Categorie: MAXergy

EROI and land use of potato crop – a pilot 1/2

In a recent project , ‘Verrijkende Landbouw’ ( Enriching Agriculture) [1], I was able to refine the theory and methodology of MAXergy, using Embodied Land as an indicator [2], thanks to a practical pilot. As follows. Agriculture needs to change. That should be obvious by now. And not only regarding…

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light pole materials compared…

I am often amazed at the amount of lights in the built environment, which only seems to be growing. Everyone thinks they have to illuminate everything. Driveways, stairs, gardens, anything you can think of has a light on it. That started yeas ago with the introduction of energy saving light…

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A New Year, New chances…: ‘Homo Vermis’

It is now exactly 10 years ago around Christmas that I struggled with the interpretation of ‘cycles’. Why I wondered, is everyone convinced there are two resource cycles, as promoted nowadays in whats called the circular economy? And why would we treat these differently? And at some moment around New…

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Every agriculture hectare requires 7,7 ha input…. Embodied Land

Before going into agriculture, and the available figures for it, I will briefly summarize how evaluate keeping resource loops closed. Fot this a calculation method has been developed, called MAXergy, with Embodied Land as a measuring unit. To close resource cycles, or to keep them closed, a number of conditions…

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Building wind turbines to dry laundry…?

Do we really want a CO2-neutral society, or even a society with closed cycles? If yes, a lot will have to change and we will need to become extremely creative. And not directly with the input of a lot of ’technology’, in the sense of high tech, but back to…

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The real capital is : Land

Henri George, during the end of the 19th century, was a renowned thinker and writer. His central theme was Land. He saw land as a vital good, to give everyone a basis to live from. But he also saw that it was sold or given away by the government, by…

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Labor 2/2: a manually constructed aqueduct still interesting…

Labor, as argued in the previous blog, is a often neglected energy factor. [1]Which might seem not that important , given the immense quantities of energy that we require for our society. Nevertheless, its interesting to give it a try to quantify this. And when I did that, some years…

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Growing Fossils: “Embodied Land”

Now and then there is debate about the land use of energy generation, usually around renewable energy. But these are often only addressing the direct ‘ visible’ land use and efficiencies; For instance: A energy Atlas in the Netherlands counts only the land needed for a fossil fuel power plant…

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