Abstract Recent papers argue that the energy return on energy invested (EROI) for renewable electricity technologies and systems may be so low that the transition from fossil fuelled to renewable electricity may displace investment in other important economic sectors. For the case of large-scale electricity supply, we draw upon insights from Net Energy Analysis and renewable energy engineering to examine critically some assumptions, data and arguments in these papers, focussing on regions in which wind and solar can provide the majority of electricity. We show that the above claim is based on outdated data on EROIs, on failing to consider the energy efficiency advantages of transitioning away from fuel combustion and on overestimates of storage requirements. EROIs of wind and solar photovoltaics, which can provide the vast majority of electricity and indeed of all energy in the future, are generally high (≥ 10) and increasing. The impact of storage on EROI depends on the quantities and types of storage adopted and their operational strategies. In the regions considered in this paper, the quantity of storage required to maintain generation reliability is relatively small.

中文翻译：

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能源投资回报 (EROI) 趋势对过渡到可再生电力的影响

摘要 最近的论文认为，可再生电力技术和系统的能源投资回报 (EROI) 可能很低，以至于从化石燃料到可再生电力的过渡可能会取代对其他重要经济部门的投资。对于大规模电力供应，我们借鉴了净能源分析和可再生能源工程的见解，批判性地检查了这些论文中的一些假设、数据和论点，重点关注风能和太阳能可以提供大部分电力的地区。我们表明，上述主张是基于 EROIs 的过时数据，没有考虑从燃料燃烧过渡的能源效率优势以及对存储要求的高估。风能和太阳能光伏的 EROIs，可以提供绝大多数电力，实际上是未来所有能源，通常很高（≥ 10）并且还在增加。存储对 EROI 的影响取决于采用的存储数量和类型及其运营策略。在本文考虑的区域中，维持发电可靠性所需的存储量相对较小。