Energy Availability and Choice 1: Foundations
The much discussed figure above graphically captures the problem of increasing societal and organizational overhead in an era of decreasing supplemental energy availability to fuel global division of labor. This phenomenon is seen in many areas of the economy in many countries of the world, even if the increase of overhead is not as stark as for US healthcare. This trend is disturbing and potentially dangerous. This series of articles will strive to generate questions to be asked for analysis to be performed.?The aim is to eventually drive societal debates with objective physical measurements instead of being driven by beliefs rooted in narrow contexts that are being applied far beyond their realm of validity.
Living organisms reduce local entropy or equivalently increase available energy* to maintain the conditions of their existence such as temperature, heat loss rates and nutrition levels. They can also go much further and increase joint energy availability over larger groups.
The joint energy availability is determined by energy available to the group along with its distribution among the group. Humans can increase joint energy availability over longer intervals of time. To do so, they must devise mechanisms to distribute available energy in proportion to the EROI (energy returned on invested) of different sub groups or individuals so more energy continues to become available to the group over time.
An accretive or sustainable society has EROI>1. Similarly, a dissipative society has EROI<1. This also means the society is unsustainable and dying. It is only an accretive society that can be civilizing, i.e., greater energy availability per capita permits consideration of longer-term consequences, which in turn can reduce the frequency and intensity of violence in human interactions or which is the same as society becoming more civil. This accretion can be temporary as in the case of our current use of fossil fuels, or it can be sustainable, as with various traditional societies around the world that lasted for thousands of years, but at low levels of energy usage per capita.
The relationships between energy availability per capita, energy usage per capita, living standards, and societal stability can be fruitfully investigated because relevant macroscopic data is available. Even data providing the size of various energy sinks constructed by humans is available, whether it is buildings or institutions consuming energy for operation and maintenance. These constitute inflexible energy overhead. Microscopic data on the distribution of wealth and income also provides estimates of the distribution energy availability and usage as money is a quasi-stationary measure of energy.
EROI is increased through increasing available energy or increasing energy usage efficiency. Increasing energy use efficiency also includes reducing organizational or societal overhead beyond what is needed for efficient division of labor. Short term increases in energy usage per capita can temporarily improve societal conditions while priming the society for much harsher conditions in the future. This is also similar to living well on debt in the present while sacrificing future conditions. We can use EROI to quantify the productivity of various geographic regions, human occupations, organizational and societal structures by using data of energy usage that are often available.
In succeeding articles, we will apply these notions to a variety of technological, organizational and societal structures. Many activities considered traditionally productive have been analyzed in prior work including that on EROI [1, 2].
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Farming and animal husbandry, fishing and forestry, drilling for oil and gas, and digging for coal add available energy to society. All engineering is raising energy use efficiency with better engines, motors, circuits, transportation, computation or communication. In fact, increasing energy consumption rates as human societies have been doing for almost 50 years for increased consumption of articles of subjective value does not require knowledge or ability as it can be seen from the ease of lighting a firecracker. The pursuit of subjective value is a significant contributor to our increasing fossil fuel consumption while not adding any additional efficiencies. A choice between two neckties of different colors for example does not usually change one's performance or odds of survival.
Engineering the environment for flood control and irrigation mitigates the effects of both flooding and drought on ecosystems, and can increase the rate of energy accretion in the biosphere. Hygiene, sanitation, social distancing, or preventive healthcare reduce human downtime and extend human working life and therefore reduce energy overhead. Educating people into problem solvers, those who integrate enough information in decision making to add energy to the ecosystem or increase energy use efficiency if achieved, will be the biggest contributor to sustainability.
Static or Malthusian perspectives of the limits to growth do not account for the efficiency adding innovation achieved by human collaboration through broader networks of exchange of goods, people, and information. Hence, many doomsday predictions about starvation or resource shortages have proven false as seen from the famous Simon-Ehrlich bet [3]. This innovation is something we can take advantage of for long term sustainability. The possible pathways provide ground for much fruitful investigation of alternative technologies, modes of organization, governance, and collaboration that reduce resource pressures and energy overhead.
*Strictly speaking, thermodynamic entropy is dependent on both heat released and the temperature of heat release. This is indeed important for heat engines of all kinds where fuel is used. However, temperature differences over most of the surface of the earth are not significant so we are replacing entropy with available energy for ease of analyses and comparisons.