The Posse first wrote this in February 1991 but has resurrected it for a generation of folks who are looking for the magic bullets for climate change mitigation as well as national security enhancement. We ARE making the mistakes projected in this article, hence the title above—and we will make more. We don’t have to if we learn certain basics from the past. So, for your reading pleasure here is deja vous all over again:
Choosing a Yardstick
Feb 18, 1991
Depending upon what happens in the Persian Gulf, and, maybe, in spite of it, energy alternatives to our reliance on oil will surface. Indeed, Bush’s National Energy Strategy may even contain a few which escape the special interest ax of his oil buddies and John Sununu.
This interest in alternatives occurred before in 1973 and 1979 and you might remember stories about devices using magnets and through some “secret” fuzzy process were able to produce energy out of thin air. Aside from violating the first law of thermodynamics, which basically tells us there is no free lunch, we haven’t seen these wonders hit the market yet and I doubt we will.
Just how do we go about making the proper decisions of which alternatives are good versus which ones are pure schlock? What we choose as a yardstick becomes important since, if we make the wrong decisions, we may inadvertantly increase fossil fuel use. This would put us at even greater risk of continued Middle-East dependency.
For instance, a lot of hoo-hah has come out for increased use of ethanol instead of gasoline but once you find out that for every unit of energy you put in to produce it, you only get 1.36 units out, it might take some of your enthusiasm away because the energy put in comes largely from oil. Investing that same amount of oil into any option which gives more than 1.36 units out is a better choice. Besides, even if the entire corn crop were put into ethanol production, it would only supply a small fraction of our fuel needs. At best, you’d end up with rich mid-west farmers and a lot of hungry drivers.
This comparison of how much energy an option provides to how much energy it takes to produce that option is called its energy profit ratio or EPR. It is the yardstick by which we can measure our future energy choices. The EPRs for a few of our fossil fuels and the more commonly mentioned alternatives are listed below:
Oil (1940’s) - 100              Nuclear (light-water) - 4
(1970’s) — 8                    Hydropower ———– 11.2
Coal(1950’s) — 80             Methanol ————- 2.6
(1970’s) — 30                   Solar Flat Plate —— 1.9
Oil Shale —- .7 to 13.3
“Well, so what if it has a low EPR? At least we get something,” you might say. But, when you consider that the good life you know was built on oil discoveries in the 1940’s with EPRs of 100 (it would take only one barrel of oil to discover, extract, refine and transport to market 100 barrels worth), the prospect of an EPR of 4 may leave you cold (literally) or little better off than subsistence. Next time someone suggests an all-nuclear society to solve our problems, think about that and also that the infrastructure to support it depends totally upon the fossil fuel economy around it.
The energy profit ratio is one of those factors in energy production which federal and state lawmakers should examine before they endorse the funding and operation of any energy source. When examined in this way, many options which otherwise look like “winners” will be “losers” in the long term.
Missing from our charts is the real winner for our immediate future, the one which allows us to use any energy source more efficiently — conservation. An automobile with twice the mileage of today, in effect, eliminates the need for fuels with low EPR’s. Conservation in the form of new compact fluorescent light bulbs or high efficiency windows eliminates costly new plant construction and saves us energy which is better spent in research and development for technologies with more promising EPR’s such as photovoltaics. Conservation buys us the time to make the right investments.
But, remember, next time you hear some inventor, economist or politician who claims to have all the answers and is hawking an alternative that sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. As for myself I put my trust in my chainsaw. For every gallon of gasoline which has 129,000 BTUs I can get about a half cord of wood with an energy value of 12 million BTUs, an energy profit ratio of 93! Together with an energy conservative home it only takes 2-1/2 cords to keep it comfy.
Climateposse@comcast.net
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