Net Energy
= “The true value of energy to society is the net energy, which is what’s left after the energy costs of getting and concentrating that energy are subtracted". [1]
Description
Mary Odum:
"All processes in the world involve energy, materials, and information. Materials are transformed through energy, which drives the process of creating every good, service, and environmental process. Information guides the process of transformation. Energy has different qualities, so a calorie of one form of energy is not the same in quality as a calorie of another form, as certain forms of energy are not substitutable, depending on the situation. A calorie of sunlight may not be substituted for a calorie of oil or of food. In order to compare apples and oranges, we need to create a common denominator. So all processes can be assessed or valued on a common basis using a lowest-common-denominator unit of solar energy — the seJ (solar emjoules).
The science of Emergy accounting places values on the energy, information, and materials in the processes, allowing us to choose more efficient policies. Emergy is defined as the available energy of one kind that is used up in transformations directly and indirectly to make a product or service. Real wealth, then, can be measured as the emergy memory that exists in human goods and services, and in non-human environmental goods and services. Odum’s updated term for net energy is net emergy or net empower. The true cost of a process to society is the net emergy, which is the emergy delivered after the emergy costs of getting and concentrating that energy are subtracted.
Net emergy contribution of any process within the economy including energy production can be calculated using an Emergy Yield Ratio, which is the net energy yield of a process expressed in emergy, divided by the purchased goods and services, which are also expressed in emergy. The EYR includes the contributions for renewable and non-renewable sources, and inputs such as human labor/services and environmental contributions, using a quality correction factor for energies of different qualities. Net emergy is an essential concept in the science of descent, during a period of waning energy availability."
(https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-10-06/energy-ecology-and-economics-revisited/?)
Status
Net Energy and Contemporary Geopolitics
(the net-energy conflict between East and West)
James Quilligan:
"Net energy gain has always been the sine qua non of economics, but the possibility of dedollarization has brought this obscure reality into the open. Today’s geopolitical confrontation shines a spotlight on the world’s preeminent monetary rivals, the mercantilist industrial engine of the Global East and the oligopolist financial complex of the Global West, which are vying fiercely to secure the asset value of their currency reserves by capturing the systems and sources of the world’s net energy (Hudson 2022, 43--44). Once again, the new world currency would be based upon the myth of infinite resources and control of Earth’s energy flows, forcing nations, businesses, and investors to choose between the opposing monetary blocs (Helleiner, Kirshner, et al. 2009, 187--215). This sets up a perilous round of energy warfare that will be driven entirely by money and power, not ecological constraints or benefits (B. J. Cohen 2008, 214--15). Both the Western core and the East/South periphery are intent on extracting energy through their state agencies and corporate cartels, then turning this energy production into exchange-value. Thus, the energy-value of money in the victorious core nations will remain greater than the purchasing capacity of their currency, while the energy-value of money will be lower in the defeated periphery nations than the purchasing capacity of their currencies (Malden and Tepper 2011, 283--96). In essence, the biosphere, serving as a “lender of last resort,” would continue to subsidize the core states more than the periphery states with no systemic means of compensating for these net energy differences, thereby allowing the core to take more net energy-value from the periphery than the core is actually purchasing (B. J. Cohen 2008, 135--48; Hudson 2022, 129--50).
This imbalance in the flow of thermodynamic value is why the existential threat of monetary and political hegemony to the planet is a grave concern: major economic deterioration is probable now because there are no winners in the zero-sum game of sovereigns. As long as the distracted financial, industrial, and technocratic empires of China, Russia, Europe, and the United States are absorbed in building up arsenals on both ends of Eurasia, international cooperation to reverse land waste, soil and water degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions will be nonproductive. While the contending states struggle to obtain net energy to maintain their economies at previous levels of economic growth, Earth’s shrinking habitats, species extinction, and biodiversity loss will worsen, further undermining the ecosystems that create biomass and allow human beings to meet basic needs and reproduce their species (Wallace-Wells 2019). Add to this the imminent danger of thermonuclear war, and the Holocene extinction and Anthropocene epoch are fait accompli.5
Neoclassical economics is neither a physical nor a biological science. This raises some curious questions. Most of the energy on Earth (excluding tidal, geothermal, and nuclear sources) is the movement or work that is generated through photons from the sun, reaching plants directly through photosynthesis, and indirectly through seeds, animals, minerals, and fossil fuels. So why is sunlight not being put to better use, and what good is it to produce more oil when it takes more energy to produce the oil than is present in the oil produced? How is environmental renewal possible when the planet’s core and periphery nations are both streaming value-added economic signals through their thermodynamic chains and pipelines from energy sources to the needs of species? Until these contradictions are addressed, the half-hearted commitment by the Global East and West to phase out fossil fuels cannot possibly offset their own shrinking energy reserves with the widening energy deficits of the planet.
Contributing to the net-energy conflict between East and West is a deep epistemological confusion in the science of thermodynamics over the meaning of energy, power, motion, heat, and life. Many physicists, chemists, and biologists are in disagreement on several aspects of energy transformations that fall at the intersection of their disciplines (Coveney, Boon, and Succi 2016). This is confounding political and economic decision-making because the social sciences, including political science and economics, are heavily influenced by the natural sciences. Before world leaders can make progress in equitable energy distribution, they have to examine the true costs of their thermodynamic applications and policies in society. As noted in the sections below, the misinterpretations of science in public policy have standardized the net transfers of energy from the poorer to the wealthier areas of the world, generating excessive levels of social inequality and deteriorating Earth’s biosphere and biodiversity."