Hi all,
I love how positive Professor David Murphy is about renewable EROEI - especially given he used to work with Charles Hall who has tended to be pessimistic about non-fossil fuel EROEI.
Either read the few paragraphs below, the full article at the link above, or listen to an interview with Professor Murphy here.
“Solar photovoltaics produce electricity straight away and therefore can’t be fundamentally compared to gas at the point of extraction until we look at what happens when gas is converted to electricity,” Prof Murphy told Byline Times. “As a result, some researchers were adding huge costs to solar and wind which they weren’t including in fossil fuels.”
His team conducted a ‘meta-analysis’ – a study of studies looking at findings across the scientific literature – and then revisited EROI measures to develop more accurate calculations focusing on a ‘point of use’ based on an engineering perspective using life-cycle analysis.
Previous EROI studies also often suffered due to poor data sources. The new research uses rigorous data from the ECOINVENT database which is widely recognised as the most detailed, transparent and vetted source for industrial life-cycle data on energy, resources, materials and beyond.
The new study confirmed that fossil fuels invariably display low and declining EROI values. Finding that no liquid fuel products from conventional oil have an EROI above 10, the study concluded that an average estimate for the EROI of oil today is around 4.2.
“All other estimates for bioethanol, biodiesel, and petrol from oil sands have harmonised EROIs below 5,” it said.
But it’s a different ballgame for renewable energy.
Renewables Rise Above Fossil Fuels
The new study concludes that wind and solar panels “have EROIs at or above 10” – which means that “greater than 90% of the energy produced by these technologies is delivered to society as net energy”.
This also means that renewables have progressed from merely being ‘cost-competitive’ with fossil fuels to fully out-competing them by generating more than double the net energy. Oil, in other words, is now generating less than half the net energy of solar and wind power.
Importantly, the study also found that incorporating battery storage into the analysis does not significantly decrease the overall EROI of a solar or wind system.
“Understanding EROI can give investors a way to make sense of which technologies are worth supporting,” said Prof Murphy. “What’s going to change for oil, gas and coal, where we’ve used up most of the best stuff?
Solar and Wind Power Now Deliver ‘More than Double’ the Net Energy Produced by Oil, New Study Finds – Byline Times