Discussed at connections-20080112

• Helmut Burkhardt respects Howard Odum's work, but has some issues because Odum isn't a physicist.
• Helmut Burkhardt attended a workshop by Howard Odum at a workshop on The Prosperous Way Down.
• Burkhardt says that solar energy is plentiful, but Odum said that it was too diffuse.
• Odum also said that the energy was highly distributed, it doesn't have quality, e.g. oil is concentrated.
• Correct: second law of thermodynamics. The quality of the energy depends on the source, e.g. oil is about 3000-4000, whereas solar energy is 6000.
• Technical efficiency is 95%, oil is 65%, bioenergy is 1%; thus, would need to collect a lot more.
• Helmut Burkhardt admires Howard Odum's creativity in ecosystems, but Odum is working on some wrong assumptions.
• Problem is theoretical.
• Engineer's concept: entropy law is backward, you get more of something negative, not something for nothing: exergy
• Energy as the ability to do work, that is nonsense.
• There's lots of heat energy in the ocean, but can't get to it.
• Ocean energy as waves, kinetic is pure exergy.
• Exergy is the part we pay for.
• Odum created a concept of emergy; Burkhardt is not sure that this is helpful.
• James Kay uses exergy, less controversial.
• Odum's damage has been to get a public perception that solar energy is not viable.
• Gain of solar technology is not bad today, with a life of 30 years, and a payback in two years.
• Look at Energy Return on Energy Invested