net energy, Tag

The post below is a reproduction of a paper published in the open access journal Sustainability by Michael Dale, Susan Krumdieck, and Pat Bodger (Vol. 3).The article is a first in creating a dynamic function where Energy...

Hall and Day (2009) report that the EROI for coal might be as high as 80 and that for hydropower, EROI is 40. Does this mean that coal is twice as ‘good’ as hydro? The answer is no, and in this post I will discuss how...

Below the fold is a reposting of an open letter I wrote to newly elected President Obama 20 months ago (posted here as Yes We Can But Will We?). The essay touches on principles of natural capital, debt, and human demand...

"The true value of energy to society is the net energy, which is that after the energy costs of getting and concentrating that energy are subtracted.” - H.T. Odum (1973)

Below the fold is rerun of an essay from Cutler Cleveland on energy transitions. The unfolding drama in the Gulf of Mexico serves as a reminder of how dependent our modern civilization has become on fossil fuels. Dr. Cleveland's...

The following multi-part series is taken from a paper that my colleagues and I published last year in the free, on-line journal Energies. You may access the entire PDF here. All references can be found in the pdf.

The “Don’t Fear the 2010s” article written by Nick Gillespie of the Wall Street Journal featured a section on Peak Oil and, after reading it, I found myself uttering the famous words of Homer Simpson: “Doh.” The...

This post reviews a paper by Nate Gagnon, Charles Hall and Lysle Brinker titled: “A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production,” published recently in the peer-reviewed...

In this series I will again approach the issue of energy return on energy invested (EROEI), or net energy. Rather than a detailed analysis of the EROEI value of specific types of renewable energy technology, however, my...

[Ed's note by PG: This is a guest post by Chris Nelder, an energy analyst and journalist; his work can be found at GetRealList and Energy & Capital. Chris is the principal author of Profit from the Peak – The End of Oil...

Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has reported that the EROI of oil and gas extraction in the U.S. has decreased from 100:1 in the 1930’s to 30:1 in the 1970’s to roughly 11:1 as of 2000 (Figure 1). But beyond the...

(**Note: This was my first main post on TOD. It was an anecdotal attempt at showing how scaling of corn ethanol would have deleterious wide boundary impacts on society. My understanding of things has changed somewhat since...

In August 2007, a post titled Extracting Heavy Oil: Using Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) introduced readers of The Oil Drum to a technology for producing an upgraded extra-heavy oil from Alberta Tar Sands without the environmentally...