[p2p-research] the net energy factor and the renewables transition

[Michel Bauwens]

source at http://www.postcarbon.org/report/44377-searching-for-a-miracle)

Net Energy Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society From P2P Foundation
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** Report: Searching for a Miracle.[Net Energy Limits and the Fate of
Industrial Society. Post Carbon Institute & International Forum on
Globalization - September 2009*

URL =
http://www.postcarbon.org/new-site-files/Reports/Searching_for_a_Miracle_web10nov09.pdf(full
report for download)

*The 'net energy' factor is the requirement that energy systems yield more
energy than is invested in their construction and operation.*
[1]<http://www.postcarbon.org/report/44377-searching-for-a-miracle%29>


 [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Net_Energy_Limits_and_the_Fate_of_Industrial_Society?title=Net_Energy_Limits_and_the_Fate_of_Industrial_Society&action=edit&section=1>
] Summary

"THIS REPORT IS INTENDED as a non-technical examination of a basic question:
Can any combination of known energy sources successfully supply society’s
energy needs at least up to the year 2100? In the end, we are left with the
disturbing conclusion that all known energy sources are subject to strict
limits of one kind or another. Conventional energy sources such as oil, gas,
coal, and nuclear are either at or nearing the limits of their ability to
grow in annual supply, and will dwindle as the decades proceed—but in any
case they are unacceptably hazardous to the environment. And contrary to the
hopes of many, there is no clear practical scenario by which we can replace
the energy from today’s conventional sources with sufficient energy from
alternative sources to sustain industrial society at its present scale of
operations.

To achieve such a transition would require

(1) a vast financial investment beyond society’s practical abilities,

(2) a very long time—too long in practical terms—for build-out, and

(3) significant sacrifices in terms of energy quality and reliability.

Perhaps the most significant limit to future energy supplies is the “net
energy” factor—the requirement that energy systems yield more energy than is
invested in their construction and operation. There is a strong likelihood
that future energy systems, both conventional and alternative, will have
higher energy input costs than those that powered industrial societies
during the last century.We will come back to this point repeatedly.

The report explores some of the presently proposed energy transition
scenarios, showing why, up to this time, most are overly optimistic, as they
do not address all of the relevant limiting factors to the expansion of
alternative energy sources. Finally, it shows why energy conservation (using
less energy, and also less resource materials) combined with humane, gradual
population decline must become primary strategies for achieving
sustainability."


Detailed overview:

"The world’s current energy regime is unsustainable. This is the recent,
explicit conclusion of the International Energy Agency1, and it is also the
substance of a wide and growing public consensus ranging across the
political spectrum. One broad segment of this consensus is concerned about
the climate and the other environmental impacts of society’s reliance on
fossil fuels.The other is mainly troubled by questions regarding the
security of future supplies of these fuels—which, as they deplete, are
increasingly concentrated in only a few countries.

To say that our current energy regime is unsustainable means that it cannot
continue and must therefore be replaced with something else.However,
replacing the energy infrastructure of modern industrial societies will be
no trivial matter. Decades have been spent building the current oil-coal-gas
infrastructure, and trillions of dollars invested. Moreover, if the
transition from current energy sources to alternatives is wrongly managed,
the consequences could be severe: there is an undeniable connection between
per-capita levels of energy consumption and economic well-being.2 A failure
to supply sufficient energy, or energy of sufficient quality, could
undermine the future welfare of humanity, while a failure to quickly make
the transition away from fossil fuels could imperil the Earth’s vital
ecosystems.

Nonetheless, it remains a commonly held assumption that alternative energy
sources capable of substituting for conventional fossil fuels are readily
available—whether fossil (tar sands or oil shale), nuclear, or a long list
of renewables—and ready to come on-line in a bigger way. All that is
necessary, according to this view, is to invest sufficiently in them, and
life will go on essentially as it is.

But is this really the case? Each energy source has highly specific
characteristics. In fact, it has been the characteristics of our present
energy sources (principally oil, coal, and natural gas) that have enabled
the building of a modern society with high mobility, large population, and
high economic growth rates. Can alternative energy sources perpetuate this
kind of society? Alas, we think not.

While it is possible to point to innumerable successful alternative energy
production installations within modern societies (ranging from small
homescale photovoltaic systems to large “farms” of threemegawatt wind
turbines), it is not possible to point to more than a very few examples of
an entire modern industrial nation obtaining the bulk of its energy from
sources other than oil, coal, and natural gas. One such rare example is
Sweden, which gets most of its energy from nuclear and hydropower. Another
is Iceland, which benefits from unusually large domestic geothermal
resources, not found in most other countries. Even in these two cases, the
situation is more complex than it appears.The construction of the
infrastructure for these power plants mostly relied on fossil fuels for the
mining of the ores and raw materials, materials processing, transportation,
manufacturing of components, the mining of uranium, construction energy, and
so on. Thus for most of the world, a meaningful energy transition is still
more theory than reality. But if current primary energy sources are
unsustainable, this implies a daunting problem. The transition to
alternative sources must occur, or the world will lack sufficient energy to
maintain basic services for its 6.8 billion people (and counting).

Thus it is vitally important that energy alternatives be evaluated
thoroughly according to relevant criteria, and that a staged plan be
formulated and funded for a systemic societal transition away from oil,
coal, and natural gas and toward the alternative energy sources deemed most
fully capable of supplying the kind of economic benefits we have been
accustomed to from conventional fossil fuels.

By now, it is possible to assemble a bookshelf filled with reports from
nonprofit environmental organizations and books from energy analysts, dating
from the early 1970s to the present, all attempting to illuminate
alternative energy transition pathways for the United States and the world
as a whole.These plans and proposals vary in breadth and quality, and
especially in their success at clearly identifying the factors that are
limiting specific alternative energy sources from being able to adequately
replace conventional fossil fuels.

It is a central purpose of this document to systematically review key
limiting factors that are often left out of such analyses.We will begin that
process in the next section. Following that, we will go further into depth
on one key criterion: net energy, or energy returned on energy invested
(EROEI).This measure focuses on the key question: All things considered, how
much more energy does a system produce than is required to develop and
operate that system? What is the ratio of energy in versus energy out? Some
energy “sources” can be shown to produce little or no net energy. Others are
only minimally positive.

Unfortunately, as we shall see in more detail below, research on EROEI
continues to suffer from lack of standard measurement practices, and its use
and implications remain widely misunderstood. Nevertheless, for the purposes
of large-scale and long-range planning, net energy may be the most vital
criterion for evaluating energy sources, as it so clearly reveals the
tradeoffs involved in any shift to new energy sources.

This report is not intended to serve as a final authoritative, comprehensive
analysis of available energy options, nor as a plan for a nation-wide or
global transition from fossil fuels to alternatives. While such analyses and
plans are needed, they will require institutional resources and ongoing
reassessment to be of value.The goal here is simply to identify and explain
the primary criteria that should be used in such analyses and plans, with
special emphasis on net energy, and to offer a cursory evaluation of
currently available energy sources, using those criteria.This will provide a
general, preliminary sense of whether alternative sources are up to the job
of replacing fossil fuels; and if they are not, we can begin to explore what
might be the fall-back strategy of governments and the other responsible
institutions of modern society.

As we will see, the fundamental disturbing conclusion of the report is that
there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or
alternative energy sources can reliably be counted on to provide the amount
and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even
current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of the current
century.

This preliminary conclusion in turn suggests that a sensible transition
energy plan will have to emphasize energy conservation above all. It also
raises questions about the sustainability of growth per se, both in terms of
human population numbers and economic activity." (
http://www.postcarbon.org/report/44377-searching-for-a-miracle))


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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