Every Wednesday for the next few months, we will be posting a new chapter from our book Fleeing Vesuvius on this site so that people have the chance to discuss the ideas it contains. We are doing this because many people find it helpful to debate and analyse unfamiliar ideas with others before deciding whether to accept them or not. Previous chapters can be found here.
This week we are publishing two articles from Fleeing Vesuvius which focus on energy supply and use. Chris Vernon‘s paper explains why, although there is a lot of oil still left in the ground, its supply will contract very rapidly indeed and the world may have run out of oil to burn for energy by 2050. Tom Konrad argues that if a standard assessment tool, the internal rate of return, is used to compare the net energy yield of various projects, it shows which to prioritise for the energy transition.
Chris Vernon’s paper: Future energy availability and the importance of ‘net energy’
Tom Konrad’s paper: Calculating the Energy Internal Rate of Return
