When a barrel of crude oil doesn’t hold enough energy to lift up itself from deep in the underground unassisted, riding on a flying carpet into the refinery and then into the fuel tank of your car, the barrel cannot lift up another barrel of oil to make that magical journey, too.
Yet, our economics, science, academia, industry, politics and the media educate people relentlessly, deceptively and hypnotically that the single barrel can, in fact, lift up not just one but 2, 14 and 20 other barrels – only not itself, though!
The claim is that, yes, a one barrel might not be enough for achieving that, but a million barrel will be more than enough to extract, collect and utilise another 20, 14 or at least another 2 million barrels!
It is this ambiguity systemically injected into the consciousness of humanity since the early steam engine in the 18th Century what has led the world to go extreme today and think autonomous vehicles, solar, wind, nuclear, fusion, hydro, EVs, shale oil, shale gas, Li batteries and others – are green[ish] and save any energy – being all, actually, no more than gold-grade fossil fuels-derivatives.
Classic EROEI metrics were and are deceptive all along. Energy on earth is not decided by Economics or politics, but rather by Physics!
It is not only shale oil, shale gas and oil sand doomed today, but all other claimed-to-be energy-sources – are toast, too:
“No energy store holds enough energy to extract, collect and utilise an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores”.
“No energy system can produce sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all energy systems [- the sun, fusion, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, autonomous vehicles, EVs, spaceships, and you name it].
Energy, like time, only flows from past to future”.
When a barrel of crude oil doesn’t hold enough energy to lift up itself from deep in the underground unassisted, riding on a flying carpet into the refinery and then into the fuel tank of your car, the barrel cannot lift up another barrel of oil to make that magical journey, too.
Yet, our economics, science, academia, industry, politics and the media educate people relentlessly, deceptively and hypnotically that the single barrel can, in fact, lift up not just one but 2, 14 and 20 other barrels – only not itself, though!
The claim is that, yes, a one barrel might not be enough for achieving that, but a million barrel will be more than enough to extract, collect and utilise another 20, 14 or at least another 2 million barrels!
It is this ambiguity systemically injected into the consciousness of humanity since the early steam engine in the 18th Century what has led the world to go extreme today and think autonomous vehicles, solar, wind, nuclear, fusion, hydro, EVs, shale oil, shale gas, Li batteries and others – are green[ish] and save any energy – being all, actually, no more than gold-grade fossil fuels-derivatives.
Classic EROEI metrics were and are deceptive all along. Energy on earth is not decided by Economics or politics, but rather by Physics!
It is not only shale oil, shale gas and oil sand doomed today, but all other claimed-to-be energy-sources – are toast, too:
“No energy store holds enough energy to extract, collect and utilise an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores”.
“No energy system can produce sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all energy systems [- the sun, fusion, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, autonomous vehicles, EVs, spaceships, and you name it].
Energy, like time, only flows from past to future”.
https://the-fifth-law.com/pages/press-release?oilprice=OFFbyPhysics