EROI of Global Energy Resources

Abstract

All forms of economic production and exchange involve the transformation of materials, which in turn requires energy. Until recently cheap and seemingly limitless fossil energy has allowed many to ignore the important contributions from the biophysical world to the economic process and potential limits to growth. ! The report that follows, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and developed by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) and Next Generation Energy Initiative (NGEI), examines the energy used by modern economies over time. This work centers on assessing the relation of energy costs of modern day society and its connection to the quality of human life. A focus of this report is energy return on investment (EROI) and some important characteristics of our major energy sources over time.! We find the EROI for each major fossil fuel resource (except coal) has declined substantially over the last century. Most renewable and non-conventional energy alternatives have substantially lower EROI values than conventional fossil fuels. Declining EROI, at the societal level, means that an increasing proportion of energy output is diverted to getting the energy needed to run an economy with few discretionary funds available for “non-essential” projects. The declining EROI of traditional fossil fuel energy sources and its eventual effect on the world economy are likely to result in a myriad of unforeseen consequences. ! We offer this report as a window into the EROI of global energy sources, the effect of policy and world events on past, present, and future EROI values, the EROI of renewable, non- conventional and imported energy sources, and provide a brief discussion on how declining EROI values may influence the economies of select developed and developing nations. !