A little philosophical speculation now. In a sense you could say all energy is fusion based. The sun runs on fusion of hydrogen nuclei. This produces the light. Scientists estimate that Earth receives only about two billionths of it.

Of that amount, about a third is reflected back into space by clouds and snow. A little over 40% warms Earth, while about 25% is used by the water cycle. Winds and ocean currents absorb about 1%, while all the plants on Earth use only about 0.023% for photosynthesis!

Fossil fuels formed from plants over millions of years and are the primary fuels we have used for our climb up to our present culture, a tiny fraction of what plants absorbed in those millions of years. Food was obtained and houses were built in George Washington’s time much as it was in the Roman Empire. Progress had been slow.

The primary use of fossil fuels must soon end. The effects of global warming and climate change have already grown large. Will we humans be able to get enough cooperation together to make it through our present impasse? No one knows.

Tom Bond, Lewis County, WV

All the way from Italy! Rome, no less. I’m impressed someone so far away would be interested in our problem here in Appalachia and the U. S. And I’ll forgive the not so gentle slam in the first paragraph from someone with such diverse interests. I’m interested in archeology, and other the things, too.

This letter is mostly gibberish, almost all natural gas is used for fuel. Of course, some is lost in leaks and flaring, publications say as little as three percent, others say as much as one-third, so some natural gas goes directly into the atmosphere, which is a very serious problem, because it has much greater greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide.

PV panels have long life, and since I was constrained to a limited number of words directed to a lay audience, it didn’t seem necessary to cover the relatively low energy cost.

Your claim PV panels require special handling for disposal seems questionable. They are ceramic, not given to crumbling, nor permeable to give off toxins to the air or hands on them. In the rest of the world they are classified as general waste (no special handling), but in the EU they are classified as e-waste in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. They are recyclable, see here:

https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling

Certainly the steel involved is small compared to what is required for fracking.

Your confusion about ERoEI and Net Energy are not unusual. The ERoEI compares energy input to energy output, and does not take into account the availability nor the ability to produce energy on demand. Gas can allow a prodution of constant energy on demand, PV panels cannot.

Tom Bond, Lewis County, WV

Let’s have a look at some points that have not been cover:

1) there is a long description of all the energies involved for fracking, but there is a very short and incomplete description of the energies involved in the production of PV panels up to the selling. What should be said is that the fracking process is not limited to the production of gas, every plant dealing with the fracking process has minor processes and products that are useful for sale and provide a good income, thus the total energy should be distributed in percentages among all the collateral minor processes. Eventually the energy involved in the sole production of gas, is about 70-75% of total.

2) what is missing in the section about PV panels is that the total energy involved in the production should take into account also the dismantling and the destruction of the panels when they are no longer efficient. This involves the handling and disposing of toxic materials, special machinery, and dedicated facilities. Moreover, the author mentioned mining of rare elements, but did not mention the metal work and the furnace energy involved to produce the supporting structures. And in case you are thinking that the steel structure for the PV domestic plants is very small, you shall moltiply it by the total number of domestic plants produced. This means also involving the personnel in the furnaces plants, their food, etc etc. You must then count the energy involved in the trasportation from the production facilities (absent in the case of gas, because it travels into pipes).

3) the concept of ERoEI and that of Net Energy are a sort of ‘anti-ERoI’ creation, but while the ERoI makes sense, because we compare the energy gain based on the total money investment, the ERoEI compares energy input to energy output, and does not take into account the availability nor the ability to produce energy on demand. Gas can allow a prodution of constant energy on demand, PV panels can not. This is why ERoEI is not a valid parameter when we have to evaluate the conveniency of an energy production method.

In case you are asking, I am a chemist too, an UE certified technician for the management of waters and environmental resources, I have worked in a chemical plant for 7 years, and since 2005 I’ve been working for a world-leading company in the Oil & Gas field; but we don’t only engineer oil & gas plants, we also engineer and build renewables, biofuel, and all kinds of energetic plants except nuclear.

1.  I don’t think we can forget about transmission, because photovoltaic and other local generation saves big on transmission costs.  Copper ore is rare and expensive to reduce to the metal, as is Aluminum, which is produced from ore that has to be transported from where it is found to an area where electricity is cheap (like Iceland), then reduced by high temperature electrolysis.  Also “Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997 and 6.5% in 2007.”   The only cost I can find is from California, see here, Page 4.

http://www.caiso.com/2360/23609c2864470.pdf

2. Reference for ERoEI graphic is as follows:

http://8020vision.com/2011/10/17/energy-return-on-investment-eroi-for-u-s-oil-and-gas-discovery-and-production/#disqus_thread

Jim Kimball, “Energy return on investment EROEI for US oil and gas discovery and production, http://www.8020vision.com, October 17, 2011.

My intention was to show how a comparison could be made, not to claim that I have correct values.

3. I didn’t see the article by Michael L. Aucott and Jacqueline M. Melillo.  My guess is the NER exclude externalized costs, or some of them, such things as environmental damage, cost of sickness and injury, property loss of value, damage to other industries, including small conventional gas, farmers, forests, recreation and retirement, etc.  They also say “EROI is also sensitive to the energy used or embedded in gathering and transmission pipelines and associated infrastructure and energy used for their construction, energy consumed in well drilling and well completion, and energy used for wastewater treatment.”

Incidentally, researching the answer to your question I found a table of ERoEI of wind power which has a value of 44.5 from Germany and one which has 2.3 from Japan!

4. Yes, gas flared would be an important externalized cost.  If they only calculate gas delivered to some point, not gas taken out of the ground, production of it could be considered a cost of production.

5. I take that to mean most of the estimates run to that end of the bar.  The author has collected values, since he does not give one which would represent his best effort.

6.  “I claim that’s an ERoEI of 10.”  I agree.  I agree also that conservation is the most obvious route to go for an informed public.  I heard Amory Lovins speak about 40 years ago.  He was far ahead of the times then. 

1. It seems to me that to compare these energy sources based on ERoEI we can forget about what happens after the resource gets to the power plant. Getting electricity to the consumer should be common for all fuels. That should reduce the complexity considerably.

2. Where did you get the values for your chart? Shale fuels and Tar Sand are the highest I’ve seen.

3. I published an article on the relationship between energy independence and fracking–there was none. In doing so I ran across an article you may enjoy.

“Michael L. Aucott and Jacqueline M. Melillo; A preliminary Energy Return on Investment Analysis of Natural Gas from the Marcellus Shale; Journal of Industrial Ecology-Yale University 2013;”.

In it they discuss two methods for calculating ERoEI – NER and NEER. Doing using the NEER gives a value of 85:1. Using the NER gives a value of 8:1. The difference in the two methods is not including the value of the energy used for operations. What I could never understand is the following comment.

“Brandt and Dale note the NER is a more comprehensive measure of the total energy return from a production pathway and can be expected to correlate closely with environmental impacts, such as GHG emissions, of a pathway. Conversely, the NEER is a more useful measure of the contribution of an energy source to the energy supply of society because it counts only the inputs that must be produced and delivered externally through the existing energy supply system.” Maybe you can explain it to me.

4. Another thing that astounded me is that neither of the methods include the gas that is flared. In 2013, frackers in the Bakken flared about 9 Trillion CF of gas. That’s about 1/3 of what this country burns in a year.

5. What do the red arrows in your chart mean?

6. All of our presidential candidates advocate the same approach to our energy climate problems. They want to produce more. Amory Lovins has been promoting energy efficiency for 40 years. No one talks about it but it has more going for it including jobs than any other approach. Amory claims that it takes 10 units of energy tp get one unit of energy to the end user. I claim that’s an ERoEI of 10. Probably not but close. So if some fuel resource doesn’t have an ERoEI of at least 10 it shouldn’t be considered. By insulating and reducing infiltration you could easily get that up to 20. Our blower door test showed that we had the equivalent of abut 1 SF opening in our home. The contractor said that was the best he’d seen up here. I’m guessing most old homes have the equivalent of an open door. Lots of energy to save.

Thanks again for a great article.

Jim Guy

As for one agreed-on value, I don’t think it is likely without violation of our concept of freedom of speech! The basic idea (and algebra) is so simple any one can understand it, though.

It is similar to efficiency in that it measures how important a process is for society.

Best wishes, Tom Bond, Lewis County

The energy to grow the ingredients in the lunch eaten by the guy who drove the truck to haul the windmill blades to the final site? But it doesn’t really matter as long as you use the same criteria for all energy sources.

Thanks, Mary Wildfire, Roane County

This is so important, both getting this critical concept out there, and the fact that this chart differs drastically from others I’ve seen. In particular, I’ve seen coal rated at 70-to-one, higher than anything except oil seventy years ago.

So I figured the common assumption that “coal’s not coming back” was wishful — but I never could get answers to the question of what the number was based on. But your chart also shows the solar energy choices as considerably higher than other charts I’ve seen.

THANK YOU, Mary Wildfire, Roane County
I’d like to see evidence of what is included in each analysis. It ought to be possible to come up with one agreed-upon, accurate chart (especially since each ERoEI is shown as a range).

Once you include the cost of coal power plants, trucks, ash disposal, etc. ERoEI for coal is not nearly as high (even without considering the enormous externalities).

Thanks for posting a reality-based ERoEI comparison chart!

Don Alexander