And incase anyone is wondering - nitrogen feed(aka fertilizer) is , which is primarily .
No fossil fuels = no fertilizer = .
European Economics Thread
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And incase anyone is wondering - nitrogen feed(aka fertilizer) is , which is primarily .
No fossil fuels = no fertilizer = .
Yeah, I think you should know that EROEI doesn't work like you think it does. First, it diminishes - if at all - for non-renewable resources like oil, it doesn't diminish in general and certainly not for energy sources like solar and wind. If anything, it rises as producing solar panels and wind turbines becomes more efficient.
Much more importantly, EROEI that has to do with exponential expansion. I've seen the number 4 quoted as the EROEI for solar; I don't know how accurate that is but it'll serve for illustration. That means each solar panel can provide the energy to create 4 solar panels over its lifetime. If we deduct one panel to replace its parent, that means each panel can create 3 excess panels. That's exponential expansion with a base of 3: 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243,... Since solar panels are made out of sand, we could basically coat the Earth with solar panels without stopping. So long as EROEI > 2, it's an exponentially expanding process.
Another factor to consider is the time between generations. Nuclear power has an EROEI of around 70, so it might seem like a clear winner. However, if it takes longer to create 70 new nuclear power plants from the energy of the parent plant (a single "generation") than it takes to create four generations of solar plants (81 in total), then solar is far more scalable even if it has much lower EROEI.
How did "great dieoff"s come to be associated with a concept as technical as EROEI?
In the health industry there is a saying that "not all calories are the same''... For example a sugar calorie is not qualitatively the same as a calorie from carbs or that of one from protein.
Globally on average for every calorie of food consumed, about 9 other additional calories of energy went into growing, producing, processing, transporting that food to make it available for consumption.
Before the age of hydrocarbons (coal, oil, natural gas, etc) the global human population stood at just barely 1 billion total, today in less than 150 years since the industrial revolution (which was underpinned by hydrocarbons and petroleum etc) we have shot up exponentially to soon 8 billion or more humans on this ever crowded and increasingly biodegraded planet.
Indeed, everything from asphalt for roads, to rubber for tires, to plastics for virtually all the stuff we buy, and to fertilizers and pesticides that help grow the food we eat at the scale and quantities that enable feeding 8 billion mouths are all entirely dependant upon hydrocarbon deposits underground in some form or another.
Recall that electricity is not a source of energy, it is merely only a carrier of energy. Oil (and coal and natural gas) on the other hand does not require an additional form of energy storage, it is its own storage and ready to be immediately used from day 0. Then there are the issues with batteries at scale, and the rate limiting factors of raw materials and rare earths to effectively make "renewables" are really just "replaceables"... It would be naïve to think that the rate limiting factor to solar scaling up is just 'sand', no more realistic than to say since IC chips are made of silicon than the semiconductor fabs in Arizona should have no issue since that's a dessert place with no shortage of sand.
For example our house solar panels lose 7% efficiency per year, so after a decade it's only 50 percent effective. After 20 years it needs to be completely replaced altogether. But currently solar is enjoying triple subsidies of 1) governments giving rebates and tax breaks 2) China making it cheaper for the world to afford solar and 3) the world's primary energy source is still using the energy dense oil/coal/NG to power the installations and implementation of said solar in the first place! So effectively the governments are propping it up, China is shouldering the burden, and we also get the energy subsidy (which is not to be confused with the two aforementioned economic subsidizes) of being able to build it out cheaply but by definition as "replaceables" like solar start to scale up more and more and start taking over for hydrocarbons as primary energy source then it will run into three walls that it will never be able to overcome (for reasons explained below)....
The "energy payback time of renewables means it will incur a permanent 'energy taxation' on all work/productivity/interactions in society somewhere between 20% to 40%, and this a thermodynamic physical energy taxation that comes before any government taxation (resulting in a total collapse of global economies and permanent macroeconomic depression everywhere) and that is even assuming there are enough raw resources to scale up (and later maintain) renewables to replace fossil fuels in mass in the first place. (there is not)
None of the renewables are energy dense enough (high threshold of EROEI) to power modern society at scale and certainly not the kind of globalized world we have become accustomed to...
Modern civilization is built upon both the expectation and the requirement of perpetual infinite growth in order to be sustained, and its tenet is one of always borrowing from the expectation of future growth to use as collateral to pay for the present/current debts and expenses.....
People tend to forget that coal, oil, and natural gas are basically a billion year sunlight inheritance and endowment of 'free energy' that we already received from our sun and mother nature. And yet in less than 150 years since the dawn of the industrial revolution (and really most of it in the tail end of the last two decades) collectively we have already used up most of the billion year sunlight energy and certainly all of the low hanging fruit first (back in the day EROEI of oil was 100, now it's not even 10... all the sweet stuff is gone and its down energy intensive deep drilling to get dirty sulphuric low energy crap )
Net energy, and net usable energy is what counts. And all of the goods and services in the modern economy, without exception, require such an energy input. As that societies/civilizations primary energy sources dwindle and/or its EROEI (total net usable energy in terms of Energy Returned on Energy Invested) threshold declines, then so does that society’s money likewise deflate and devalue. The same unit of money will be able to fetch less energy, produce less work, contribute to less productivity, and thus enable less real economic activity etc
And globally, that has been decreasing (it peaked) and we have been in terminal decline. Human body is 70% water by weight, but you don't have to lose every last drop of water to die. At a 10% water loss you are on the verge of death by dehydration and at 20% loss you are already more dead than Abe.
Modern civilization and global economies are all (China included) marginalized to the hilt, it needs a minimum EROEI just to survive (and a higher threshold to thrive) and prop up the superstructure itself. Below that threshold everything falls apart and unravels.... this is indeed precisely what is happening in the world today and it's the real reason nations are all going into debt, printing like there is no tomorrow, and currencies are all being debased as cost inflation skyrockets past wage/income; because at the end of the day its net energy that gives money its raw purchasing power and thus inherent value, as access to energy and resources decline then commensurately so does the money lose its value...
Modern money derives almost entirely its real purchasing power (and thus its value) from the energy that enables the underlying "work/force/productivity multiplier-effect" in the context of the society in which it exists. Modern "money" is a claim on existing energy deposit's future ability to do "work". Put another way, money as a claim on energy, specifically, it is the ability to use the money to apply that energy to do productive work in the future. (When the money is spent/exchanged/actualized in the context of a society that still has readily access to available net energy for use)
Using money to measure economic activity is like using an ever-shrinking ruler/yardstick to measure the dimensions of your physical property and volume of your tangible assets.... even as you get poorer and had to sell off more of your things, if your ruler or measurement device is shrinking at a faster pace, then it would still appear by all measurements you were well off (for example using money to measure GDP as a signifier of the health or status of a nation or global economy when in fact the dollar is constantly losing its purchasing power)
All the economic models of modern times are based on the axiomatic and 'a priori' assumption of infinite perpetual growth... and none of the models account for the fact that by all accounts back in late 2019 we have already globally peaked... that nest egg you saved up (401k, social security, retirement, investments) is not going to be there for you for the simple fact that the global useable energy is gone... The raw purchasing power of money was always almost entirely inflated by the availability of cheap and abundantly high-quality energy (and the “work/productivity multiplier effect” derived thereof) and the assumption that it would always be the case of remaining exercisable and actualizable into perpetuity...
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We are essentially, for all intents and purposes, living in a so-called Fractional Reserve Energy Economy. In that there is not a commensurate amount of energy set aside or locked away for each unit of money invested, printed or saved.
Energy is priced on the basis of output vs consumption demand, even as the total global reserves themselves are starting to run empty/dry but as long as it can be pumped out at roughly the same rate then the price stays relatively stable... But this false stability is misleading because the total remaining extractable/usable net energy reserves in the world are already far less than the amount of total money out there in circulation and in terms of monies saved up or in the form of investments, retirement funds, profits earned and accumulated etc etc
Energy is being priced by an economic system that relies upon the assumption that the very instruments of what it is relying on to price will always exist into perpetuity.
Global average/aggregate EROEI of 2 (your hypothetical example) would mean we would need at least another 7 more earths to maintain just our current way of life and current standard of living.... perpetual growth in any finite environment is mathematical impossibility.
Simple thought experiment: you are a hamster on a flat 2D plane /surface that extends infinitely in all directions and there is a peanut placed every X meters away from you in all four directions of North, South, East and West. Effectively on this infinite surface you have access to infinite energy sources of infinite peanuts everywhere. But yet there is a distance X in meters or whatever units that if the placement were to exceed this distance/value that the hamster would still starve to death if it took him more energy to go from one peanut to the next one than the effective energy he could net gain from eating each peanut etc.... this is what I mean by an EROEI of 2 would never work.... at least not without an earth with fresh supplies the size of Jupiter
Then there is the matter of the Energy Trap and don't forget about Jevons paradox applied to global scale....
All the Paris Accords and talk about going green is lip service, at first sign of economic contraction everyone is going back to dirty coal and whatever else there is to burn in order to keep their people alive and to stall off economic implosion for a little while longer. So if the EU and US cheats and then China is left doing the honorable thing then China will lose out in terms of growth and development and GDP. Jevons paradox means any good/progress for the world that China makes in terms of going green and conservation and renewables etc will merely be wiped out by some other country like India or the USA unless all major nations are onboard.... and since America won't even be onboard with not nuking everyone to death (pulled out of START and other treaties) the chance of this is literally zero...
And if you take the time to truly read up and understand the notion of this Energy Trap (in terms of not being able to make the transition from fossil fuels to anything else) even China would be hard pressed to pull it off, so we can absolutely forget about India or the USA or even the Europe, not to mention the rest of the developing third world....
Energy is priced on the basis of output vs consumption demand, even as the total global reserves themselves are starting to run empty/dry but as long as it can be pumped out at roughly the same rate then the price stays relatively stable... But this false stability is misleading because the total remaining extractable/usable net energy reserves in the world are already far less than the amount of total money out there in circulation and in terms of monies saved up or in the form of investments, retirement funds, profits earned and accumulated etc etc
Energy is being priced by an economic system that relies upon the assumption that the very instruments of what it is relying on to price will always exist into perpetuity.
Global average/aggregate EROEI of 2 (your hypothetical example) would mean we would need at least another 7 more earths to maintain just our current way of life and current standard of living.... perpetual growth in any finite environment is mathematical impossibility.
Simple thought experiment: you are a hamster on a flat 2D plane /surface that extends infinitely in all directions and there is a peanut placed every X meters away from you in all four directions of North, South, East and West. Effectively on this infinite surface you have access to infinite energy sources of infinite peanuts everywhere. But yet there is a distance X in meters or whatever units that if the placement were to exceed this distance/value that the hamster would still starve to death if it took him more energy to go from one peanut to the next one than the effective energy he could net gain from eating each peanut etc.... this is what I mean by an EROEI of 2 would never work.... at least not without an earth with fresh supplies the size of Jupiter
Then there is the matter of the Energy Trap and don't forget about Jevons paradox applied to global scale....
All the Paris Accords and talk about going green is lip service, at first sign of economic contraction everyone is going back to dirty coal and whatever else there is to burn in order to keep their people alive and to stall off economic implosion for a little while longer. So if the EU and US cheats and then China is left doing the honorable thing then China will lose out in terms of growth and development and GDP. Jevons paradox means any good/progress for the world that China makes in terms of going green and conservation and renewables etc will merely be wiped out by some other country like India or the USA unless all major nations are onboard.... and since America won't even be onboard with not nuking everyone to death (pulled out of START and other treaties) the chance of this is literally zero...
And if you take the time to truly read up and understand the notion of this Energy Trap (in terms of not being able to make the transition from fossil fuels to anything else) even China would be hard pressed to pull it off, so we can absolutely forget about India or the USA or even the Europe, not to mention the rest of the developing third world....
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Good for the health industry, meaningless to this discussion.
Yes, terribly inefficient. What do current agricultural inefficiencies and consumer obsession with meat have to do with our discussion?
Doesn't mean hydrocarbons are necessary to produce them. They are produced from hydrocarbons today because that's the most efficient way to produce them; when that's no longer the case they'll be produced from something else.
You seem to think that oil is a magical substance where all one need do is look at the ground and up it comes. As if the oil industry doesn't require vast, heavily subsidized infrastructure.
Get better panels. Your house's solar panels are not the final verdict on the possibilities of photovoltaics.
1) Want to take a look at the rebates and tax breaks hydrocarbons get? 2) That's called technological advancement and rising EROEI. That's very important, remember it. 3) Good, that's exactly what it should be used for. If I get a pile of free money (assuming that's what oil is), the first thing I'll do is invest that money so I can live off the interest and dividends. Just because stupid people would consume their principal doesn't make my investment strategy problematic.
You didn't explain anything below. All you did was spout a bunch of assertions, sprinkle some numbers, and write a story about money. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Interestingly, it's exactly where photovoltaics also get their energy from. The sun is such a nice thing, isn't it? Radiating enough power on the planet that even using a minute fraction of it could supply humanity's power needs into the indefinite future.
As for the oil you believe so indispensable, it existed long before humans shambled out of the primordial muck. How come it's only in the last 150 years or so that it's been used? Answer that question correctly and you'll see why your entire belief system is fundamentally flawed. EROEI doesn't work like you think it does.
Do you see China cutting its coal use precipitously to do the "honourable" thing? It is cutting coal because it's found better replacements and it's in its interest to do so.
Having said all this, the coming energy transition off fossil fuels will definitely have winners and losers - just like the Industrial Revolution that was powered by fossil fuels had winners and losers. China is most certainly a winner, which is why I welcome that transition. If other societies can't make the transition and will fail catastrophically because they're too politically dysfunctional, boohoo for them. I'll cry exactly as many tears for them as they cried when they victimized China when the Industrial Revolution allowed them to.
supercat
Major
The Euro zone is entering recession. Euro/US$ is approaching 1. It will probably be less than 1 in the near future. It's probably a good time to buy something from the Euro zone. The other day I bought a few items from a German website. They had an unmarked 17% discount. I didn't realize it until I put the items into the cart.
What are the implications of this?
It means this thread should either be deleted soon cause Europe won't have an economy left, or it should be merged with the funny stuff thread
