Energy follies
EROEI is the only currency of energy
As we scan through the SocialMedia sphere, our eyes are lured into all kinds of “breakthrough” technologies and flashy articles about how this or that is going to revolutionize the energy industry.
Out there you can find everything spanning from hydrogen, fusion, hamster generators, footstep energy recovery systems and so on and so forth.
The average person reading through these doesn’t necessarily have the mental antibodies to sieve through the details and understand the difference between a good energy technology and a plain bad one.
Here we shall attempt to explain some basic energy technology principles to provide the readers with a mental compass to navigate intelligently through the mole of fake news and unrealistic techs floating out there.
At the very CORE of our discussion is the concept of EROEI: Energy Returned Over Energy Invested.
The concept is simple: If you do nothing, you get nothing!
Even to refill your gas tank, you need to spend some energy to get to the gas station.
Sure the amount of time and energy spent to refill the tank is a tiny fraction of the total energy you will get once you refill the tank and you have hundreds of miles of autonomy to go around.
This concept is very well known by EV motorist who so happen to suffer from range anxiety as opposed to their gasoline powered fellows.
The range anxiety concept is the key to understand EROEI, which means that every technology that brings energy products to the market and consumers, needs to have some infrastructures to make that energy available.
These infrastructures also need energy to run, process the raw energy and move it toward the end user points.
A system that yields lot of energy with little to no effort is preferred and causes “less anxiety” to human society, so people can focus on other activities other than finding energy to power their lives.
This is a high EROEI energy technology and is universally preferred!
A system that is inefficient and takes a lot of time and effort to make is less preferable because people will always be out there on the hunt for whatever little scrap of energy they can get their hands onto.
That is an energy starved low EROEI type society.
Since humans are efficient (or lazy), like all living organism out there, they try to maximize their produce and focus on activities that bring in a lot of benefits with the least amount of energy expenditure.
This concept is at the base of humans moving from hunter/gatherers toward farmers/city dwellers, because the energy returned from agricultural activities available to the farmer family and the village is in average much greater than the energy returned from hunting activities.
We can safely say that the farm food energy EROEI was greater than 1 back in the days, probably in the range or around 3 to 5, meaning a family of 5 people working the land could produce enough food to feed 15 to 25 people.
This because most of the energy to grow the food was provided by the Sun. Farmers only had to gather the foodstuff energy and bring it in to the village.
Eventually archaic farming methods got hold of more modern technologies like the oxen powered plow, or the use of more fertile lands and way to fertilize them with manure, thus increasing the EROEI toward the 10 or 20 mark like in ancient Egypt around the Nile region, which in return spurred a flourishing and sophisticated society.
Modern food production EROEI is estimated to be below 0.75, much worse than ancient Egypt!
This because our nowadays industrialized agriculture spends a lot of energy in chemical fertilizers, diesel powered tractors, complex food processing machineries and cooking processes, long range transportation.
Therefore only a small fraction of the food energy comes from the Sun, most of the energy content of our food comes from fossil fuels and all that goes around the handling and transport.
Our food production is high (albeit at lower efficiencies) because through the centuries mankind has managed to unlock energy technologies capable of boosting the natural Sun productivity of crops, thus making more food available for the purpose of growing more population and educating it more, thus feedbacking into a virtuous technological self-reinforcing loop.
State of the art EROEI in AD 2025
Of all the energy technologies out there, some are good because have high EROEI and allow higher population density and education.
Other technologies have low EROEI and whilst still producing a net energy output require a lot more effort and cost.
So who is who in terms of EROEI?
In this chart we present some of the most energy efficient technologies along with some of the worst.
Best performing energy technology is hydroelectric, and by no chance it was one of the first ones to be exploited by mankind: We go for the low hanging fruits first!
We then have the Brent oil with an average EROEI of 75, meaning for every 75 barrels of oil extracted, one must be re-invested in the oilfield to keep the other 74 barrel flowing and going through the refining and transportation processes.
Nuclear and coal are around 40 and very reliably so, followed by WTI crude from Texas; Not as easy to extract compared to the Brent in Middle East, it requires more energy refining processes in order to get it out there in the market.
Worst performing technologies at the bottom end of the curve is fracking oil, tar sands and wind power.
Meaning for every 4.5 units of energy produced this way, one unit must be reinvested into the system and all the various clap traps associated to it.
These technologies inherently require lot of steel, concrete, pumps, compressors, control panels, engineers and technicians, all working feverishly to get very little energy output out there into the economy for processes other than energy production.
QUICK TIP: Even if you do not know the exact EROEI of a certain energy technology you can always lookup the UNSUBSIDIZED energy cost of this energy.
Cheap energy means high EROEI type energy since it is efficient to produce.
Expensive energy means low EROEI energy.
This last point being very important when studying bizzarro energy techs proposed out there.
Making energy and squandering energy
So far we spoke of technologies that have an EROEI higher than 1 and can still deliver something to the market, but what happens when you have a technology which is lower than 1?
When EROEI is lower than 1 it means you are taking good energy which could have been used to power people’s lives, and you are throwing it into a process which wastes said energy to return a much lower energy output.
It is the equivalent of putting your money on a fund which reliably yields negative interest rates.
Every technology, in its infancy, needed more money and was less efficient compared to other more mature options, so they all started broke and with an energy debt to be paid back.
However some technologies have the physics on their side and are known to be able to yield above 1 EROEI, at least on paper, like nuclear fusion discussed in other posts.
Other technologies instead can be seen not to work, even on paper, because the thermodynamic processes are already on the negative side, regardless of our best assumptions on ideal process efficiencies.
In this case the energy EROEI will be below 1 on the paper, and for sure it will be well below 1 once you make a real system and process inefficiencies are all accounted for.
It is like putting money on a fund which GUARANTEES you a negative return in the best possible year, and a much worse negative return on investment on a normal year!
Hydrogen saves the day?
Speaking with smart money on wall street, I stumbled on this mantra from energy fund managers rambling about “hydrogen has higher energy density per kilogram compared to natural gas” and also that “when it burns it produces water, not CO2 so it is green”.
These pieces of information alone should be enough for everybody to drop whatever they are doing and jump into the hydrogen energy bandwagon, frantically scramble to call their fund managers and order them switch their entire portfolio into hydrogen energy funds!
Hold your horses and bear with me one sec before you do just that.
If we make a back of the napkin EROEI calculation we will see that at best hydrogen fuel EROEI is 0.8 when produced from natural gas, and much lower than that when you consider other sources such as GREEN hydrogen from renewable electricity, whose EROEI is in the range of 0.38 (85% electrolyzer efficiency, 45% average thermal power plant efficiency to compare chemical energy for chemical energy).
In fact you can make a quick search on Google and see for yourself just how many projects are out there to “co-fire” some old coal powered plants using a blend of green hydrogen in the furnace, so now the coal power plant is a bit greener and emits a bit less pollution.
Phew, 4% “greener” electricity, not bad! We are doing our part toward a better world!
Kudos of self-righteousness to the engineering genius who came up with this idea.
Now what would have happened if you had taken the renewable electricity from your wind turbine, and put that electricity straight into the grid as opposed to passing through the hydrogen electrolyzer?
I sure would have hoped to speak with the brass heads at DOE before they embarked in handing down tens of millions of dollars in electrolyzer equipment for this project*, but the phone was ringing to no avail.
The guy at DOE in charge of this project might have been a collateral of the DOGE hullabaloo?
We will never hear the end of it…
All this to generalize the concept that some technologies are just a bad energy investment on the get go, and do not assume that the people in charge up there know better than the little guy down here.
To all hydrogen enthusiasts out there, let me be clear: Hydrogen is needed in the petrochemical and metallurgic industry for very specific processes where no other molecule can achieve certain reactions and product qualities.
The idea of using hydrogen as a fuel or combustible gas, in any combination or permutation (from green electricity, nat gas, electrolyzer, fuel cell, etc) is an energy wasteful solution, possible only where there are heavy subsidies or very cheap energy available from high EROEI sources.
Energies of scales: Every little helps (not!)
Another important concept to bear in mind is that things are more efficient when we produce them in bulk quantity, and this is the same for energy.
Big power plants and generators are more efficient and higher EROEI than tiny ones.
Nevertheless, we should not let this concept discourage us from seeking innovation and test revolutionary new concepts.
Without further ado I hereby present you the groundbreaking (pun intended) footstep energy generator!
Has anybody ever dared to make an EROEI analysis of this technology?
Yes?… No?… Maybe so?
Well, let us give it a shot, shall we:
1) What is the energy source of that generator?
A) Human footstep!
2) Does it cost energy to walk on a RIGID pavement?
B) Yes it does!
3) Does it cost you MORE energy to walk over that thing as opposed to a RIGID pavement?
C) Hell yeah it does! It will feel to you like walking over a gentle incline or a mattress.
Maybe not a huge cardio exercise but your muscles ARE in fact putting the energy that goes into that thing, more energy than they would when walking on a rigid surface.
4) How efficient is the mechanical energy converted by a human muscle?
D) About 20%
5) How efficient is the energy content of our human food stuff?
E) Per earlier circa 0.75 EROEI.
6) So how much EROEI efficient is the footstep energy generator even in best case scenario of 100% efficiency of conversion of footstep to electricity?
F) 0.20 x 0.75 = 0.15 at the very very best-est!
7) And what happens to a society when it uses EROEI techs below 1?
Effective ways to improve upon the footstep generator technology
In this picture we hereby propose, apparently for the first time (?) an unbeknown improvement of the aforementioned human footstep energy generator, at least unbeknown to the inventor of the footstep generator: The donkey powered generator!
Some key features of this interesting spin off (more pundits) tech:
1) Less moving parts than the footstep generator, much cheaper to build!
2) Direct coupled mechanical shaft transmission approaching 100% energy transfer efficiency.
You don’t get to see those kind of efficiency numbers often in the power industry if you ask the experts!
3) Lower donkey BMR (basic metabolic rate) thanks to smaller brain compared to humans and greater muscular efficiency thanks to four legged traction already out of the box!
4) Ability to use high EROEI locally produced unprocessed hay (> 5!) compared to low EROEI human grade foodstuff (EROEI < 0.75).
5) The donkey is a sure and true Sun powered free energy generator!
It might all seem somewhat sarcastic but the important concept at play here is that sometimes simplicity just wins the day compared to techs requiring all kinds of claptraps to get them to work.
We also note how disheartening is to scroll down on the comment section of the footstep video shown above. Many people commenting enthusiastically on this technology, begging to be made available or install it on motorways so that the gasoline engine of cars can power cities, at the cost of extra gasoline bill for motorists and more CO2 produced by cars running on these.
Maybe a sign that we are approaching a late empire phase of our technological society?
Alas we digress.
What about hamster energy generators?
At last we get to the main course of this little post of ours: Hamster energy generators!
It would appear that the blogosphere out there is quite obsessed with the tale of young elementary class students (maybe the same who ended up at DOE?) which allegedly put to shame energy scientist across the world some odd years ago through this ingenious energy technology and the possibility to resolve both mankind energy woes and environmental problems in one shot: Hamster energy generators!
The roots of that glorious post are apparently lost forever in the dustbin of history, or it might very well be that powerful energy lobbies have maliciously acted in order to censor this hidden gem from the public, because, we all know too well, they do not want you to know and they want to keep us all slave to dirty fossil fuel energy…
Still the legend lives on out there in the blogosphere, with a number of authors and pet lovers from all venues of life publishing verbose AI assisted articles about various pet and hamster energy generators and the possibility to go off the grid by means of this revolutionary (pundit!) energy source!
In this article a first back of the napkin calculation reveals that ONLY 81 hamsters are required to achieve grid neutrality and finally get rid of annoying energy bills!
After having involved powerful engineering resources at The Foundation, it has been seemingly confirmed that said figure is off by about a factor of 10 (only 1.5 w per hamster, not 15?), meaning the figure is closer to 810 Hamsters/household, and this is if we let our furry little friends run for 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.
Should we allow them to rest and sleep (because we all know too well a happy worker is also a GOOD worker), and include overall generator efficiency then the figure is closer to 16200 hamsters to achieve grid neutrality for a household.
The elites do not want you to know this, but there is nothing they can do to stop you from hooking up 16000 hamster wheels together so you don’t have to pay energy bills to O&G industry anymore!
Most in dept article about the true potential of said tech can be found here. It goes a long way calculating hamster quantity, breeding and mortality rates, estate requirement size & costs, cage / poo cleaning & disposal, etc … Just to land the KWH energy cost in the range of some 55.000 $ per KWH as opposed to the average 0.3 $ cost of unsubsidized fired coal power plant.
We still believe the original energy at the wheel input per hamster is off on that article, but let’s face it, the average reader attention level is now dwindling in the single digit, no one has eyes for details at this stage.
Regrettably the author of such enlightening paper only focuses on the energy cost and its possible economies of scale (or lack of thereof), and he does not go into the laudable calculation of the total process EROEI of said technology, which we shall not openly reveal in this post but we prefer leaving such exercise to the interested reader.
