In an earlier series of posts (Fueling an industrial world and Energy and the biophysical view of economic activity: from joules to fuels) I pointed out how aggregating energy sources on the basis of their nominal heating values—as is common practice for our most prominent and influential energy information agencies at national and international scale—tends to obscure the dependencies between concrete economic infrastructure and the specific forms that energy sources take in practice. The aggregation process involves taking a highly abstract view of energy sources—a view that highlights only one narrow parameter, at the expense of most of what is important for appreciating how our physical economy functions. One of the most critical areas of omission relates to the energy costs of energy supply and use. Continue reading →