EROEI / EROI For Doomies

 

“Pyramid of Energetic Needs” representing the minimum EROI required for conventional oil, at the well-head, to be able to perform various tasks required for civilization. The blue values are published values, the yellow values increasingly speculative. 

Chart from “EROI of Global Energy Resources Preliminary Status and Trends” Jessica Lambert, Charles Hall, Steve Balogh, Alex Poisson, and Ajay Gupta State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Oh, the ER-O-I was a'fallin'
And the win was gettin' low...

-- Adapted from the ER-I-O (Erie Canal) folksong

EROEI / EROI For Doomies

Energy Return On  Energy Invested, a.k.a., Energy Return On Invested is a core concept for those of us thinking of our present and near future. But it doesn't travel alone. Here, I'll try to lay out a useful set of related concepts, their dynamics and consequences.

Useful terms

EROEI -- The ratio of an amount  of energy divided by all necessary investment of all EI inputs (expressed as energy) required for ER outputs (energy extraction, refinement, production and distribution... from here on, I'll use the shorthand production for all of these).

Historically, EROI has fallen and is falling significantly. Lower numbers tend to account for more, often overlooked inputs.

Any complex, adaptive system (e.g., a living organism or an economy) requires an EROEI > 1 by some significant factor as its minimum for survival. This is in accord with the laws of thermodynamics, and remains undisputed.

NOTE: EROEI is often expressed as a ratio (EI/ER) or a proportion (usually EI:ER).

Gross Energy -- The total amount of extracted energy under discussion before adjusting for its production overheads.

Net Energy -- The amount of energy left over from Gross Energy after its production overheads.

Surplus Energy -- The amount of energy left over from Net Energy after systemic overheads (all the necessaries to support life). This is what's left over for electives.

NOTE: Gross and Net Energy can increase, even while EROI is falling. This has been the case, historically, prior to the present moment.

Peak Energy -- The point at which approximately half of energy resources have been extracted. At this point, the easy pickings have been picked and the (energy) cost of production for remaining, harder-to-access resources rises. From this point, required energy investment for extraction rises exponentially and EROI accordingly falls.

For further reading, see Hubbert Curves, which describe the prospects of any given resource being commercially extracted, and have successfully predicted Peak Energy for any given energy resource.

NOTE: Peak Energy from fossil fuels could conceivably become moot in the face of new energy sources, but for the foreseeable future, they are dominant and likely to remain so.

Implications

By industry assessments, we already have- or are soon to enter post-Peak Energy. EI to produce energy from fossil fuels will increase exponentially (rapidly declining EROEI and Net Energy).

Falling EROEI consequent to rising production costs in a post-Peak Energy environment chews away at Net Energy in proportion to Gross Energy. Gross Energy may be increasing, but the available Net Energy (GE minus overheads) is an ever smaller fraction of the gross. Eventually, as necessary extraction investments increase, Net Energy falls toward zero. 

At the same time, should Gross Energy plateau or decline (as considerable data suggest is now or soon to be the case), Net Energy falls toward zero.

For us Doomies, this is an alarming double squeeze!

Net Energy is what pays for shit. All the stuff we really need or think we need. All the stuff we think of as wealth. It's what Finances it. Grows it. Builds it. Produces it. Maintains it. Moves it around... roads, rail and bridges, shipping and supply chains. Keeps the lights on, water clean and flowing. Education, entertainment, arts. Everything. When we run too low on Net Energy and things start to fail for want of energy, it's TEOTWAWKI.

But it's slow to unbuild. As the surplus dwindles, things start to be under energized and fail at the fringes. It's made worse by wealth inequity, where the powerful turn wealth-sharing flows toward themselves. The disenfranchised don't have the energy/wealth/power to organize and defend themselves, and become prey to 'strongmen' who use their plight to their own ends.

As the surplus energy available to global, industrial civilization decreases, we can foresee the following:

• Failing infrastructures
• Increasing pollution (from energy investments, lower quality fuels, less remediation)
• Increasing climate instability
• Resource conflicts
  
  
• General impoverishment and reduction of total wealth
• Reductions of social services and safety nets
• A political turn toward far-right 'solutions'
• Increasingly authoritarian state control
• Increasing social unrest, protest, war and displacement
  
  
• Cascading failures and contagion proliferate
  
• Tipping points are reached
• Collapse

All of these (including localized Collapses, world-wide) are the major headlines of our day.

*****

Objections and IMHO

Here are a few of the standard objections to the above...

There's Still Plenty of Fossil Fuel

Well, yes - about half, give or take, and that's a LOT - but that's not the point.

The point is that that post-peak half is trending toward a point where its production is prohibitively expensive. The half that's left is less accessible, of lower quality (e.g., tar sands and shale) and/0r plays out more quickly (e.g., fracking). All this means low EROEI.

This is a consensus view among industry analysts (vs. PR types). Only the timing and what might intervene is in debate.

Green Tech will Save Us

Well, maybe, but both the will and a pathway are absent. It appears to be a long shot.

One large problem is that the conversion of existing infrastructure and systems to 'renewables' is energy (and materially) intensive, with its own, lowish EROEI. It is unclear whether, even given the will and commitment to the cross-over, that there would be enough Net Energy available for the task, not to mention related environmental impacts of the project.

Time is another... whether we have time for such conversion before some critical tipping point is reached? But of course that applies to all paths forward. Still, we're talking best case in terms of decades.

Tech Tech will Save Us

Well, maybe, but...

Alternative energy projects at BAU (Business As Usual) scale are promising but distant. Nuclear fusion has just passed operational EROEI slightly greater than 1. That is to say, a skosh over break-even so long as we don't count the infrastructure, conversion (heat to electricity) or distribution costs. This after years and billions of dollars in hot pursuit of the dream.

Deep-bore, grid-scale geothermal may be the best possibility in the offing. In this tech, high energy beams (from gyrotrons developed for nuclear fusion) replace mechanical drilling techniques for much deeper wells reaching into high heat regions of the Earth's mantle. It's in development, uses existing infrastructure for conversion/distribution and should be boot-strappable. Unfortunately, it too appears be well behind schedule with very little success to report. Bootstrapping is predicted to require decades.

The Market will Provide

Well, no. The market has worked wonders, but is not magical.

That the market will provide is an economic article of faith among Cornucopians who believe (more or less) that, given a high enough demand in the face of low supply, and substitutions can and will be made. 

This may be theoretically true but is pragmatically false. For example, since e=mc^2, given enough market incentive and energy, any resource could be synthesized. In practice, the EI of this approach would be prohibitive.

Further, the implicit assumption is that solutions will be found and implemented on demand (i.e., just-in-time innovation and production) given enough market incentive. Problem is, this flies in the face of considerable experience with Scientific Method... discoveries are not made on a schedule, regardless of the incentive. Industrial scale production is also far from instantaneous. Other market forces, such as cost, are in opposition.

An example would be the fairly recent discovery of one of the side-effects of sildenifil citrate, originally studied as a treatment for high blood-pressure... despite vast market incentive and effort across centuries, this active ingredient of Viagra(R) is without an historical peer. It was observed serendipitously during clinical studies, and, approximately 12 years later, hit the market.

Who says it's all gloom and doom?

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that EROEI and related concepts are a lens for viewing the lifeblood of our global industrial economy and civilization.

That EROEI and Net Energy are falling with nothing assured in prospect would indicate that we are suffering from terminal, congestive heart failure.

Time to set our affairs in order.

For further reading, here's a good place to start.

Spooky...

Planet Petri Dish

Spooky...

Since Y2K, nothing with an associated date has concerned me more than any other. But this year... I'm picking up a vibe.

Nothing particular stands out. 

We're skittering along the usual up and down slopes at accelerating speed. Oscillations are getting wilder, but we've grown to expect that. Abundance is slipping away from us, but there's still (nearly) half of everything left, isn't there? 

All this has seemed critical for decades - a small interval in history. No particular reason to think it might go bust this year.

But something's in the wind...

Many observers who've never committed themselves to a prediction are restless. Lowing and milling in our courses. Spooked.

Many who've reliably cheerled the the team with rah-rahs of Growth! Excelsior! Never better, thank you very much! are entering 2015 with the jitters. A dim perception of trouble brewing is coming to a simmer.

Could be the return of nuclear posturing among the heavy hitters. Could be the emergence of Ebola (still a Level IV pathogen), and it's potential escape into the wider Third World. Could be the death throes of American Empire. Could be the spectre of Islamic fundamentalist unrest threatening the heart of Middle East oil kingdoms. Could be the financial meltdown threatened by fiat money, global debt, untamed derivatives, shift of reserve currency, etc.. Could be 'climate change', from CO2 or jacked up on perma-frost methane release. Could be any number of unmonitored threats stemming from fouling our petri dish.

The sense - or realization - that we  have lost control - is waxing pandemic. Global symptoms of Collapse, with which we've lived our entire lives, have grown feverish and are nearing convulsive intensity.

In terms of Limits to Growth type projections - a graphic of which banners this blog - we are just now leaving the give-or-take margins of uncertainty flanking the cusp of our arc. One or both feet are now firmly planted on the slippery slope of the catastrophic Seneca Cliff (or catabolic Long Descent, if you prefer).

What does this mean for ourselves?

Time to double-check our preparations. Gather our Tribe. Get our affairs in order. Make our peace. Maybe say our good-byes. None of this can hurt.

It could be just another year of everything getting worse for most folks...

But could be feelin' the tremblor, before the Big One, that puts the birds to flight.

It IS Different This Time

This is a poor graph, I admit... scales to left an right of the 'peak' are not consistent.
My Bad.

The overfamiliar cry of “but it’s different this time!” is popular, it’s comforting, but it’s also irrelevant. Of course it’s different this time; it was different every other time, too. Neolithic civilizations limited to one river valley and continental empires with complex technologies have all declined and fallen in much the same way and for much the same reasons.

-- From TheArchdruidReport by John Michael Greer

Here, he's speaking of 'Cornucopians' but same goes for 'Doomers'

It IS Different This Time

Let me start by stating that I am a fan of the writings of John Michael Greer, the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and avidly follow his blog, thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.

I find his thinking and presentation clear, his knowledge of history wide-ranging and that his ruminations run deep. He never fails to widen my horizons, nor to stimulate a flurry of fact-checking (almost all of which holds up, btw... rare exceptions are subject to interpretation), cross-reference and further readings.

My cup o' tea!

So it is with the greatest respect that I venture to differ with one of his central assumptions; that  nothing is different this time.

Greer proposes an explanation of How Civilizations Fall: A theory of Catabolic Collapse:

At a certain, peak moment, an ascendant culture's accumulating assets become too expensive to maintain with available resources. Some assets are converted to waste (let go) in a period of contraction, beginning a long period of descent. 

'Assets' everything from institutions, mores, hierarchy and education to infrastructure to soil fertility. 'Waste' may involve the overthrow of dynasties, debasing of currencies and crumbling or abandoned infrastructure to retreat, defeat and/or revolution.

Contractions are typically (though not necessarily) chaotic, involuntary and violent.

Following each contraction, a temporarily affordable equilibrium is reached at a lower level, and things even out for a while, with perhaps partial recovery. But, so long as no new resources become available, the cycle repeats in a downward trend, following a generally stair-step trajectory.

This theory arguably accounts for the (rise and) fall trajectories of historical civilizations. 

The question arises, does this theory predict the course of our own collapse, or are things different this time?

Greer, himself, is dismissive of the notion, and considers our civilization to be fundamentally the same as all its predecessors. In his view, it will collapse, and follow a similar, stair-step trajectory of slow descent into coming Dark Ages.  

Here is an evocative sample he provides of the narrative one might expect for our future Long Descent, analogous to those of the past.

I, myself, believe the are fundamental differences between our present and historical cases, and that the collapse will be catastrophic (I guess that makes me a 'Doomer').
 
A contraction can only 'fetch up' at the next lower step while its survivors possess assets which are both sufficient and viably intact at a lower level of function. 

To fundamentally change our situation from those past in ways that make us vulnerable non-catabolic, catastrophic collapse, there must be non-trivial differences which render our fall-back assets insufficient and/or non-viable.

So what's new? Here's a minimal list, for starters:



The Global Economy

For the first time in human history, the economies of the world are fused into a single, global dynamic, utterly dependent on continuity and collectively continuous growth to maintain its vital functions.

Production is widely distributed, with markets and essential components found half a world away from one another. Energy flows ditto. Communications are networked via surface, sub-surface and satellite connections.

Complex systems - such as the global economy - are chaotic. That is to say, resistant to successful modelling, subject to the Butterfly Effect, strange attractors, abrupt phase shifts.

They tend to be robust, so long as a critical set of vital nodes (aka hubs) continue to function. But, should one of these fail, a series of cascading failures can be (with very high likelihood) set in motion which destabilize the system, leading to a system crash.

Add to this the effects of economic dependency on unlimited growth within the closed system  of planet earth. All growth is exponential.

Until it isn't.


Technology

Unique to the modern era, our civilization is supported by a suite of interdependent technologies which, in the event of sufficient interruption, can neither be 're-booted' nor function in a contracted environment.

Technical expertise has become ever more specialized, with the effect of rendering the implementation and maintenance of all core systems a vast, team effort. At the same time, these teams are ever more dependent on the tools they service, and the environment in which those services function.

Production has become ever more dependent on inter-linked technologies which are themselves far beyond the reach of the human artisan.

A power grid is one example. 

Power grids distribute necessary electrical power for virtually all aspects of modern civilization. This includes their own, continued operation. Communication and control of the grid itself depend on some unknown but considerable level of grid function.

Should even momentary, grid-wide failure occur, reboot (black start) is a delicate matter whose success is not assured. Should the down period extend, every hour decreases the chances of a successful reboot, as support systems (such as parts deliveries) degrade for lack of power.

Other, codependent technologies would fail as well, further disrupting reboot efforts.

To reconstruct the grid at a lower level of function, or even break it into gridlets, would require massive changes, by specialists, to existing soft-, hard- and firmware, unsupported by grid power. Not a chewing gum and baling wire operation. 


That's the point.


Food and Farmers

Historically, even the most technologically advanced civilizations were built on a preponderant majority of farmers and countryfolk whose tools, methods, seedstocks and know-how were able (by and large) to withstand the upheavals of catabolic collapse. Each tread in their civilization's long descent relied on those assets.

Our codependent, global economy cum civilization, in contrast - through a succession of green revolutions which put world food production on a petroleum footing, hybridized most primary seedstocks, mechanized virtually all farming tasks, encouraged monoculture and long distance transport - has fundamentally, albeit temporarily, altered the historical relationship between food producers and civilization.

Should the current, interlocked, computerized and satellited systems of fuel / power, transport and finance fail for any extended period at all, current crops will fail and/or languish in the field for lack of labor, fertilizer and pesticide and transport, far from their markets. Hybrids revert to diminished parent stocks. Irrigation systems fail. 

Especially in the First World, farmers themselves will face malnutrition, even in the midst of monocrop abundance. Even where (non-hybrid) seedstock is on hand, the interval between seed and harvest is a long one, with initial output vastly diminished.

Farms are no longer subsistent. Farmerfolk have not preserved, by and large, the country skills that once saw themselves and others through each round of contracted equilibrium. The ways and means lie, for the most part, some three to four generations past in the First World, and considerable losses in the remainder.

We can no more return directly from present practice to viable, organic farming than peasant farmers of the past could return directly to viable hunter-gathering. The tools and skill-sets are different, and the learning curve that separates them, vast.

And when city folk go hungry, farmlands no longer spread around their walls.


Population Mass and Urban Concentration

The planet's population of some 7 billion+ human beings is now half-urban (54%).

By contrast, 1800 saw roughly 1 billion souls (roughly double world population at the height of Rome, and less than presently live in China or India) of whom only 3% were urban dwellers.

Another way to put it: in 1800, 97 persons embedded in a rural economy supported 3 persons embedded in an urban economy. Now, less than 3 rurals support those 3 urbans.

In the event of systemic disruption, sheer weight of numbers will exacerbate any collapse via resource exhaustion / pressure and competition by the living and putrefaction of the dead.

Cities are, for the most part, serviced by long chain and Just In Time logistics. Without constant resupply, limited food-on-hand is quickly consumed. Two choices: fight for what's left, or fan out into adjacent countryside (which is not necessarily farmland).

My guess is that the cities will first implode, then explode.

Much of the world's core business is conducted within, or orchestrated from cities (finance, ports, fuel terminals, communications, etc.) . They go down, and world commerce goes with them.

As the cities tear themselves and surroundings apart, another indisputably novel factor comes into play. 


Resource Depletion

Numerous surface and near-surface resources - in particular fossil fuels and metals - have been extracted well past the reach of even marginally lower levels of technology and economy. 

Generally speaking, EROEI for what remains is presently 'uneconomic' despite all our current material and procedural advantages. If dilute concentrations (low yield deposits or tailings) are not affordably recoverable, they are in practice unavailable.

Below some unknown but certain point, contractions must needs exist within a salvage/scavenge mineral budget, with entropic losses at each recycle. Fossil fuels aren't recyclable, and would cease to be an option.

In addition, energy requirements for such recycling - absent accessible, concentrated energy - make industrial scales unlikely. Furthermore, in such a transition, industrial infrastructure would require re-tooling on a massive scale; requiring energy and a highly functional industrial environment, neither of which - at least below the point mentioned above - would pertain.


Nuclear Situation

The northern hemisphere is now liberally salted with nuclear reactors. 

Without constant, specialized service, high-tech resupply and continuous flow of coolant (water + grid power or fuel), the majority of them will undergo irremediable LOCAs (Loss Of Coolant Accidents), releasing radioactive debris into widespread air- and watersheds.

No prior civilization has faced an analogous pitfall in the course of its descent.


*****


Greer's theory of Catabolic Collapse posits collapse as inevitable, and here, we agree. 

Its prediction of stair-step, long descent, however, relies on the assumption that nothing fundamental has changed in the current civilization. That the future is analogous to the past.

But, if any of the above-listed considerations are true (along with others one might add), it IS different this time. Fundamentally, non-trivially different.

A stair-step, Long Descent may still be possible.  

If vital technologies and services can be kept running continuously through several cycles of contraction, they might be incrementally curtailed. Eventually, by this means, they could reach the lower-tech levels that would allow them the luxury of intermittency and eventual, sub-catastrophic demise.  Populations might incrementally reduce, and rural assets might regain ascendency. Nuclear plants might be safely decommissioned and their wastes stored for long-term, low to zero maintenance.

But, without a widely distributed set of assets which can be reconfigured and simplified under extreme duress; with a glut of vulnerable populations with no immediate means of support beyond the functioning global economy; without some implemented, passive alternative to nuclear plant coolant systems... well... Humpty Dumpty sits on a wall.

Should a trigger event initiate irrecoverable, cascading failures in a core system - the pillars of our civilization become dominoes. And the next step downward from here is so spaced as to ensure a tumble.

It appears to me that - rather than an inevitable repetition of historical process - the Long Descent is but one, rather remote possibility we now face among a crowd of abrupt, catastrophic likelihoods.

Watch that first step... it's a doozy! 




NOTE: The problem with growth - doubling every so often - is that ONE doubling period prior to full saturation of whatever medium, the cup only appears half full... all of human history and we've only used up half of what's available. Especially the easy access, low hanging fruit.

For the first time, it appears that we are at - or past - the halfway point.

Will it take all of historical time to use up the remainder? Or merely one more doubling period, currently estimated to be within the half-century range?

My guess is that - in this sense - the collapse of civilizations is more logarithmic than catabolic.

 

The Ozymandian Moment

Ozymandias
Painting by Julie Krizan

Ozymandias 
-- As remembered, with apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land, who said:
 
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert...
Near them, on the sand - half sunk - a shatter'd visage lies,
Whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read:
The hand that mocked,
The heart that fed.  

And on the pedestal these words appear:
 
My name is OZYMANDIAS, KING of Kings!          
LOOK upon my works, ye Mighty... and DESPAIR!
.
.
.
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck,
Boundless and bare...
 
The lone and level sands stretch far away.



The Ozymandian Moment

Long before I first looked up to mark the falling sky, this poem seized me, and clung tight.

It's one of only a handful of poems I've ever memorized, and the only one before I was ten. Before I ever knew the term, it whispered to me of TEOTWAWKIs past. Urgent and unforeseen. It invoked a horrified fascination that has never left me.

I've wondered since; am I prone to apocalyptic thinking - and was therefore drawn to the poem and all the rest? Or did it 'imprint' me with apocalyptic vision - an organizing principle by which I order a deluge of factoids?

Or is it just obvious?

From Ugo Bardi's post, The Seneca Effect

Lucius Anneaus Seneca wrote, "The path of increase is slow, but the road to ruin is swift."

Ugo Bardi calls this the Seneca Effect. The Seneca Curve resembles the familiar Bell Curve, but has a decisively abrupt drop trailing its apex. Bardi calls this the Seneca Cliff.

In Ozymandian terms, the Seneca Curve has three sections.

• The Rise of Humankind;
• The Ozymandian Moment;
• The Colossal Wreck.

The Rise of Humankind is familiar to us all, taught as the 'inevitable, upward march of Progress'. The vast superiority of our species over all others. Of the Present over the Past.

Oh sure, it's had its ups-and-downs. Quibbling episodes of rapaciousness, inquisition, war, genocide and terrarism [sic]. But it's all been in good fun, and ya can't make omelets without busting eggs.

Overall, we've mounted the heights.

Our Present justifies our Past.

The Ozymandian Moment is the peak of the curve. We can see further than ever before; our powers at their zenith. We entertain the smug notion that we have arrived. That we possess all knowledge and wisdom. That the future is but the mere elaboration of detail; the tying up of loose ends. The consolidation of gains.

And clearly, we can extrapolate ever upwards. Progress and Growth forever and ever, amen!

And then... the Colossal Wreck.


*****

I believe that our Ozymandian Moment lingers, but is almost past. That our Colossal Wreck will be global in scale, with lone and leveled sands - in a manner of speaking - to mark our passing.

Will there still be human travelers to wonder at our shatter'd visage? Our vast and trunkless legs of stone? I hope so.

And I wish them brighter prospects than our own.

Apologies to Pat Oliphant