What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have

By C. Hall, Stephen B. Balogh, D. Murphy. 2009

599 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Economic production and, more generally, most global societies, are overwhelmingly dependant upon depleting supplies of fossil fuels. There is considerable concern amongst resource scientists, if not most economists, as to whether market signals or cost benefit analysis based on today’s prices are sufficient to guide our decisions about our energy future. These suspicions and concerns were escalated during the oil price increase from 2005 – 2008 and the subsequent but probably related market collapse of 2008. We believe that Energy Return On Investment (EROI) analysis provides a useful approach for examining disadvantages and advantages of different fuels and also offers the possibility to look into the future in ways that markets seem unable to do. The goal of this paper is to review the application of EROI theory to both natural and economic realms, and to assess preliminarily the minimum EROI that a society must attain from its energy exploitation to support continued economic activity and social function. In doing so we calculate herein a basic first attempt at the minimum EROI for current society and some of the consequences when that minimum is approached. The theory of the minimum EROI discussed here, which describes the somewhat obvious but nonetheless important idea that for any being or system to survive or grow it must gain substantially more energy than it uses in obtaining that energy, may be especially important. Thus any particular being or system must abide by a “Law of Minimum EROI”, which we calculate for both oil and corn-based ethanol as about 3:1 at the mine-mouth/farm-gate. Since most biofuels have EROI’s of less than 3:1 they must be subsidized by fossil fuels to be useful.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e42d7f3efd6c8311d353684bc18e7da1744e4ba5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Environmental Engineering

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production (2009, background): “[20] on the minimum EROI for society indicates that society, even at its most basic level, cannot function on an EROI at the wellhead of less than about 3:1, and that considerably more than that would be required for the full suite of goods and services (such as medical care and education) that we h”
Life cycle assessment of macroalgae cultivation and processing for biofuel production (2014, unknown): “The sustainability of recovering energy from biomass however is often criticised due to high energy inputs and adverse environmental impacts (Hall et al., 2009).”
Oil supply limits and the continuing financial crisis (2012, background): “In countries where workers live in unheated huts and roads are dirt roads, the overhead component would be low, but in countries that use well-constructed, heated homes, paved roads, and extensive educational and health systems, the overhead will be high [28].”
A General Mathematical Framework for Calculating Systems-Scale Efficiency of Energy Extraction and Conversion: Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and Other Energy Return Ratios (2011, background): “Historically, Hall developed the concept of energy return on investment (EROI) and applied it to migrating fish populations [8].”
EROI of different fuels and the implications for society (2014, unknown): “The maximum energy from US coal seems to have occurred in 1998 (Hall et al., 2009; Murphy and Hall, 2010).”
Relating Financial and Energy Return on Investment (2011, methodology): “By developing theoretical minimum EROI values for fuels and electricity, as in one of the current author’s previous work [1], we can translate those critical EROI values into a price range.”
The energetic metabolism of societies and the degrowth paradigm: analyzing biophysical constraints and realities (2013, background): “The literature assessing the net energy return of alternative energy sources is still controversial; however, there is a consensus (Hall et al., 2009) that within the limits of current technological advancements, it will not be possible to return to the “high surplus energy” lifestyles regardless…”
Environmental and climate innovation: Limitations, policies and prices (2013, background): “Hall et al. (2009) try to assess a minimum EROEI that a society must attain from its energy exploitation to sustainably support economic activity.”
Energy expenditure, economic growth, and the minimum EROI of society (2016, background): “Hall et al. (2009) offer a technical minimum EROI of 3:1 for oil at the wellhead.”