Burning dung for cooking and heating inside a hut is perfectly OK if there is an efficient stove.
I've been in huts in India where this is the case, dung,as a fuel, is also very cheap.

Bazz, the insurance costs would be significant when deciding which energy infrastructure to build. And cost is far more important than EROEI except when the latter is at very low values. But it is nothing to do with EROEI. And trying to factor it into the EROEI calculation is like trying to factor the cost of car insurance into the car's fuel efficiency figures!

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Luciferase, I've not read the book; merely the review, so I haven't got sufficient information to pass judgement on it. Nevertheless, my second objection was more than just a quibble: it appears to be evidence of a serious flaw in the methodology.

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Loudmouth I think you've got your answers mixed up. But the evidence is pretty clear: including maintenance, the EROEI of renewable energy is greater than 1. Usually much greater.

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Peter Lang, I'll examine the assumptions behind the CSIRO's tool when I have more time. Meanwhile I've explained to you several times why the claim that "An ERoEI of around 7 to 14 is needed to support modern society" is wrong. Why do you persist in the intellectual dishonesty of claiming otherwise?

"... my second objection was more than just a quibble"
These are real costs for real installations. There is a perfect world where insuring installations prone to weather damage is an insignificant cost, then there is the real world where actual cost matters.

EROI's are not additive, you'll agree, two plus two does not equal 4. The absurdity of building massive installations in parallel to power modern civilization, when the return on investment is so low (except for the recipients of feed-in tariffs, at everyone else's expense), is already manifest in Spain, Germany and Japan.

Your assumption that concessional loans by governments to investors will overcome the reality of PV experience so far is heroic. Stupid lending and stupid investment cannot make PV's more viable.

Aidan,

>"Meanwhile I've explained to you several times why the claim that "An ERoEI of around 7 to 14 is needed to support modern society" is wrong. Why do you persist in the intellectual dishonesty of claiming otherwise?"

No you have not. You've done nothing of the sort. You've repeated your baseless assertions over and over again. They've been refuted repeatedly by me and others including many of your silly comments on BNC.

When you had the opportunity to make cogent comments to state the basis for your beliefs and support them, on this thread, on BNC and on the threads elsewhere where the EROEI work has been discussed by the authors of the work, you squibbed it. You preferred to divert your comments to the trivial and irrelevant matter of the Opera House design and cost.

You have nothing cogent to offer on ERoEI. You can't present an argument. No one who knows anything about the subject has taken you seriously. And you continually display the signs of intellectual dishonesty. read them here and think about how they aply to your arguing tactics: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/

If you were honest, had an open and inquiring mind, and were capable of researching objectively, you could begin to learn about the genuine, pragmatic achievable alternatives. You could start by reading the links I posted in the first comment on this thread and reading the cited references in each where you want to dig deeper.

I see you're resorting to outright lies now Peter!'

On BNC I stated the reason for the figure of 7 being ridiculous: with a lower figure you could achieve the same result with more energy infrastructure. I did so in the context of John Morgan's example of oil, and when he responded by mentioning the limit to the amount of oil we have. When I pointed out that although this was true for oil it was not applicable to renewables, he withdrew from the discussion.

On the Compact Nuclear thread here I twice posted:
"...Except when it's VERY low, EROEI is never itself the limiting factor for what can be done. Human effort is a far bigger constraint, and although the "underlying authoritative paper" attempts to do this in section 6, it fails dismally! Two fundamental errors it makes are treating labour costs as a constant rather than a variable (ignoring scope for increased mechanization) and assuming the current situation to be the minimum threshold required. And while it notes that cost structures differ considerably, it does not attempt to quantify this difference even though it's more likely than EROEI to be the deciding factor."

Both times you refused to engage with my argument but carried on as if I hadn't said it. The fourth sign of intellectual dishonesty on that list you are so fond of linking to.

On this thread, the author (John Morgan) isn't participating so it provided no new opportunities. The first few respondents were already participating in the Compact Nuclear thread, and I saw no reason to split the discussion over two threads. Subsequent posters were responding mainly to each other rather than the article, and it was in this context I replied in one post to three of them, one of whom was discussing electric cars, one molten salt, and the third the Sydney Opera House. And that's as far as my comments with that went: a third of a post.

Is it a matter of presentation? Then what would I have to do to get you to take my argument seriously? And why?

Luciferase I completely agree that cost matters. It usually matters far more than EROEI. But the cost of insurance has nothing to do with EROEI.

EROEI is not additive, but net energy is. And it is the latter that modern society requires.

There is nothing stupid about lending to fund renewable energy infrastructure. It serves a very important public purpose.