billp37

Andritz Group: Investing in Wood Pellets

What is Energy Returned On Energy Invested [EROEI] for wood pellets?

BTUs IN for BTUs OUT.

""For highter EROEI, the difference is negligible. But it skyrockets when you approach 1."

I think this is a critical issue that is being grossly overlooked. Here's a little table I built to illustrate the basic concept:


EROEI % net Representative Source
100:1 99 Early oil
50:1 98 Mid 20th century
33:1 97 Late 20th century
25:1 96 Turn of 21st
20:1 95 Century oil
15:1 93 Oil now?
10:1 90
9:1 89 Deep water oil?
8:1 88
7:1 86 Tar sands?
6:1 83
5:1 80 Polar oil?
4:1 75
3:1 67 Biodiesel
2:1 50
1.5:1 33 Oil shale?
1.33:1 25 Ethanol best
1.25:1 20
1.1:1 9
1:1 0
1:.7 -43 Ethanol worst

The next steps are to consider increasing population and declining extraction in concert with declining EROEI. Together, those three trends cut useful per capita energy in half before 2030, which is only a college student's lifetime away, and which places us where we were before the green revolution, which raises the issue of feeding ourselves - seen grain prices lately? Another student's lifetime and we're back where we were before the Great Depression. But I think by then we may think of that "Great" in a whole different vein, as in that was the Great Depression, and this is the Terrible One.

Empires get hooked on certain fuel sources like dope addicts. The Dutch were masters of wind and water. But their commercial dominance faltered with the rise of coal. Coal fed the British Empire. But it eventually gave way to the oil-powered might of the United States. Phillips maintains that the inevitable transition to a post-oil global economy — whether it is based on natural gas, hydrogen, greater nuclear reliance, renewable energy, or whatever — “could see the United States displaced by a new leading economic power, probably an Asian one.” The history of modern empires is one in which transitions to new fuel sources are just not successful. ..."