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The Energy Return on Investment Threshold

Hall and Day (2009) report that the EROI for coal might be as high as 80 and that for hydropower, EROI is 40. Does this mean that coal is twice as ‘good’ as hydro? The answer is no, and in this post I will discuss how this relates to the idea of an...

Lucky Economists, Unlucky Scientists?

For decades, economists (Cornucopians or optimists) have been at odds with natural scientists (Malthusians or pessimists) when it comes to the scarcity of natural resources. The economist’s argument, summarized here by Julian Simon, is as follows: M...

Does Peak Oil Even Matter?

It is easy to become befuddled by the current discourse on peak oil. Peak oil is defined generally as the point at which the flow rate of oil to society has reached a maximum. But this simple definition has issues too, such as what should be considered...

Energy Tomorrow interviews David Murphy on Economic Growth

At the most recent ASPO-USA conference, I gave a presentation as part of a panel hosted by The Oil Drum. The subject matter of my post was taken from a recent paper developed by Charles Hall and me on peak oil, net energy, and economic growth. A much ...

EROI, Insidious Feedbacks, and the End of Economic Growth

The following is a brief portion of a paper of the same title that we (Charles Hall and I) wrote and that is currently under peer-review. I will be presenting on this topic at this year’s ASPO conference in Washington, D.C. I hope that our readers w...

New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment (EROI) of Corn Ethanol: Part 1 of 2

The following is the first of two posts based on a recent paper published under the same title in the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability. The paper is divided into five sections, and to keep each post succinct, we have divided the pap...

The True Value of Energy is the Net Energy

"The true value of energy to society is the net energy, which is that after the energy costs of getting and concentrating that energy are subtracted.” - H.T. Odum (1973) To reduce Odum’s assertion to a pithy phrase—it takes energy to get energy ...

A Photographic Tour of a Natural Gas Well in the Marcellus Shale

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a tour of a natural gas well in Troy, Pennsylvania, courtesy of Talisman Energy USA. Founded in 2002 as Fortuna Energy, Talisman Energy USA is a subsidiary of Talisman Energy Inc., of Canada. They are currently producing over 100 wells in New York and Pennsylvania with 200 miles...

What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have? Part 3: Calculating the minimum EROI to support the U.S. transportation system

The following multi-part series is taken from a paper we published last year in the free, on-line journal Energies. You may access the entire PDF here. All references can be found in the pdf. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can be found here.

In this final installment of the...

Energy Transitions and the Next “Paradigmatic Image of the World”

The history of modern humankind has undergone two major energy transitions, marked by the invention and development of agriculture and the discovery and exploitation of oil. The two energy transitions partition human history into three phases: hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and industrial. Faber et al. (1996) refer to these phases as “Paradigmatic Images...

What Does “Peak Oil” Mean to You?

The “Don’t Fear the 2010s” article written by Nick Gillespie of the Wall Street Journal featured a section on Peak Oil and, after reading it, I found myself uttering the famous words of Homer Simpson: “Doh.” The article claims that "something always gets in the way" of peak oil,...

Reflections from ASPO: Contradiction, EROI, and Future Energy Supplies



One feature of this year’s ASPO conference that I most enjoyed was the contradiction amongst presentations. Marcio Mello gave an animated talk on Sunday night about the pre-salt formations off the coast of Brazil quoting that there are upwards of 500 billion barrels of oil...