Energy Return On Investment with the concept of EROI. Applications, criticism and implications

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Engineering - Power Engineering, grade: 1,0, Technical University of Munich (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering), course: Advanced Seminar on Renewable and Sustainable Energy Systems, language: English, abstract: This paper is about the energy return of investment.

Energy has a significant impact on economic growth and is a key driver for the wellbeing of a society. The less a society has to spend on energy, the more remains for consumption and discretionary spending that is directly translated into economic growth.

This impact can be assessed with the help of the net energy analysis that makes use of the concept of EROI. The Energy Return On Investment is the ratio of the quantity of energy delivered to the quantity of energy consumed in a given process. Thus, this metric serves to measure the accessibility of a resource, meaning that the higher the EROI, the greater the amount of net energy delivered to society in order to support economic growth. This goes hand in hand with the finding that there is a minimum level of EROI that has to be reached, otherwise economic growth cannot be possible.

Given that net energy analysis is going to be one of the most fundamental concepts in academic and policy discussion in view of the future of the energy mix there is still a clear need for a standardized and independent framework to calculate EROI.