Norwegian oil and gas fields are relatively new and of high quality, which has led, during recent decades, to very high profitability both financially and in terms of energy production. One useful measure for profitability is Energy Return on Investment, EROI. Our analysis shows that EROI for...

The two methods of processing synthetic crude from organic marlstone in demonstration or small-scale commercial status in the U.S. are <em>in situ</em> extraction and surface retorting. The considerable uncertainty surrounding the technological characterization, resource characterization, and choice of...

A new flexible, rapid and affordable risk assessment procedure was developed and verified for dams based on case studies in Scotland (UK) and the region of Baden (Germany). A database of six different sustainable flood retention basin (SFRB) types with varying flood control potential has been...

In China there has been considerable discussion of how one should express the efficiency of energy conversion and production. Energy return on investment (EROI) can be useful for this because its methodology is based on outputs and inputs. Unfortunately, similar to the rest of the world, most of...

The development of a new parallel mechanism based on simulation driven design is a rapid approach to discover the unique features or advantages of a conceptual model. In this research, one novel parallel mechanism which can generate three degrees-of-freedom translations is proposed. The...

The authors of this paper have been involved in contentious discussion of the EROI of biomass-based ethanol. This contention has undermined, in the minds of some, the utility of EROI for assessing fuels. This paper seeks to understand the reasons for the divergent results.

Stand-alone environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment (LCA), such as the carbon footprint and water footprint, are becoming increasingly popular as a means of directing sustainable production and consumption. However, individually, these metrics violate the principle of LCA known...

Promotion of undergraduate student thinking and learning in the realm of sustainable production is a new focus for horticulture curricula. In a writing intensive course, Greenhouse Management (Hort 3002W; University of Minnesota), students focus their learning of sustainability by writing...

Micro-manufacturing emerged in the last years as a new engineering area with the potential of increasing peoples’ quality of life through the production of innovative micro-devices to be used, for example, in the biomedical, micro-electronics or telecommunication sectors. The possibility to...

This paper is a synthesis of a series of twenty papers on the topic of EROI, or energy return on investment. EROI is simply the energy gained from an energy-obtaining effort divided by the energy used to get that energy. For example, one barrel of oil invested into getting oil out of the ground...