions, dangers of genetic engineering; corporate control, and population overshoot to name a few of the less subtle. Some would have more technology to combat these problems or at best forestall them.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

For citizens of developed nations, this is about lifestyle – energy and other resource consumption – will we change our lifestyle for the children and grandchildren’s future?  NO.

And now for a rousing chorus of – Yes, but .  .  .

There is one legitimate “Yes, but .  .  . 

You can't get there (wherever there is) from here!

A Small Fan

A small fan in my solar electric system died.  It kept a major part of the system from overheating and is necessary for continuous operation.  To manufacture that small fan a massive industrial infrastructure is necessary to provide the components.

The fan motor is wound with copper wire that comes from newly mined copper because of the need for purity.  “Wire supply is produced predominantly from newly refined copper .  .  .”

http://recycling.about.com/od/Recycling/a/Facts-About-Copper-Recycling.htm

k Joseph, Günter, 1999, “Copper: Its Trade, Manufacture, Use, and Environmental Status”, edited by Kundig, Konrad J.A., ASM International Vol. 2.03, Electrical Conductors

Copper mining is done in huge pits using massive machines.  The refining of the ore is a series of processes, chemicals and along with the mining, intensive energy use.  You can see a DVD of this process on “Modern Marvels: Copper”.  You can also see a diagram and pictures of the equipment and process at:

http://www.mine-engineer.com/mining/copperm.htm

A fascinating recent documentary on PBS – “Raw to Ready” - showed the development of the massive Komatsu 930-E: 

“to extract precious metals found beneath the earth requires a massive 232-ton, two-story-tall dump truck with a load capacity of 320 tons — a giant earth-mover like the Komatsu 930E. This amazing engineering achievement is made possible by five essential raw ingredients: coal, chromium, mineral oil, latex rubber and sulphuric acid, an electron superhighway that generates massive power.”

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365097595/

http://www.wgte.org/wgte/item.asp?item_id=15847

The manufacture of my solar electric system, in its use of copper, is tied into an international infrastructure of machines, equipment and energy. Aluminum, rare metals, coal, plastics, glass, rubber, multiple chemicals and many other material components are also a necessary additional part of this global material complex. 

Furthermore, it is dependent on this far ranging system for replacement parts.

Where are the motors in your world? – water pump, air conditioner, windshield wiper, and on and on and on.

Being aware of where things come from and what is involved in obtaining them is a major step in being responsible.  

There are many who will in private admit we are trashing the earth. 

Mindlessly!

Copper Mining Info

http://www.mine-engineer.com/mining/copperm.htm

The above flowsheet shows a basic copper mine process, from mine to metal. There are two distinct types of copper ore, the sulfide ore and the oxide ore. The sulfide ores are beneficiated in flotation cells, while the oxide ores are generally leached. First the copper ore from a open pit mine is blasted, loaded and transported to the primary crushers. Then the ore is crushed and screened, with the fine sulfide ore (~-0.5 mm) going to froth flotation cells for recovery of copper. The coarser ore goes to the heap leach, where the copper is subjected to a dilute sulfuric acid solution to dissolve the copper. Then the leach solution containing the dissolved copper is subjected to a process called solvent extraction (SX). The SX process concentrates and purifies the copper leach solution so the copper can be recovered at a high electrical current efficiency by the electrowinning cells. It does this by adding a chemical reagent to the SX tanks which selectively binds with and extracts the copper, is easily separated from the copper (stripped), recovering as much of the reagent as possible for re-use. The concentrated copper solution is dissolved in sulfuric acid and sent to the electrolytic cells for recovery as copper plates (cathodes). From the copper cathodes, it is manufactured into wire, appliances, etc. that are used in every day life. Below are some photos of the process:

The primary crusher at a copper mine. The truck dumps ore into the crusher which crushes the ore. Screens size and distribute the classified ore to a series of conveyors, like those above, for transportation to the mill for further processing.

Conveyors and trucks deposit coarse ore on a heap leach pad, which has a series of pipes and hoses dispensing a diluted sulfuric acid solution to the ore. Copper is dissolved and flows to a pond at the bottom of the pad. This process can take several months. The leached solution is pumped to the SX (Solvent Extraction) circuit, which looks like a series of agitation tanks or cells. The fine sulfide ore is sent to froth flotation cells like those below for recovery.

The concentrates from the flotation cells are sent to the smelter for processing to a copper plate. The copper plate is then dissolved in sulfuric acid and sent to the electrowinning cells for plating onto cathodes, along with the concentrated copper from the SX circuits. The copper leach solution typically consists of 40 gm of copper and 200 gm sulfuric acid per liter. Current densities on the electrowinning cells can be 300 amperes per square foot, or more.

Banks of electrowinning cells with cathodes. Copper on the annodes ranges from 99.0 to 99.5 percent pure. Power consumed in electroplating copper ranges from 0.08 to 0.20 KWH per pound of copper. Any gold or silver in the copper does not plate out and drops to the bottom of the cell with the sludge to be recovered later.

Machine transporting and handling the copper cathodes that were removed from the electrowinning cells. That's it, the rest is manufacturing products from the pure copper!

Our Potatoes

We grew 800 pounds of potatoes this year (2013).  They are specialty potatoes - adirondack blues, adirondack reds, all blue, fingerlings and a couple other types.  Here is a picture of half of them curing on the floor of our new building.

Here is our logo.  In Northern Minnesota there are many rocks, bigggg rocks and they are always slowly coming to the surface.  The red containers we got for free and adapted them to hold our potatoes.  They are about a bushel.   The plastic buckets we get from a local bakery.

This is the sign we have hanging from our mailbox.

 When we built the root cellar, we screwed the roof down with torque screws.  This august we took the roof off, went up a level and put it back on.  There are 6 inches of insulation in the walls and 12 inches in the ceiling.  Right now we are using it as a work house but other possibilities exist.  Below we still have a root cellar wall off so that will also be a basement below.  This last year our potatoes lasted before setting eyes until the first of July in the root cellar.  Even then they remained firm and edible.   Below is the before and after of the building.