[zamfi]

I did not mention this because it bears more on how much energy infrastructure is required to build more energy infrastructure rather than to maintain our energy-hungry lifestyle.

EROEI is much harder to calculate for solar, wind, battery, etc. than for literal mining from the ground, but it seems like we’re around 10 for current utility-scale solar and hydro pumped storage.

That said, there are a lot of studies presenting extremes either way, usually funded by those who would benefit by the real number falling at such an extreme, so who knows.

Also, for those interested, the Wikipedia article on EROEI is actually good resource: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_in...

Nothing will ever beat the EROEI of oil spilling out of the ground ready-to-burn, but it’s also not a given that we need that to bootstrap industrial civilization.