When we discussed the energy cost of energy last month I said, “If we play our cards right, things might work better.” That proves easier said than done, with some geeky card tricks en route.

Increasing energy cost of energy (ECoE) means our system progressively struggles to support the lifestyles we enjoy. Amazingly, that’s rarely discussed, despite leading British energy economist Tim Morgan calling it “the killer equation”.

Take the kororā, the world’s smallest penguin. Little blue penguin colonies are in decline, and Auckland Museum’s feather collection offers clues. “Stable isotope analysis” of carbon shows that 100 years ago, the bird’s diet was mainly sourced inshore. Today’s feathers reveal coastal pollution and overfishing have driven kororā offshore for food (aka energy).

Extra swimming pushes up the penguins’ ECoE, leaving less energy to nest, breed and care for chicks successfully. Less energy for the “lifestyles” they are used to.

A quantum leap away, Britain’s biggest power station, the 2.6GW Drax plant, is fully retired from coal and burns biomass (selected trees and grasses) to generate 4% of the UK’s supply. It sounds amazing until we crunch the numbers.

The supply chain needs 12,000km2 of land to grow biomass. If that supplies 4% of UK demand, 300,000km2 would be required to supply 100%. But the entire UK is 243,610km2, so it needs more than the whole of the UK to grow enough biomass to make all of its electricity that way.

A card trick?

Factor in that most of the biomass is grown in Louisiana, in the United States, which then passes through purpose-built pelletisation factories and purpose-built ships plying between purpose-built ports to reach Drax.

Now, Britain offers significant financial incentives for “bioenergy carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) to remove CO2 after combustion, even though that increases the energy consumed by the power station. Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry analysed energy losses in eight Drax supply chains and found the best (without BECCS) had an ECoE of 84.4%, and the worst (with BECCS, see image) 103.4%, an overall energy loss (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2018/ ee/c7ee03610h).

So what?

Well, Morgan just posted Surplus Energy Economics No.289 (https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2024/09/17/289-project-2050-part-one/). “Advanced economies of the West,” he notes, “cannot grow their prosperity at ECoEs above 5%.” Then he laments ECoEs are now in double figures. And Drax is in triple figures! Another trick, maybe?

And, if so, green hydrogen is a trick on steroids. With an eyewatering ECoE of 400-500%, or 100 times the maximum compatible with “growing prosperity”.

Even I might have inadvertently played a trick. Last month, I wrote: “The more we electrify, the closer we get to an economy two or three times as energy-efficient as one based on combustion.”

I put that to Morgan, and he thought I was optimistic for two reasons: the need to “buffer” renewables with large-scale storage to smooth intermittent generation (for example, mega-batteries) and infrastructure for generating “renewable” electricity that requires fossil fuels for its production.

An electrified economy may be more efficient, but not by so much.

So, what might good energy cards actually look like?

Maybe maxing-out electrification is still a strong trump, but the joker is undoubtedly “learn to live well with a lot less energy”.