energy 2
oil (including natural gas) has an eroei in the neighborhood of 50. but when it runs out we're gonna use coal. why? cause we have lots of coal. and we don't have lots of anything else. clean coal has an eroei of about 10 give or take. our oil economy uses 2% of the energy produced to produce more energy. that leaves 98% for everything else. like driving cars. the coal economy uses 10% of the energy produced to produce more energy. that leaves 90% for cars. now if we simplistically assume we produce the same amount of total energy and constant population then we have 9% less energy available for cars. or put it another way. the impending energy crisis means our cars have to get 22 mpg instead of 20. everybody panic.