ASPO-USA: Support for Global Energy Flow modelling and a Net Energy database
Posted by Euan Mearns on November 1, 2006 - 12:30pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: aspo-usa, cutler cleveland, dick lawrence, eroei, net energy database, ron swenson [list all tags]
One of the breakout session working groups at the ASPO-USA conference focused on the need to have greater understanding of all Energy Flows within and between countries on a Global scale and to have greater understanding of Net Energy within all energy production systems. Within the limited time available at the breakout meeting the focus was on the Net Energy topic and it is therefore Net Energy that is the focus of this short post. ASPO-USA directors Dick Lawrence and Ron Swenson led the session.
Professor Cutler Cleveland outlined work in progress at Boston University where they have already begun to compile a Net Energy database. A recent guest post by Professor Cleveland on The Oil Drum presented a compilation of Net Energy data for wind. Professor Cleveland also introduced the Encyclopedia of Earth that is a new WIKI based collection of reviewed articles pertaining to the entire Earth Domain. Professor Cleveland proposed that a subsection of this encyclopedia might be dedicated to Net Energy.
The ASPO-USA working group resolved to:
1. Compile a register of professional expertise and credentials among those who attended this break out session in order to establish how those who attended may be able to support this effort.
2. To define the objectives of ASPO-USA in relation to this Net Energy project.
3. To help define an "industry standard" procedure for measuring and documenting Net Energy.
4. To help form an international panel of experts on Net Energy who may both contribute to defining the industry standard procedure described in #3 (above) and who may also act as editors to entries made on The Encyclopaedia of Earth.
5. To facilitate the public promotion of the Net Energy database and in this regard BLOGS like The Oil Drum may have a key role to play.
The subject of Global Energy Flows will be discussed in greater detail at subsequent meetings of this ASPO-USA working group. The work in progress on Net Energy will provide one of the inputs to the higher goal of creating a Global Energy Flow dynamic simulation.
The view from Cry Wolf
To quote Professor Cleveland "The economic, environmental, social and geopolitical significance of the concepts and implications of Net Energy have never been greater. Yet there is great confusion about every aspect of the concept, and more bad "information" than good. As a result, the impact of Net Energy issues on personal decisions and policy making is nil."
Reliable understanding of Net Energy is in my opinion, fundamentally important to the future prosperity of the Global economy as we become increasingly dependent upon non-fossil fuel energy sources. Consider this, if an energy delivery system has an ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) close to 1, then our economy will spend all its energy on energy production - not leaving any surplus energy for food production, manufacturing, construction, transportation etc. If the ERoEI is close to 2, then energy delivery systems will spend 50% of their working lives repaying the energy used in their construction and so on. TOD contributor Nate Hagens has outlined these principles in relation to a theoretical community. Maximising ERoEI within our energy production systems will maximise the Net Energy available for society to consume. Our future prosperity, therefore, is inextricably linked to investing in the most energy efficient energy production systems - and this can only happen if the ERoEI of different energy production systems is understood for a range of operating conditions.
In energy production systems with ERoEI less than 10, the energy efficiency plummets towards a Net Energy sink as ERoEI approaches unity. The future prosperity of the World economy will be dependent upon building new energy infrastructure with optimal ERoEI and Net Energy return.
In the past, understanding of Net Energy has not seemed to be important. Early oil and gas production wells had ERoEI ratios > 50. In energy terms, this has been essentially free energy - a 5000% profit on energy invested and wasting this resource has not seemed to matter to mankind. Much of this energy profit has been harvested by national governments by way of taxation both directly and indirectly. Companies and individuals have prospered with "limitless" supplies of virtually free energy and that prosperity has driven the World economy upwards and our climate close to the edge of collapse. The society we know - schools, universities, hospitals, transportation infrastructures, defence, social security and care for the elderly - is all founded upon this fossil fuel bounty.
By way of a personal example, I have been engaged in dialogue with politicians in Scotland concerning their enthusiasm for wind energy and building a hydrogen-based economy. The compilation of wind energy data compiled by Professor Cleveland points to a significant Net Energy ratio for wind in the region 15 to 20. This is approaching contemporary values for fossil fuels making wind energy extremely competitive in Net Energy terms. The disadvantage of wind is intermittency and the relatively "low energy density" of the electricity that is produced. However, with the abundance of Net Energy, my feeling is that the power management and energy storage issues may be more easily resolved - if for no other reason that it will be permissible to "spill" some energy in achieving stable grid power.
Cry Wolfaka Euan Mearns TOD UK Contributor
note that I will shortly start posting under my proper name
Thanks to Dick Lawrence, Ron Swenson, Cutler Cleveland and Nate Hagens for providing supporting information for this post. Readers should also note that Nate is the TOD expert on Net Energy and will be posting more detailed articles on this subject in the near future.
One thing that is sometimes overlooked in net energy analysis is liebigs law of the minimum. If Peak Oil is nigh, then energy will likely be the limiting factor, but as planetary ecological systems become more strained and our waste products exceed the absorption capacity, analysis of new energy technologies will have to incorporate other inputs/outputs than straight BTUs. What if water becomes more important than energy - then do we have Energy Return on Water Invested?
What if we design a great energy technology with high EROI of 20:1, yet it has triple the greenhouse gas emissions and depletes the soil. Multicriteria analysis, with particular attention to externalities, somehow needs to be incorporated into net energy analysis. And that is one thing that both EROI and standard financial ROI have in common.
Dual cycle nat gas power plants are often promoted on the basis of their super heat conversion efficiency. But the utilities may conveniently forget to add in the energy costs of gas discovery, liquification, transportation, regasification before it reaches the boilers.
Bio fuels as you know have a wide range of potential externalities - water use, soil depletion, transportation, monocultures etc. That's one reason why I liked the talk by Milton Maciel on Brazilian sugar cane at ASPO so much - I still think we should try and get a post on that - because it captured a technlogy that delivered high ERoEI but in an ecologically sustainable way.
Many of the externalities are "hidden" costs to society and they are often environemntal in nature. Given our dual concerns for energy depletion and environmental sustainability, I believe that a "whole system" method of accounting EroEI + external costs is vital to seeing the best path forward.
That, by the very definition of "great", would not only not be a great technology but simply unsustainable.
In the real world one always has to deal with multiple problems at the same time, yet, it is not only technically correct to seperate concerns but also necessary. The reason why you are not allowed to dispose of your motor oil in the sewage is that the water treatment plant can't deal with it.
For very much the same reasons nuclear power plants are not allowed to ship nuclear waste in carboard boxes with the mail.
Right now global awareness is growing that disposing of CO2 in the atmosphere is just as bad as spilling oil or releasing radioactivity once you get to the Gton/year quantities. The mechanisms to deal with that are the same as with the motor oil and the nuclear waste: laws and regulations.
Just because you can make up a worse scenario in your mind than exists in reality, real problem solvers will not have to change their strategies. And one of them is seperation of concerns, which starts at the analysis level and then continues on the political one.
Of course, how does one make money doing that....?
I do not believe that most of our politicians and decision makers have the ability to grasp that notion - that an energy production system may seem "profitable" in finance terms simply because it is subsidised by energy produced from a more efficient energy production system.
I also beleive that we need to give equal weight to efficient energy use - and there we need to have a clear understanding of what is efficient and what is not. For example, it is easy to claculate that hanging clothes out side to dry is better than popping them into a tumble drier - or is it? You need to have space available outside for a clothes rope - and what is the energy cost or providing that?
I believe that with the correct choice of energy production systems (that may vary from region to region) combined with efficient energy use - then we (Mankind) have nothing to worry about - there's no problem here that $10 billion won't solve....
My biggest concern is timing. If I understood the preliminarly discussion at the ASPO meeting correctly, the idea is to determine what kind of detailed (country by country) model is needed, find two or three individuals with modelling expertise to work on this, and have a finished product in two or three years. (Correct me if I am wrong on this - I went to a different breakout session.)
Based on this assumed timing, it seems like the output would not be available until about 2009. If peak oil does not occur until 2010 to 2015, this timing might be OK, but does not give much time for mitigation.
There is a distinct possibility, however, that 2005 will prove to be peak oil year. EIA data that came out October 31, 2006, shows the following average production amounts:
Average production - All Liquids - Data set t14
2005 year - 84,411
2006 YTD through August - 84,303
Average production - Crude oil plus lease condensate - 11c
2005 year - 73,554
2006 YTD through August - 73,421
If these patterns continue to hold, 2005 could prove to be the year of highest production. By 2009, we could possibly be four years post-peak.
Because of the close timing of the peak and the need for mitigation, it would seem like we should be making a real effort to publicize any findings that are helpful early on. For example, if, in the course of building the model we discover helpful information about biofuels, we would want to publicize this information as soon as possible. It might even be worthwhile building a simpler model parallel to the full model, in the hopes of developing useful information more quickly.
What Cry Wolf says is true. I suspect that some financial and / or human crisis will be required to kick start a genuine action plan.
If there is one thing I have learned from reading TOD over the past few month's is that many of the energy solutions are there - too many solutions perhaps, and we lack the knowledge to be able to pick the right selection for our optimal future.
Personally I don't beleive we are past peak oil, even though UK oil production is going down the tubes. The recent down trend in Global production is in my opinion demand driven, and is a correction from an over-extended position of the last year or two. Only when demand (and price) pick up again will we know if 2005 was the peak year. My bets are on 2011 / 12.
We can see this already happening in Europe and some of the states in the US. The changes will be gradual and kickstart plans, like the mobilization of the US in WW II, will not be required.
Everyone with a home can become energy independent at the cost of 50 cents per kWh, tops. People without a home can just wait for the utility companies to raise their cost by a few cents. We might see a gas tax of up to a dollar a gallon. Big deal, not.
People will bitch and roll their eyes. Then they will discover that nobody listens and that eye-rolling hurts. They will stop both and simply pay the transition cost.
By the time our children have children the world will look different and nobody will mind the blue-grey color of solar roofs.
If we started with USA, Mexico, and Canada, it would be easier to include variables such as water supply, global warming, food production, and natural gas supply. It may also be easier to explain to legislators.
The organization is ASPO-USA, so a USA focus for at least a preliminary model might make sense.
On the former, one thing that is often overlooked in the discussion of net energy, and in my opinion is largely disregarded by net energy detractors is that modern society is built on highly concentrated energy and most alternative forms are more diffuse in nature.
In other words, energy quality, an important component of net energy analysis, will someday switch over from electricity to liquid fuel being more highly valued and scarce (unless we quickly switch to electrified transport). Low EROI biofuels and non-upgraded wind and solar dont have the oomph to operate our current infrastructure, unless they are concentrated and upgraded, which at each stage undergoes an energy loss. So, although the graphic is dated, our task is to move the renewable blue boxes upward, using technology and the depleting blue boxes, while gradually moving the red boxes downward
It seems the problem is that modern society survives on the spread between efficiency of production and efficiency of use - an energy profit margin so to speak.
However, to carry the analogy one step further, I am not sure that the highly concentrated energy use that modern society is built on is a "fixed cost" or fixed variable.
Modern society's wasteful approach to energy may not be an integral element to modern society, but rather a byproduct of historical cheap energy. Just like we never had to consider net energy with 50+ EROEI resources available, we never had to consider the efficiency of our energy use at a system level.
I have noted before that I believe that "conservation" is a crucial element of the eventual solution, but that there is no viable mechanism for making it happen aside from price. The diminishing net energy of future resources seems certain to have an impact on the cost of energy. This will lead to a reduction in use. If the use is wasteful, then the impact does not have to be entirely negative.
It seems reasonable to consider certain energy consumptive lifestyles as dependant on peak oil and hence doomed. I am sure that the people in wealthy and soon to be wealthy countries could and will eliminate massive amounts of energy from food, transportation, and other activities.
The EROEI line on Cry Wolf's chart makes it clear that marginal suppliers of net energy, such as corn ethanol are not consistent with a lifestyle that we could be expected to adjust to. However, at an energy balance of around +5, it seems the net energy is about 80%. I don't see this as being fatal, although it is unlikely that a majority of energy could be produced at levels much below 10.
So the two relevant questions seem to be:
- Can mankind develop a sustainable energy production system with an EROEI of above 8-10?
- Can mankind live on this level of energy.
The jury is still out on whether we can do this and how severe the impacts of the transition will be. It doesn't provide much assurance to either a doomer or cornucopian viewpoint. It does seem clear that the issues you and Cry Wolf are drawing our attention to are among the most important facing us.Nate, I think this is the diagram that Cutler said he didn't fully understand at ASPO. And I'm not sure what it means either - if anything. I suspect the proximity of spatial area of current fuel sources with our urban / industrial infrastructure may just be a coincidence. Like wise, is it really a problem that renewable energy sources are spatially "less dense" at point of harvesting?
Having said that, it is worth noting the position of Hydro - is that the size of the lake or the catchment area that is plotted. One thing for sure, we couldn't power ourselves just on Hydro in the UK - just not enough height and gradient.
WRT to wind (shoot me now) I guess the question is how many turbines do you need - and what area would be required to host these - is there enough space? Certainly should be if the off shore is used. But I know that there is problem in west Denmark with the intrusion of turbines.
In terms of upgrading wind power (shoot me again) I see that as strategies for delivering a stable grid - balancing and storage - and we need expert electrical engineering input to answer that.
We should remember the very low cost of pumped storage: only .6 cents per kwhr. Why wasn't this used before? Because natural gas was so cheap, and worked so well for handling intermittent/peak loads. Nat gas has only been recognized as expensive and limited for a very, very short time.
Anyway, here is some real data. From the IEA:
http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2005/variability.pdf
From an actual electrical engineering journal (requires registration):
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3544/3
a serious study in Ireland:
http://www.sei.ie/index.asp?locID=330&docID=-1
and from a technical working group of actual power engineers:
http://www.uwig.org/IntegrationStateoftheArt.htm
Re: The disadvantage of wind is intermittency and the relatively "low energy density" of the electricity that is produced
Yes, people on my ASPO-USA thread were arguing about this but I'm not sure I fully understand "low energy density" for wind. It's generating electricity, right? feeding power into the grid? What's the deal?
I want to learn more here.
Imagine the wind is the size of the picture frame - in fact its really much bigger than that. These little wind mills only capture a tiny fraction of the energy available.
Compare that with Hydro - where the glacially sculpted land surface captures most of the water and diverts it, through gravity, into streams, rivers and eventually a water fall where man can capture lots of the solar energy. The Sun evaporates the water, and gravity (which no one really fully understands yet) concetrates all that water into one point where man can convert it to energy. Even better than that, by building a dam he can release that energy when he needs to use it.
Wind is a bit different. In its primary form it is very diffuse and man can only capture a tiny amount of all the energy that is available. What's more, the wind doesn't always blow when man wants it to - so he needs to devise ways of storing or controlling this energy resource - which in some other respects is free.
Electricity, is the way that man utilises wind, hydro and many fossil energy resources. The fossil energy resources are very concentrated, but in converting them to electricity, man actually dilutes that concentraion of energy significantly - the compensation here is that the energy is in a very user friendly format - ready to use - when you want to use it.
The problem with wind, is that it is dilute and not always there - and storing the electricity in a battery it is diluted - eg 100 mile range for an electric car with a big battery comapred with 400 - 500 miles for a gasoline car with a small tank.
The main point is that with a high ERoEI >> 15, wind may provide an energy bounty, and some of the energy it produces may be used to solve some of these low density, intermitency problems.
As for the double Y axis chart - we live in a multi dimensional universe - so more of those to come.
CW
If they are necessary, they are a sad necessity, and shouldn't be viewed in such embellished, glorifying terms in my opinion.
I guess I do feel differently about the systems that just divert water through a generator along the stream, however.
Distributed PV and wind are far better and less destructive than dams in my opinion. All of our annual electrical needs are currently being served by 18 modest-sized panels on our suburban roof - no maintenance, good for decades. What's wrong with that?
It's not Earth we're worried about. The Earth will be OK in a couple million years after we're gone and done trashing it. It's our sorry asses we need to worry about and whatever vital animals & plants might be saved. But I digress.
Re: it is diluted ... and intermittent
Yes, I understand all that. Now, consider these quotes on my ASPO-USA thread..
From here:
And from here: And from here: So, this whole subject seems more complex than I had imagined, I am embarrassed to say.Somebody needs to post on the "Challenges of Wind" as it gets integrated into the electrical power grid.
For one thing we could easily capture GWs of power with water electrolysis and create hydrogen for storage... IF we just had them. The only thing that happens there is that we take a huge efficiency loss. And still the overall efficiency would stay quite good, especially if that hydrogen becomes part of the transportation fuel cycle.
In any case, the power grid, if designed properly for peak loads will not go down. To build a power grid that can shift twice the amount of power around than it does today will require investments, of course. The power companies will need to be re-imbursed for those moneys and we will see them shift their business model from producers of power to transmitters of power.
No problem here. Except that one has to think a bit more on the system and a little bit less on the circuit level.
:-)
That's a really big IF, isn't it? How do think hydrogen is created? Doesn't it usually involve one of those fossil fuel words?
Re: No problem here. Except that one has to think a bit more on the system and a little bit less on the circuit level
So, do your feet ever actually touch the ground -- which is where the rest of us live? Or do you just float around above the Earth?
InfinitePossibilities? The only infinite possibility I see here is the ability of human beings to screw up. And, you did not even remotely begin to address my questions about integrating wind into the power grid.
The synergies are fairly outstanding!
So, when somebody tells me to think at the "systems" level and not the "circuit level", I view that as some sort of fantasy. For example, when I flip the switch to turn on one of those energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs, I have a definite interest in whether it will actually come on. If that's thinking at the "circuit" level, then I am guilty.
Assume we have a hydrogen can-opener...
So that leads us with a few possibilities: Spend trillions on storage systems such as: depleted NG caverns for compressed air. Huge water pump storages on mountain tops. A massive scale up in commercial battery sites, such as flow batteries. A fleet of EVs and PEHVs that all use V2G setups. Or channel our excess energy production into hydrogen/ammonia generation/storage. Choose your poison. You have to use some of these set ups to avoid becoming a renewable 'export' country :P
Doable and affordable IMHO.
Alan
But please, don't get me wrong! I love alternatives including wind/solar. I simply think people are looking in the situation with one eye not only covered, but sowed up, locked up behind a bullet proof eye patch, which is then stapled to their heads. Just as we will need a basket of renewables to replace oil, we will need a basket of storage systems to make it viable.
Oh, and we have an infrastructure for hydrogen...we make fertilizer out of it :P
Three more could have been built at the 2 GW Raccoon Mountain site. They picked one end of the ridge because it was closer to existing transmission lines and land acquistion would be easier.
The Upper Penisula of Michigan can site massive pumped storage (close to Dakota & Manitoba wind and Manitoba hydro).
Ozarks have potential, etc. etc. etc.
Alan
An unfamilar term outside felines to me.
I see a need for more pumped storage in almost any scenario so I disagree with "build what we don't need".
And "will already be built" in the future ?
I assume you are talking about Vehicle to Grid using EV batteries. I think that is likely a bad idea since cycling chemical batteries shortens their life. VERY expensive battery storage.
And American consumer behavior is hard to predict (see recent auto sales). I expect many to recharge during evening peak demand (dinner time). So more grid capacity required.
Alan
Take a look at THESE BATTERIES
BTW, a CAT is a Compressed Air Transportation device, or a CAT car
========Hype only company (Altair Gold ??) with week old "breakthrough" report. And we are to base our future on new nanotechnologies ?!?
You need to check the crediability of your sources of information !
Even if 3M or GE announced the same "breakthrough" I would expect 12 to 15 years till mass production capable of replaceing half of US fleet.
No Hope for BS,
Alan
Alan, that's with a "business as usual" approach. In WWII we ramped to 100,000 planes in about 2 years.
"business as usual" won't implement anything at lightning speed: neither rail nor EV's.
Also, keep in mind that we don't have to replace half the fleet to cut half the fuel consumption: probably the newest 40% of vehicles get 60% of the miles, and 40% of vehicles is only 5 years production. Ramping up production is the variable, and that simply depends on the priority it gets: it could be done in 2 years on a war basis, and 5 on a normal commercial high-priority basis (say, $180 oil).
They did this without advanced technology, just "coal, mules & sweat" and 3% of today's GNP. And it was done as a commercial boom.
You underestimate the time required to implement from benchtop prototype breakthrough of, say, a carbon nanotechnology battery to millions/year production. WW II production did not use major breakthroughs in technology (except 3 hand made A bombs) and there is a learning curve with new technologies that simply takes time.
There is simply no humanly possible way to expect a novel technology to go from benchtop breakthrough to million + large scale production in 24 months.
Durability testing, for example, simply takes time.
Wind turbines have been steadily improving for 20+ years and are on the verge of being ready for the "big time". But the first large offshore wind farm (2 MW WTs by Vestas) had to pull EVERY WT back for rework & re-engineer (from memory).
Best Hopes,
Alan
hmmm. If your point is that rail could make an enormous difference in 20 years, I agree. I would guess that a large rail project would take at minimum 15 years from conception to completion, and perhaps 12 years from drawings to completion - does that sound roughly right?
"There is simply no humanly possible way to expect a novel technology to go from benchtop breakthrough to million + large scale production in 24 months."
That's not what I was suggesting. I believe that existing technology is sufficient, if necessary. That's what the Tesla uses. They plan to incorporate incremental battery improvements as they are proven. EV's are much simpler than ICE vehicles - only the batteries and power electronics are challenges, and they've gotten good enough.
OTOH, I would point to two things: first, there are a number of improved battery technologies which, while not proven, have a very high likelihood of success very, very soon. One of the most intriguing is Firefly, which is a spinoff of Caterpillar, and very credible. They expect to be in large-scale production in 2007. Probably the most important is A123systems, which is in production now for Dewalt powertools - it's here now, though it's optimized for powertool use (high power) rather than EV use (high energy density). They're working on an EV version now.
2nd, while benchtop to factory floor would be very difficult to do in 2 years, it can be done in 4, and was by A123systems - see:
COMPANIES: AI23 SYSTEMS AND BLACK & DECKER
The guys in the aisle at Home Depot don't know it. But that $800 DeWalt cordless power-tool set - the one they really want for Christmas, but are just too scared to ask for - gets its butt-kicking oomph from a Nature Materials paper published only four years ago. It's taken that time for a battery cathode based on phosphate nanocrystals to rip its way from a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, through financing, design, development and manufacture in east Asia, to its current position, driving 36-volt power tools from Black & Decker - owner of the DeWalt professional-grade marque. (registration required)
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061030/full/444016a.html
I'm confident that this could be reduced somewhat, if it was sufficiently high priority.
Anyway, it's a somewhat moot question: we don't need any lab breakthroughs at this point to go forward with an ambitious PHEV/EV program.
Does that make sense to you?