Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Why EROI Matters
Charles Hall, The Oil Drum
Introduction by Nate Hagens:
This is the first of a five part series of guest posts by Professor Charles Hall of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and his students and collaborative researchers.
Professor Hall has endeavored to update and improve the state of net energy analysis as he believes (as do I), that future energy policy decisions should at least be guided, if not directly steered using biophysical principles. The opinions on the importance of net energy analysis as a tool for addressing our looming energy crisis are quite disparate, but without some science grounded in physical principles, we are left to rely on the market.
The unfolding international credit crisis highlights the dangers of relying on strictly fiat monetary measures for biophysical planning – credit and debt can be created with no underlying physical foundation. Professor Hall previously posted on TOD, “At $100 Oil, What Can the Scientist Say to the Investor?”
This first post is composed of 2 pieces. First is an introduction and an explanation by Dr Hall why EROI analysis is important. The second part lays out a request to theoildrum.com readership for helping contribute to this net energy data effort. …
(1 April 2008)
Soaring energy costs ‘to change how society operates’ says former Woolworths chief
Courier-Mail (Australia)
ENERGY costs could increase up to tenfold over the next few years, profoundly changing the way business and society operate, a former Woolworths chief says.
Roger Corbett told a Queensland University of Technology business leaders’ forum in Brisbane today that rising energy costs would “no doubt” present challenges for the retailing and business sectors.
“Our lives in the Western world are absolutely dependent upon the unit energy cost, whatever it may be, most of all the petroleum costs,” Mr Corbett said.
“And I don’t think it’s ill-conceived to think in the next few years that energy cost may go up by a factor of five or 10 times – certainly five.
(31 March 2008)
The Accidental Environmentalist (Matthew Simmons)
Evan Hughes, Good Magazine
An oil man reconsiders the future of black gold.
—
Matthew Simmons, head of the Houston-based investment firm Simmons and Company, has made a fortune by investing billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry. Increasingly, though, Simmons has been telling the industry what it doesn’t want to hear-that our planet’s oil is in short supply.
Now considered one of the world’s leading experts on the theory of peak oil-which says we are near or have already reached the peak capacity for oil production worldwide-George W. Bush’s former energy advisor foresees a steep decline in oil output and profits.
His predictions, outlined in his book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, took the industry by storm, naming names and contending that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have as much oil as it claims. With barrel prices passing the hundred-dollar mark at the beginning of this year, Simmons’s predictions seem to have more gravity than ever.
But, unlike many like-minded thinkers, Simmons believes that current alternative energy strategies are pipe dreams, environmentalists are deeply misguided, and global warming is nowhere close to our largest problem. GOOD sat down with him on the porch of his stately Maine home to get his take on the future of the energy business.
(20 March 2008)
Also at APEM
