Categorie: resources

Let nature do the work… EROI in agriculture

A few months ago I wrote about agriculture, and that the EROI was 0.16: 1 (energy return on (energy) investment) – on average across all agricultural products in the Netherlands, and the EL (Embodied Land) no less than 7.7 ha-year / ha year. Much more goes in than comes out,…

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Transition: charging points madness

Amsterdam needs around 50,000 charging points for electric cars. 50,000? Really? Have we gone completely nuts or what? Doesn’t alarm bells start ringing: “What the hell are we doing?” Where do all these raw materials come from, and the energy to supply those charging stations? The electricity grid has already…

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A 0-marginal resource society does not exist

Rifkin some time ago wrote about the 0-marginal cost society. The book had a lot of attention. But cost is a complete different measuring unit as energy or greenhouse gasses. A 0-marginal cost society is not the same as a 0-marginal resource society!! On the contrary. A small example: At…

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Building without heating: more material or more installations?

Last month I finally visited the ‘2226’ office in Austria near Bregenz. (updated in 2022 and 2024, see at the end) . The building, realized about 4 years ago, already won many prizes. What is special about this building: it has no heating system, and in fact no ventilation system,…

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How to win a discussion on materials

Many colleagues in the field feel frustrated when trying to improve the materials performance of buildings: the lobbying and framing of materials is huge, blurring a real discussion on what materials with best performance and lowest impact should be applied. I have come across these discussions myself many times as…

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From Energy transition via Materials transition to Welfare transition…

Currently we are deeply concerned with the energy transition. However, our main problem is not energy, but material. There is enough energy without us having to exhaust it or without having nasty side effects such as global warming. Think of solar radiation, surface water, wind, geothermal energy, hydropower. However lost…

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transition is materials increase… (=energy)

Last month the OECD published its report with the latest figures on material consumption worldwide. [1] Currently that is 79 GigaTon of materials per year, and we are going to 167 Gt (!) in 2060. Every year. This includes a doubling of biomass use, and even greater for metals, from…

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Circular cities..? Real time material flows for London

Since it looks as if we are going to introduce the climate measures for buildings mainly via municipalities or cities, I have recovered some of my older research material about urban sustainability, developed when I worked at Wageningen University. The urban approach makes sense, buildings are not isolated functions, they…

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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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Solar panels cause CO2 Emissions rising…EROI

Big headlines in Nature last week: [1]” Emissions are still rising: disaster up the cuts “And” Leaders at climate summit get bad news: CO2 emissions are rising again “. Astonishing that may not be, however: if the economy continues to grow, and therefore consumption, energy and material use will increase,…

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