Energy Transformation First Principles - Part I
A look through history to observe the natural human condition and its fundamental driving force
Ever-increasing Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) has been the ultimate foundation for a better quality of life and increasing population growth for all of human history.
Not as catchy as you thought it’d be, huh?
What does a high Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) even mean? Energy received > energy exerted. Energy out > energy in. Example: Person A expending 5,000 calories to receive 5,000 has an EROEI of 1x. Person B expending 5,000 to receive 10,000 has an EROEI of 2x. Guess which person ends up having a higher quality of life? Person B. Why? Bear with me here.
What will Person B do with the excess energy (calories) they obtained vs. Person A? They feed themselves, the wife and kids very well, and have time to build better shelter, better tools for the next hunt, educate, innovate, etc. Early humans strived to get this energy return as high as possible to travel further up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
This topic will be broken into a multiple part series as there is a lot to build off this idea. For now, we need to go through history to see how achieving high energy returns was the ultimate goal in every era since 200,000 BC to lead to a better quality of life. There’s no better way to discover First Principles than starting from the beginning.
200,000 BC - Hunter Gatherer Era
Since the emergence of homo sapiens circa 200,000 BC, they relied on MUSCLES (energy output) for hunting and gathering to obtain CALORIES (energy input). The best foragers and hunters had positive Net Energy Returns, i.e they obtained more calories than they exerted – the earliest hunters had EROEIs that were barely positive (i.e: expended 3,000 calories to consume 3,500 calories. An EROEI of 1.2x)
Overtime and very slowly, this excess energy (calories) began to have an exponential impact on quality. Humans of the Old World used this excess energy to find ways to obtain more with less. How? That excess 500 calories was used to fashion a better stone-tipped spear, study migration and movement patterns of prey, innovate animal traps etc. This resulted in even more excess energy (calories) over time which allowed them innovate even further.
At some point, hunter gatherers learned to domesticate some of these animals and farm various plants. This led to the agricultural revolution - a direct result of early humans having more available energy to expend and therefore more time to discover new methods to obtain more with less. Quality of life increases as EROEI increases.
10,000 BC – Agricultural Era
From 10,000 BC humans domesticated strong horses and oxen, one of which equals the power of 10 men. These farms supported larger populations, increasing population densities in regions ideal for farming as humans would expend 1,000 calories to return something closer to 4,000. An EROEI of 4x. Controlled fire led to regular removal of vegetation to reset crop harvesting cycles. It also allowed society to begin to smelt metals for various uses (hooves for horses, copper weapons etc.)
This higher Energy Return cultivated societies where inhabitants were able to expand the size of their families knowing that food (energy) security would support them – that their basic needs were met. Time spent developing a wide range of skills rose. The division of labor emerges: infrastructure, trade, military, education, healthcare…
Charcoal, which is used to produce metal, grew in popularity. But eventually, the material source became hard to come by as entire forests were burned to create metals for various uses.
Metal smelting was highly inefficient and led to massive deforestation. Fire pits to produce these metals were small-scale, so copper and iron had use-cases limited to gear, weaponry, and currency. It was not practical for it to become the dominant material for machinery, farming equipment, infrastructure etc. It was too inefficient for that, and it’s likely very few fathomed a future where metal smelting efficiency would be high enough to build robust infrastructure.
So, charcoal became very expensive and energy-intensive to create iron from wood, meaning EROEIs were declining.
More time and energy were spent on conducting R&D in search for more efficient ways of producing iron. Coke (coal) smelting was then born, a process requiring less labor to mine than cutting wood (for charcoal). Coal was more abundant as well. Though the iron produced from coke occurred in the 1620s, it still wasn’t competitive with iron produced from charcoal until the 1750s.
EROEI for iron production shifted dramatically higher through this new method and became plentiful enough to build out infrastructure, which kicked off the Industrial Revolution.
1700s – Industrial Revolution Era
The main driver here was the build-out of infrastructure through more readily available methods to produce iron and steel.
Characterized by the rapid colonization of new regions around the world, improvements in medicine and public health knowledge, a more regular food supply and the rise of digital technology, population growth grew exponentially. It took about 200,000 years in the prior two energy eras to reach 0.6 billion in global population. It took just 320 years to reach 7.8 billion during the Industrial Revolution.
The steam engine improved the efficiency of mining, agriculture, and creating factories and mills to produce goods at a much faster/more efficient rate than human labor. The invention of the telegraph/telephone made for seamless communication across hundreds of miles of land. Electricity and the incandescent light reduced the need for inefficient kerosene-fired lamps. The internal combustion engine made for quicker transportation of people and goods. Securing basic needs became commonplace. Quality of life increases as EROEI increases.
Stepping back: let’s remember the framework. Why were you taken through a brief history of these 3 different energy eras? Each transformation from one era to the next had one thing in common: higher EROEI. Each era involved shifting to a more efficient source of energy. Why did humans strive for this? For a better quality of life, which we saw occur in each subsequent energy era.
To put it in more graceful words, here’s a quote from Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba, who wrote “World History and Energy”:
Improving the quality of life has been the principal individual benefit of this quest for higher energy use that has brought increased food harvests, greater accumulation of personal possessions, abundance of educational and leisure opportunities, and vastly enhanced personal mobility. The growth of the world’s population, the rising economic might of nations, the extension of empires and military capabilities, the expansion of world trade, and the globalization of human affairs have been the key collective consequences of the quest.
Energy and Population Growth
Population growth has closely been correlated with innovation. Throughout history, all innovations were driven by the utilization of increasingly efficient sources of energy. Better weaponry, domestication of animals, farming techniques, infrastructure, transportation, internet... All this innovation led to increased food and energy security, which led to more time spent on education in STEM disciplines, each of which contributed to population growth. Kind of sounds like a ponzi.
The industrial revolution of course saw the greatest population growth in a short period of time.
Though we can see how historically better energy sources → higher population growth, we should be cautious in extrapolating this relationship to the future. There are too many factors that could break down this relationship, such as declining fertility rates, physical resource exhaustion, shifting demographics, personal preference etc.
But, since the very meaning of First Principles is a basic assumption that cannot be deduced further, and which applies to all cases, we should at least contemplate the argument that higher energy efficiencies (EROEI) will continue to lead to a better quality of life and population growth.
Let’s imagine an energy source is discovered/innovated that gives us, say, 100x the efficiency of current energy sources. Could we see rapid increases in future population growth that we saw during the Industrial Revolution? One may be quick to respond “not a chance.” But lets entertain the thought. With this abundance of energy, couldn’t we easily deploy our newfound excess resources to colonize other planets and achieve significant life-extension capabilities, powered by innovations potentially in artificial intelligence and computing power, among many other disciplines? Couldn’t this resume the increasing quality of life and population growth we’ve seen throughout all of human history?
If this scenario sounds outlandish, please re-read that first section under “1700s - Industrial Revolution Era” again. Don’t they both draw strikingly similar parallels?
The point of mentioning all this is to introduce the argument that: rising energy efficiencies (EROEI) leading to increasing quality of life and population growth could continue to hold despite the changing dynamics of today’s physically constrained Earth. Unless this time is truly different compared to the last 200,000 years - these First Principles of Energy Transformations can shed some light into our potential future.
Recap
Humans constantly strive for a better quality of life. The way we’ve achieved this throughout history is through the invention of more efficient energy sources, depicted by the EROEI formula (energy consumed > energy exerted). Historically this translated to rapid population growth as higher food and energy security led to better education and time able to be spent innovating in sectors like technology, healthcare, engineering, sciences etc. If this idea surely is the First Principles of striving for better quality of life and continued population growth, it’s possible that continued growth could transcend a physically-constrained Earth.
In the short-term though, high EROEIs have diminishing returns. A simple example would be: one person expends 100 calories on their phone and receives 4,000 calories at their door. Another expends 100 on their phone and receives 1,000. There is hardly any incremental benefit for the first person having a high EROEI than there is for the second. This applies on a societal scale as well.
The long-term beneficial impacts of high (excess) EROEIs however, are apparent and should certainly be differentiated from the excess consumption seen in today’s Western societies.
In the next installments, we’ll go through the EROEIs of different sources of energy over time, visualize that point of high EROEI diminishing returns in the short-term (and compare it across different countries), look at how higher EROEIs can be beneficial for the long-term, and the minimum EROEI needed for society to continue progressing.