The observation that the manufacture, delivery, installation, and maintenance of “clean” energy devices can, and on a regular basis does, cost more energy than the device is expected to return over its lifetime is not new and regularly features in sources which you probably do not read.
The claim here is not that the energy use won’t make return over its lifetime is not the claim being made here. (And that’s incidentally false: the EROEI for wind and solar and nuclear are all much greater than 1. See e.g. the table here). What’s being argued here is much more interesting and subtle, namely that there’s a separate problem because the energy return is occurring over a long period of time.
I’ve also tried to follow three links from the Wikipedia on EROEI for solar panel and couldn’t find anything accessible. You don’t happen to have a link handy for the calculations and underlying assumptions?
What he’s talking about here is a little different than energy cannibalism but they are definitely related. Energy cannibalism occurs due to rapid growth. The observation here is that the problem of this nature occurs even with slow growth of the solar, wind and nuclear.
Not off the top of my head. Heinberg’s “Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society” has some calculations and references- he gets a slightly more pessimistic numbers but still well over 1 for both photovoltaic solar and wind question. I’d also point to this source. There’s disagreement over what the EROEI of most of these is, but there’s no serious argument that they aren’t greater than 1.
The claim here is not that the energy use won’t make return over its lifetime is not the claim being made here. (And that’s incidentally false: the EROEI for wind and solar and nuclear are all much greater than 1. See e.g. the table here). What’s being argued here is much more interesting and subtle, namely that there’s a separate problem because the energy return is occurring over a long period of time.
Is this then what you are talking about?
I’ve also tried to follow three links from the Wikipedia on EROEI for solar panel and couldn’t find anything accessible. You don’t happen to have a link handy for the calculations and underlying assumptions?
What he’s talking about here is a little different than energy cannibalism but they are definitely related. Energy cannibalism occurs due to rapid growth. The observation here is that the problem of this nature occurs even with slow growth of the solar, wind and nuclear.
Not off the top of my head. Heinberg’s “Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits and the Fate of Industrial Society” has some calculations and references- he gets a slightly more pessimistic numbers but still well over 1 for both photovoltaic solar and wind question. I’d also point to this source. There’s disagreement over what the EROEI of most of these is, but there’s no serious argument that they aren’t greater than 1.