Ecology in Times of Scarcity

Day, John W.; Hall, Charles A. S.; Yáñez‐Arancibia, Alejandro; Pimentel, David; Martí, Carles Ibáñez; Mitsch, William J.

doi:10.1525/bio.2009.59.4.10

Cited by 66 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Galician offshore trawling and long lining fisheries, as far as we could ascertain through a comprehensive set of publications, constituted the fleets with lowest ep-EROI values, which highly questions the efficiency of these fleets in terms of energy return. This situation highlights the vulnerability of these fleets in a predicted energy-scarce future (Day et al 2009). …”

Section: Contextualization Of the Results And Comparison With Other Smentioning

confidence: 98%

“…According to a set of influential publications that have been published in the last 20 years, ecological economists forecast that the so-called ''petroleum age'' will end in the first few decades of the twenty-first century, although recent advances in technology and drilling may slightly postpone this deadline (Meng and Bentley 2008;Almeida and Silva 2009). This situation will inevitably generate an increase in oil prices driven by a predicted increase in demand, in which the steady increase of renewable fuel production in some Western nations will not compensate the exponential increase in demand in emerging countries, as opposed to dwindling fossil fuel production (Day et al 2009). …”

Section: Discussion the Importance Of Eroi Estimation In Galician Fismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Coastal fleets Offshore fleets Open-sea fleets Average all fleets current energy levels alone (Hirsch et al 2005;Day et al 2009). Based on this reasoning, it seems plausible to predict a scenario in which those fisheries with lowest ep-EROI values will eventually encounter most difficulties to access competitive fuel prices to continue their activities.…”

Section: Eroi (%)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Edible Protein Energy Return on Investment Ratio (ep-EROI) for Spanish Seafood Products

Vázquez‐Rowe

Villanueva-Rey

Moreira

et al. 2013

AMBIO

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) has developed into a useful methodology to assess energy consumption of fishing fleets and their derived seafood products, as well as the associated environmental burdens. In this study, however, the life cycle inventory data is used to provide a dimensionless ratio between energy inputs and the energy provided by the fish: the edible protein energy return on investment (ep-EROI). The main objective was to perform a critical comparison of seafood products landed in Galicia (NW Spain) in terms of ep-EROI. The combination of energy return on investment (EROI) with LCA, the latter having standardized mechanisms regarding data acquisition and system boundary delimitation, allowed a reduction of uncertainties in EROI estimations. Results allow a deeper understanding of the energy efficiency in the Galician fishing sector, showing that small pelagic species present the highest ep-EROI values if captured using specific fishing techniques. Finally, results are expected to provide useful guidelines for policy support in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.

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Section: Contextualization Of the Results And Comparison With Other Smentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussion the Importance Of Eroi Estimation In Galician Fismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Eroi (%)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Edible Protein Energy Return on Investment Ratio (ep-EROI) for Spanish Seafood Products

Vázquez‐Rowe

Villanueva-Rey

Moreira

et al. 2013

AMBIO

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“…More recently as energy prices have again been increasing the interest in EROI has again increased (e.g., Heinberg [8], many web sites). Additionally many papers on energy and emerging economic fields discuss this ratio and what it means to current and future economies (e.g., Hall and Klitgaard [9], Hall [10], Mearns [11], Day et al [12], Hall et al [13], Hall and Day [14], Murphy and Hall [15]). However, given the number of decades the concept of EROI has been around, only a small, although growing, body of work is available on the subject [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of the Past and Current State of EROI Data

2011

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This is a review of the literature available on data for the EROI (prior to this special issue) of the following 12 sources of fuel/energy: oil and natural gas, coal, tar sands, shale oil, nuclear, wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, wave/tidal and corn ethanol. Unfortunately, we found that few studies have been undertaken since the 1980s, and such as have been done are often marked more by advocacy than objectivity. The most recent summary of work and data on the EROI of fuels was conducted in the summer of 2007 at SUNY ESF and appeared on The Oil Drum website and in a readable summary by Richard Heinberg. This paper summarizes the findings of that study, and also those preceding and subsequent to it where available. It also summarizes issues raised by some concerning the findings of these studies and with the calculations within. While there are many who believe that such EROI studies are critical to understanding our financial and social future there seems to be very little interest by governments and industries in supporting this research or in using or promulgating such research as has been done. We view this as critical as our main fuels are progressively depleted and as we are faced with making extremely important decisions on a very meager analytical and data base, and with few scientists trained to cut through the reams of insufficiently analyzed energy advocacy saturating our media and the blogosphere.

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“…Those kinds of reversals in the direction of change are often possible to clearly identify, even from anecdotal information when consistent definitions and patterns of change are lacking. Simply a lag in the rate of finding new reserves is clear evidence of it, as occurred for world oil reserve discoveries in the 1950's [31] (see Figure 2). Reversal in the rate of increasing productivity of resource investment is often irreversible, as resource development is generally a comprehensive search, and so indicates natural development limits being faced.…”

Section: Whole Environmental Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 94%

System Energy Assessment (SEA), Defining a Standard Measure of EROI for Energy Businesses as Whole Systems

Henshaw

King²,

Zarnikau

2011

Sustainability

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A more objective method for measuring the energy needs of businesses, System Energy Assessment (SEA), measures the combined impacts of material supply chains and service supply chains, to assess businesses as whole self-managing net-energy systems. The method is demonstrated using a model Wind Farm, and defines a physical measure of their energy productivity for society (EROI-S), a ratio of total energy delivered to total energy expended. Energy use records for technology and proxy measures for clearly understood but not individually recorded energy uses for services are combined for a whole system estimate of consumption required for production. Current methods count only energy needs for technology. Business services outsource their own energy needs to operate, leaving no traceable record. That uncounted business energy demand is often 80% of the total, an amount of "dark energy" hidden from view, discovered by finding the average energy estimated needs for businesses far below the world average energy consumed per dollar of GDP. Presently for lack of information the energy needs of business services are counted to be "0". Our default assumption is to treat them as "average". The result is a hard measure of total business demand for energy services, a "Scope 4" energy use or GHG impact assessment. Counting recorded energy uses and discounting unrecorded ones misrepresents labor intensive work as highly energy efficient. The result confirms a similar finding by Hall et al. in 1981 [1]. We use exhaustive search for what a business needs to operate as a whole, tracing internal business relationships rather than energy data, to locate its natural physical boundary as a working unit, and so define a business as a physical rather than statistical subject of scientific study. See also online resource materials and notes [2].

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Ecology in Times of Scarcity

Cited by 66 publications

References 55 publications

Edible Protein Energy Return on Investment Ratio (ep-EROI) for Spanish Seafood Products

Edible Protein Energy Return on Investment Ratio (ep-EROI) for Spanish Seafood Products

A Review of the Past and Current State of EROI Data

System Energy Assessment (SEA), Defining a Standard Measure of EROI for Energy Businesses as Whole Systems

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