ASPO-5 Day 2: Charles Hall Calls Ethanol "Unviable"

With temperatures in Pisa soaring into the 90s, Charles Hall delved deep into what he calls “one of the most important defining issues of the future”: energy return on investment (EROI). The concept, he said, embodies a kind of bottom line for oil-addicted societies, defining the range of feasible energy-production options. It stops dead any project that costs more energy to produce than you get from burning it.

The professor at the State University of New York, Syracuse, who practically invented the energy-return concept, said that oil is beginning to suffer the fate of diminishing energy returns, as crude becomes tougher and more expensive to find. “It doesn’t matter how much you find if it costs you a barrel to get that barrel.”

In his talk, Hall railed against conventional neo-classical economists who refuse to acknowledge the reality and logic of finite energy resources. He says the second half of the age of oil will require a new brand of economics that he calls “biophysical economics.”

Hall doubts that technology or markets can solve the world's oil-depletion predicament. The measure of success of new technologies would be a rising EROI. But that’s not what’s happening, he said. Despite massive applications of new oil exploration and recovery techniques, the energy profit from oil production has been falling inexorably. In 1930, we got 100 barrels of oil for every barrel invested. By 1970, the ratio had fallen to 30 to 1, and today the figure is around 15 to 1.

“The harder we drill, the less efficient you get at finding it,” he said.

Hall dismissed the prospects for ethanol, calling its EROI marginal at best. Even if you don’t agree with Pimental that ethanol has negative returns, even the best estimates peg the biofuel at less than 5 to 1. “Anything energy source less than 5 to 1 is probably unviable,” he said.