It bows down to the Sun
The image of resilience.
Monday, June 5, 2023
And yet it moves. Why the EROI of renewables may be higher than that of fossils
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Is the Energy Return of Renewables Really Higher than that of Fossil Fuels? A Rebuttal to Art Berman's Criticism
It is a very good thing that Art Berman, a well-known expert in oil and fossil fuel matters, has intervened in the EROI debate on renewables with a recent post. It means that the EROI is becoming the focus of the debate, as it should be. The most recent data indicate that the EROI of renewables significantly surpasses that of oil when examined at the "point of use" rather than at the "well mouth." And, of course, as users of energy, the point of use it is what we are interested in.
This statement from that paper was a huge red flag for me.
“Even if crude oil were measured to have an EROI of 1000 or more at the point of extraction, the corresponding EROI at the point of use, using global average data for the energy “cost” of the process chain, would still only be a maximum of 8.7.”
This means that the supply-chain energy costs for refining and product distribution create a permanent penalty that prevents oil from reaching an EROI of more than 8.7. It furthermore implies that refining must be a marginally profitable business at best which it is not.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Godzilla's Egg: Why Renewables Will Never Replace Fossil Fuels (Or Maybe They Will?)
The concept that "renewables will never be able to..." takes many forms, perhaps the most common one being that they provide today just a minor fraction of the energy produced by fossil fuels. And, hence, this fraction is destined to remain small. I often use the joke that it is the same as saying that Godzilla couldn't be but a small beast judging from the size of its egg.
A recent restatement of the Godzilla's egg problem can be found in the book by Vaclav Smil, "How the World Really Works." (Viking, 2022). Honestly, it is a disappointing book, especially comparing its content with the ambitious title. Not that there is anything specifically wrong with it. Smil has excellent capabilities of reporting quantitative data; his approach is simple and direct; a good example is his analysis of the average risks faced by an ordinary person in terms of their probability and frequency.
But this book? Well, it reports a lot of data, but all in a conversational form, not a single diagram, not even a table. Maybe it is the way a book has to be if it has to become a "New York Times International Bestseller." After all, it is known that most people cannot understand cartesian diagrams. Yet, data are not sufficient if they are not interpreted in a correct time frame, and Smil's analysis is almost always static; it tells you about the current situation but not how we arrived at it nor what we can expect in the future.
The problem is especially visible with Smil's treatment of renewable energy. The whole discussion on energy is weak, to say nothing of the typical mistake of reporting that, during the oil crisis of the 1970s, OPEC (the organization of oil exporting countries) "set the prices" of oil. OPEC does not and cannot do anything like that, although its management of oil production surely affects prices.
About renewables, the main point that Smil makes is that, today, they represent only a small fraction of the world's energy production. Considering the huge task ahead, he concludes that renewables would need a very long time to replace fossil fuels, if they ever will. The main problem in this discussion is that Smil does not use the "EROI" (energy returned for energy invested) parameter. This parameter tells you that, nowadays, renewable energy is more efficient and yields more than fossil fuels and any other energy production technology. Missing this point, the whole discussion is flawed. Renewables can, and will grow rapidly, at least in the short term future. And, in the medium and long run they are destined to replace the inferior technology of fossil fuels. The same is true for many other data reported; they remain scarcely useful if not analyzed in a way that gives some idea of how they are going to evolve and change. Paradoxically, what this book lacks is exactly what the title promises: an explanation of how the world works.
The weakness of Smil's arguments does not mean that renewables will quickly replace fossil fuels. One thing is what is feasible, and another is what can actually be done within the limitations of time and resources. For some dynamic scenarios of their possible growth, you may take a look at a paper that I wrote together with my colleagues Sgouridis and Csala. It is a little old (2016), but its basic methods and conclusions are still valid. And the conclusion is that it is possible to replace fossil fuels with renewables, but not easy. What we can say at present is that renewables are growing fast: will they hatch into a full-size Godzilla, able to overcome the obstacles it faces?
The idea that the economy is a superorganism derives from the concept that energy drives the economy, just like it does for living beings. The Economic Superorganism book provides stories, data, science, and philosophy to guide readers through the arguments from competing narratives on energy, growth, and policy. Among many other good things, it is remarkable for its honest attempt to present different points of view in a balanced way. It also helps to distinguish the technically possible from the socially viable, and understand how our future depends on this distinction. At global scales, the combination of resource-rich environment, coordination in groups, corporations and nations, and the maximization of financial surplus, tethered to energy and carbon, results in a mindless, energy-hungry, CO2 emitting Superorganism (a concept also examined in depth by Nate Hagens).
Now, the superorganism is in trouble. Just like living beings, it risks dying of starvation. Could it be a good thing, considering how the economic leviathan has damaged more or less everything in the biosphere? Or perhaps it is still possible to tame the big beast and force it to behave a little better. Maybe. Even though we may all be just cells of a huge beast, there is a lot that you can learn from this book. Unfortunately, even though it is clearly written and well argumented, it will never be a New York Times Bestseller. And that may be one of the reasons why the superorganism deserves to collapse.
And how about renewables? King's book doesn't take a yes/no position, and correctly so. It provides instead a complete discussion of the various facets of the issue. Just the description of the value of the EROI concept is worth the whole book. And, eventually, we'll go where the superorganism takes us.
Sunday, May 21, 2023
Solving Renewables' Communication Problem. Don't Tell, Show!
Renewable Energy has a serious problem of communication: most people don't understand it. Since all communication is based on storytelling, I propose to face it by using the technique used in storytelling called "Don't tell, show." Telling people that renewables can produce energy is not enough; we need to show that they are useful. And that means focusing on "resilience." (image source)
Years ago, a colleague of mine told me a story about the photovoltaic plant he had installed, one of the first in Italy. He said that a high-rank politician came to visit it. To show him that the plant was really working, my colleague connected its output to a small electric heater, showing how the resistive heating elements could be rapidly brought to a nice red glow. The politician refused to believe that the energy came from the PV panels, and he asked, "Where is the trick?" Apparently, he left still unconvinced.
I have my own stories about this kind of cognitive dissonance, and you probably have yours. Many people don't deny that renewables can produce energy but consider them little more than nice toys for Greens. Come on, to really produce energy, you need to burn something; coal, oil, or gas; you need a big fire and engines turning. Otherwise, it is a joke, no more than that.
You can see this attitude expressed, over and over, in the comments on social media. In its basic form, it goes as, "Renewable energy will never be able to replace fossil fuels." Similar statements are common, including the idea that renewables are not really renewable but "substitutable" or "replaceable," meaning that fossil fuels will always be needed to replace old plants as they wear out. Normally, these statements are presented as self-evident, and some people seem to be offended and to become aggressive when told that the opposite may be true.
Contrasting this attitude using data is nearly impossible. The scientific argument in favor of renewables is mostly based on life cycle analysis (LCA) that currently leads to favorable estimates for their EROI (energy return for energy invested). It means that renewables can be recycled and can sustain a circular economy. But most people (including politicians) don't understand EROI. They don't understand that the uncertainty in the EROI estimates is typical of all scientific matters; they want certainties. The attitude of scientists does not help. They tend to avoid public debates and disseminate their results only as papers in scientific journals. Papers that nobody reads and which are ignored when it is time to make policy choices. It is the same problem we have with climate science.
So, I believe we have to change tack. Since all communication is based on storytelling, we may use a well-known rule in storytelling that says, "Do not tell, show!" That is, it is not enough to tell people about quantitative estimates of this or that. We need to show people how renewable energy can be useful for them here and now, not a hundred years from now,
It is, in the end, a question of positioning: in the current historical phase, renewables can be seen as a tool for resilience, a concept that most people understand and appreciate. Many people interpret this idea in terms of PV panels on their roofs and batteries at home as an emergency supply in case of blackouts. It is not a bad idea in itself, but it is expensive, and many people don't have the kind of space needed to install PV panels. "Resilience" is a wider concept, and, at present, it implies not only a defense against blackouts but a most needed help for people who are facing high energy prices affecting their activities and their personal budgets.
In Italy, we are experimenting with an interesting initiative called "Energy Communities," legislation that allows citizens to link together their energy production plants, forming a local community that gives advantages to both producers and consumers. These communities are on a small scale, but the same concept can be enlarged as a general barrier against emergencies and supply disruption. It is a question of networking at various scales. It also includes large-scale plants; they are certainly more efficient than home-based ones. But they need to be accepted by the public, otherwise it is hopeless.
Framing renewables in this way, we see that we are not aiming at "replacing fossil fuels." It is possible, in principle, but it can't be a short-term goal. If we aim at resilience, we don't need a 100% replacement of fossil fuels. A country like Germany already produces about 50% of its electric energy from renewable sources. At this level, the renewable infrastructure may act as a national-level UPS (uninterruptible power supply), keeping the lights on, and the essential services going (food, transportation, health care, and others). These are achievable objectives in the short and medium term. They are also steps forward to creating a truly sustainable, large scale energy system.
My colleague had chosen the right way to tell the story when he showed a politician how he could operate an electric heater using his PV plant. But that wasn't enough. We need to show that renewables not only produce energy, but produce useful energy for the community. It will also be a concrete set of actions to fight climate change. It is the right path for the future.
Saturday, May 20, 2023
The Garden of Forking Paths: Renewables are an Opportunity we Cannot Afford to Miss
Do you remember the story of the boy who cried wolf? It tells you that you shouldn't cry wolf too many times but also that the wolf will eventually come. It illustrates how our destiny as human beings is to always choose extreme viewpoints: either we are too afraid of the wolf, or we believe it doesn't exist. Indeed, Erwin Schlesinger said, "human beings have only two modes of operation: complacency and panic."
This dichotomy is especially visible in the current debate on the "Energy Transition" that recently flared in an exchange between Simon Michaux and Nafeez Ahmed, the first maintaining that the transition is impossible, the second arriving at the opposite conclusion. In my modest opinion, Michaud's work is correct within the limits of the assumptions he made. But these assumptions are not necessarily right.
Models may be perfectly correct, but still unable to predict the future.
If you really believe that they can, you are bound to make enormous mistakes -- as we saw in the way the recent pandemic was (mis)managed.
Models are there to understand the future, not to predict it.
The future is a garden of forking paths. Where you go depends on the path you choose. But you still need to follow one of the available paths.
______________________________________
Now, let me try to examine Michaux's work and Ahmed's rebuttal in light of these considerations. I went through Michaux's report, and I can tell you that it is well done, accurate, full of data, and created by competent professionals. That doesn't mean it cannot be wrong, just like the peak oil date was proposed by competent professionals but turned out to be wrong. The problem is evident from the beginning: it is right there, in the title.
Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels
You see? Michaux assumes from the start that we need "extra capacity" from "alternative" energy in order to "completely replace" fossil fuels. If the problem is stated in these terms, the answer to the question of the feasibility of the transition can only be negative.
Alas, we didn't need a report of 985 pages to understand that. It was obvious from the beginning. The limits of mineral resources were already shown in 1972 by the authors of "The Limits to Growth," the report sponsored by the Club of Rome. We know that we have limits; the problem is which paths we can choose within these limits.
This question is often touched on in Michaux's report when he mentions the need to "think outside the box" and to change the structure of the system. But, eventually, the result is still stated in negative terms. It is clear from the summary, where Michaux says, "The existing renewable energy sectors and the EV technology systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final solution." This suggests that we should stick to fossil fuels while waiting for some miracle leading us to the "final" solution, whatever that means. This statement can be used to argue that renewables are useless. Then, it becomes a memetic weapon to keep us stuck to fossil fuels; an attitude which can only lead us to disaster.
Nafeez Ahmed perfectly understood the problems in his rebuttal. Ahmed notes several critical points in Michaud's report; the principal ones are underestimating the current EROI of renewables and the recent developments of batteries. That leads him to the statement that renewables are not really "renewable" but, at most, "replaceable." Which is simply wrong. The EROI of renewables is now large enough to allow the use of renewable energy to recycle renewable plants. Renewables are exactly that: renewable.
You could argue that my (and Ahmed's) evaluation of the EROI of renewables is over-optimistic. Maybe, but that's not the main point. Ahmed's criticism is focused on the roots of the problem: we need to take into account how the system can (and always does) adapt to scarcity. It follows different paths among the many available. Ahmed writes:
...we remain trapped within the prevailing ideological paradigm associated with modern industrial civilisation. This paradigm is a form of reductive-materialism that defines human nature, the natural world, and the relationship between them through the lens of homo economicus – a reduction of human nature to base imperatives oriented around endless consumption and production of materially-defined pursuits; pursuits which are premised on an understanding of nature as little more than a repository of material resources suitable only for human domination and material self-maximisation; in which both human and nature are projected as separate and competing, themselves comprised of separate and competing units.
Yet this ideology is bound up with a system that is hurtling toward self-destruction. As an empirical test of accuracy, it has utterly failed: it is not true because it clearly does not reflect the reality of human nature and the natural world.
It’s understandable, then, that in reacting to this ideology, many environmentalists have zeroed in on certain features of the current system – its predatory growth trajectory – and sought out alternatives that would seem to be diametrically opposed to those regressive features.
One result of this is a proliferation of narratives claiming that the clean energy transformation is little more than an extension of the same industrialised, endless growth ideological paradigm that led us to this global crisis in the first place. Instead of solving that crisis, they claim, it will only worsen it.
Within this worldview, replacing the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure with a new one based on renewable energy technologies is a fantasy, and therefore the world is heading for an unavoidable contraction that will result in the demise of modern civilisation. ... Far from being a sober, scientific perspective, this view is itself an ideological reaction that represents a ‘fight or flight’ response to the current crisis convergence. In fact, the proponents of this view are often as dogmatically committed to their views as those they criticise. ....
Recognising the flaws in Michaux’s approach does not vindicate the idea that the current structures and value-systems of the global economy should simply stay the same. On the contrary, accelerating the energy and transport disruptions entails fundamental changes not only within these sectors, but in the way they are organised and managed in relation to wider society.
My critique of Michaux doesn’t justify complacency about metals and minerals requirements for the clean energy transformation. Resource bottlenecks can happen for a range of reasons as geopolitical crises like Russia's war in Ukraine make obvious. But there are no good reasons to believe that potential materials bottlenecks entail the total infeasibility of the transition.
... we face the unprecedented opportunity and ecological necessity to move into a new system. This system includes the possibilities of abundant clean energy and transport with diminishing material throughput, requiring new circular economy approaches rooted in respect for life and the earth; and where the key technologies are so networked and decentralised that they work best with participatory models of distribution and sharing. This entails the emergence of a new economy with value measured in innovative ways, because traditional GDP metrics focusing on ever-increasing material throughput will become functionally useless.
If you can, please, try to examine these statements by Ahmed with an open mind because he perfectly frames the problem. And never forget one thing: the future is not a single path toward catastrophe. It is a garden of forking paths. We are bound to follow one of these paths: we don't know which one yet, but not all of them lead to the Seneca Cliff. In the transition to a renewable energy system, we can adapt, reduce demand, improve efficiency, deploy new technologies, and simply be happy with a more limited supply of energy at some moments. It is only the rigidity of our mental models that make us think that there are no alternatives to fossil fuels.
Thursday, May 18, 2023
Renewables are not a cleaner cockroach, they are a new butterfly. A discussion with Dennis Meadows
Dennis Meadows (left in the image) and Ugo Bardi in Berlin, 2016
A few days ago, I received a message from Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of the 1972 study "The Limits to Growth," about a previous post of mine on "The Seneca Effect." I am publishing it here with his kind permission, together with my comments, and his comments on my comments. I am happy to report that after this exchange we are "99% in agreement."
Ugo,
I would not choose either path; rather I believe it is time to quit focusing on fossil energy scarcity as a source of our problems and start concentrating on fragility. The debate -renewables versus fossil - is a distraction from considering the important options for increasing the resilience of society.
Dennis Meadows
#1: There is no possibility that the so-called renewable energy sources will permit the elimination of fossil fuels and sustain current levels of economic activity and material well- being. The scramble for access to declining energy sources is likely to produce violence.
#2: The planet will not sustain anywhere close to 9 billion people at living standards close to their aspirations (or our views about what is fair).
#5: The rapidly approaching climate chaos will erode society's capacity for constructive action before it prompts it.
#7: History does not unfold in a smooth, linear, gradual process. Big, drastic discontinuities lie ahead - soon.
#8: When a group of people believe they must choose between options that offer more order or those affording greater liberty, they will always opt for order.
Unfortunately so, since it will have grave implications for the evolution of society’s governance systems. Dictators will always promise less chaos than Democrats.
Friday, March 3, 2023
Electricity: the universal energy currency
By Harald Desing
Energy is conserved. Counter to common language, energy can neither be "produced" nor "consumed", but only transformed. However, there are more and less useful forms of energy: electricity, for example, is extremely versatile and can be transformed into any other form of energy with close to 100% efficiency. In contrast, low temperature heat cannot do much work anymore; it is the energy "waste" with no work potential. The work potential is called exergy: electricity has 100% exergy content, whereas heat at the same temperature than the surroundings has 0%. Society is driven by useful work provided through different energy resources. So, different energy forms should be compared with the useful work they are able to do.
Commonly, this is not the case. Energy statistics, such as the IEA or from national statistic offices, do compare apples with oranges: "Primary" energy is accounted on different levels: calorific energy content of fuels (that is the heat potential that can be generated by burning the fuel) alongside with solar electricity and geothermal heat at different temperature levels. All of them have different work potentials, and they are later used as different forms of energy: heat for buildings and industry, electricity, or motion for mobility.
When we defossilize the energy system, most of the fossil energy applications, which are not yet electricity, have to be replaced by renewable electricity. For example, instead of internal combustion engines in cars and trucks, we need battery electric vehicles and electric trains; gas boilers can be replaced by heat pumps powered by electricity; and high temperature heat for industry with either direct electric heating (such as an electric arc furnace) or hydrogen produced with renewable electricity (such for hydrogen-reduced steel). Low temperature heat could also be provided by solar thermal collectors, with a similar efficiency than converting to solar electricity first and to heat with heat pumps later. High temperature heat could be provided by concentrated solar systems, however, this is currently not very practical for most applications in industry. In particular cases, it may make sense to provide heat directly from solar, biomass or geothermal. However generally, electricity is the universal and versatile intermediary form of energy for all sectors.
We do not have to replace "primary" fossil energy, but only the useful work they provide to society. Fictively converting all primary energy to electric energy equivalents using state-of-the-art conversion technologies, provides a more reasonable estimate for what really needs to be replaced. It reduces the energy supply to society from almost 19 terawatt (TW) in 2019—as counted by IEA as "primary" energy—to 7.3TW. Renewable energies already provide 15% of this, so "only" 6.3TW needs to be replaced during the energy transition with renewable electricity.
Sometimes, this reduction is labeled "gigantic efficiency improvements" when switching to RE systems, but actually it is merely counting energies on the basis of usefulness to society. The efficiency of the subsequent energy services remain the same. The efficiency of the energy provisioning system, in contrast, could be measured by tracing energy conversions all the way back to their origin. For most energy forms, this is our sun. Hydropower is nothing but converted sunlight: sunshine on oceans evaporates water, forms clouds and generates winds that carry vapor over land where it falls as rain. The height difference of the runoff back to the oceans is what can be used as hydropower. This description makes it clear already that from the original solar energy, only a tiny fraction can be converted to hydroelectricity. The same applies to wind and biomass. All of them are much less efficient than direct solar energy conversion. Fossil fuels are also nothing but (ancient) sunlight. They had been slowly built over many million years by buried biomass; now we burn them at a rate more than ten thousand times faster than they were built. The solar energy that created coal, oil and gas deposits is again much more than solar energy stored in recent biomass, reducing the conversion efficiency from sunlight to useful work even further. Nuclear, geothermal and tidal energies do not originate from our sun. They originate from exploding stars and need to be traced back all the way to the big bang. The energy from our sun can be traced back to the big bang too, which would be truly primary energy: all the useful work at our disposal originates from there.
Due to all the additional conversion steps for other energy forms, direct solar energy conversion is the most efficient way to provide useful work to society. And electric energy is the embodiment of useful work (100% exergy), which is why it is ideal for comparisons and modelling substitutions among different energy provisioning systems.