Energy, EROI and quality of life
By Jessica G. Lambert, C. Hall, Stephen B. Balogh, A. Gupta, Michelle Arnold. 2014
323 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The near- and long-term societal effects of declining EROI are uncertain, but probably adverse. A major obstacle to examining social implications of declining EROI is that we do not have adequate empirical understanding of how EROI is linked, directly or indirectly, to an average citizen′s ability to achieve well-being. To evaluate the possible linkages between societal well-being and net energy availability, we compare these preliminary estimates of energy availability: (1) EROI at a societal level, (2) energy use per capita, (3) multiple regression analyses and (4) a new composite energy index (Lambert Energy Index), to select indicators of quality of life (HDI, percent children under weight, health expenditures, Gender Inequality Index, literacy rate and access to improved water). Our results suggest that energy indices are highly correlated with a higher standard of living. We also find a saturation point at which increases in per capita energy availability (greater than 150GJ) or EROI (above 20:1) are not associated with further improvement to society.
Subfields: Pollution, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc074a70bb914fac4a5e5221d40d7e471a5458d6
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Citations in the corpus
- Energy Poverty and Its Implication on Standard of Living in Kirinyaga, Kenya (2018, background): “availability of energy and the efficiency with which it is used enable humans to improve their living standards, live longer, and increase their numbers [99].”
- Energy expenditure, economic growth, and the minimum EROI of society (2016, result): “Our results support the qualitative suppositions advanced by Murphy and Hall (2011a,b) and Lambert et al. (2014).”
- EROI of different fuels and the implications for society (2014, unknown): “Different boundaries and variables differ between nations and may result in con fl icting or inconsistent data (Lambert et al., 2013).”
- The 21st century population-energy-climate nexus (2016, background): “Lower EROI fuels quickly reduce the share of net energy available for societal use (Murphy and Hall, 2010) and as less energy is available to societies, it is speculated that there will have to be a reprioritization of societal energetic needs (Lambert et al., 2014).”