Wind is renewable. Sunshine is renewable. Wind turbines and solar panels are about as renewable as a Volkswagon. As they scale, raw material extraction costs more energy, and recycling both costs a lot of energy and fails to fully recover all the materials (see earlier videos on thermodynamics and stock-flow). Furthermore, extraction of materials for these devices, refinement, steel and glass production, transportation to the factory and then to point of use all use oil, not electricity. These devices don't last more than 25 years. How long until THEIR EROI declines below usefulness? I hope Dr. O'Neill addresses this in a future video.
And thats why degrowth suddenly makes sense. If we want to maintain such a huge economy while all these materials are finite, we need to conjure up more of the finite materials and/or increase circularity of the materials. As the first is impossible and the second only feasible to some degree, the logical conclusion is that the extent of the current economy is unsustainable, ergo needs to shrink.
Very well put together Dan, great content in your channel. The fact that the paper from Ayres et al. has been ignored speaks loudly about how blind and gaslighted are policymakers across the world. / BTW, The comment from Mia Charlotte and its 34 replies are all bots. Is it possible to delete them all?
Wow, what a different perspective from what I usually hear. Gives me some hope that we can accomplish much of the energy transition with the sustainable resources we already have, wind a solar.
The exergy growth cycle is experiencing diminishing returns. Every new efficiency improvement is smaller, as you approach 99,99% efficiency. You cannot get above 100% efficiency.
I still don't get why you call it exergy instead of energy. There's useful energy and there's wasted energy, as in the example with the coal plant. EROI is based on how much energy (or is it exergy, no, I don't think so, it's energy) input to energy output, we don't need exergy, because it's just another word for energy. For ex, we want the LFP battery cell to require the least amount of Wh to make a Wh of capacity, or the least amount of Wh to make a watt of the solar PV needed to charge the battery (I think it's 100 and 3,000, respectively). Now, maybe exergy is another word for entropy? That's like that pool and gas thing, where they both contain the same amount of energy (why exergy, again?) but one is more energy dense (and I believe the least energy dense is the more entropy, not sure, doesn't really matter except, maybe, the efficiency that a higher EROI depends on will also require insulated working conditions, too. The main point i'm trying to spit out is that what matters is "how many Wh in to make a watt, or Wh of capacity. And we need to use the word "energy". Energy wasted, energy put to good use and OVERALL EROI, or energy returned on ENERGY, (not exergy, lol) invested, such as for solar and LFP battery (combined). However, I want to thank you for your work, just because I don't really want to include exergy with my energy comprehension doesn't mean I'm correct. I just have to watch again!
You are confusing innovation and productivity with energy usage - because both typically use machines that need energy. The reason why we have less innovation and productivity outside of computers and communication, is because we have had a great stagnation in innovation since 1973. Some say its to do with government intervention and regulation. Some say its because we don't have any low hanging fruit.
