# Presentation: 310729

## Emergy in 60 Minutes

- Everything you didn’t know you wanted to know about emergy and didn’t know to ask.

**Notes:**
This is the first in a series of three seminars to acquaint our fellow AED employees and guests about this new-fangled concept that some call risky, but that is an important part of the human ecology initiative trying to bridge the gap between environmental science and the socio-economic aspects of human well-being. I would like to introduce my two research partners – Dan Campbell and TingTing Cai.  Dan has been working with emergy almost since its conception, and Tingting is an expert on the maximum power principle that you will be hearing me refer to throughout this talk.  Please feel free to direct your questions to either of them throughout or after this talk.

## Information Transfer Goals(aka presentation outline)

- Basic definitions and semantics
- Top 10 Things You Need to Know
- Emergy applications

**Notes:**
My ITGs (information transfer goals) for today include presenting some very basic definitions and explanations, then expanding that a little with a top ten list of important emergy concepts.  I will include 1 or 2 case studies to illustrate some of these concepts, and also to let you see the utility of emergy evaluations.

## E  M ERGY

**Notes:**
But first, I’d like us all to take a few seconds to look at this word.  Please take this opportunity to make sure you are in the right seminar.  For all of you still here, this word should now be indelibly etched on your retinas....and that brings me to perhaps the most important point of the entire seminar, after which we can all go back to work.................

## What is EMERGY?

- EMergy is NOT _energy_ misspelled!

**Notes:**
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough.  It is true that emergy is energy related, and I do appreciate Google asking me, “Did you mean: energy ?”  But the “M” is deliberate and has a meaning as we will see in the next slide.  Some people ask why we have to make up so many new words to describe this methodology....I remind you, gently of course, that in its day the word calculus was created to explain, well you know what it stands for, and that word was ridiculed (as well as the entire concept of applying math to multidimensional problems), but is of course now, an almost household word.  Cursed in many households perhaps, but it is what took us to the moon and builds bridges, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

## What is EMERGY?

- Emergy is a tool, an assessor
- Some metaphors (transfer functions):
- pH is the negative log of the number of H+ ions
- Dow Jones average is a measure of market activity
- GNP is a measure of economic exchange
- Trophic state indices measure productivity

**Notes:**
Emergy by itself is not a science.....it is based on energy systems theory, which is a science.  But emergy accounting is a tool, a way to assess environmental services along with economic activities.  It is an objective, repeatable, donor based metric, rather than a situation-specific, subjective and receiver identified value.

## What is EMERGY?

- Based on the laws of physics and thermodynamics
- Applies energy systems principles
- All goods, services and information (either environmental, economic or cultural) put into a common unit of measure

**Notes:**
There is no interaction or exchange on this planet that does not have an energy transaction associated with it.  Even love, as irrational as it may seem, begins with a measurable chemical reaction that is built upon by a variety of material, energy and information exchanges, all of them governed by the laws of physics and thermodynamics. 
Emergy evaluations begin with an explicit description of the system or process that leads to the concentrated energy form, material, product or service of interest.  These pathways are the energy and material exchanges evaluated using established physical and chemical equations. 
Energy systems concepts also help us understand the symbiosis of human society and economy with the environment, permitting a rigorous definition of the interface which in turn leads to the ability to define a single unit of measure, the solar emjoule, that is common to all systems.

## What is EMERGY?

**Emergy** is the available energy of any kind previously used both directly and indirectly to make another form of energy, product or service.
- Emergy might be thought of as energy memory.

**Notes:**
Finally, the definition.

## What is EMERGY?

**Notes:**
Think of a food web that you are familiar with.  It takes a large amount of diffuse sun energy to make  a lot of carbohydrate energy to feed a few herbivores that provide energy for a single carnivore.  At every step, energy is transformed from one form into another, concentrating the energy and its ability to do meaningful work, with a great deal of loss of energy from this particular system.  While most common energy analysis methods deal with either the direct energy input or the energy dissipated, emergy keeps track of all the energy required to get to the endpoint.  In a way, you could say that emergy continually tracks the true support area needed to sustain production of any item. 

## What is EMERGY?

- Its unit is the emjoule
- In this global system, use the solar emjoule (sej).

**Notes:**
To differentiate this combining of different energy forms from input-output energy measures or embodied energy, each unit is called an emjoule.  Because everything on this planet begins with solar energy, we track energy back to this first input and hence call each unit a solar emjoule. 

## Transformations & Concentration

**1E10**

**1E7**

**1E5**

**1E4**

**1E10 sej/t**

**1E10 sej/t**

**1E10 sej/t**

**1E10 sej/t**

**J/t**

**Sun**

**Notes:**
Obviously, this is a highly simplified diagram of a system that involves a great deal more complexity, but let’s say that all of the different plants required as support have been aggregated into this one symbol, and that all of the insects and herbivores required to keep this section of productivity going are aggregated here and so on.  
Now, let’s put some somewhat realistic energy values on each pathway as energy is concentrated from left to right. We see that the original amount of energy required to get this pathway going was 1E10Joules per some unit of time.  That now becomes the total emjoules accounted for at each energy transformation,  If we had brought other energy resources, such as oxygen or outside nutrients or human game management into the system, we would have added the emjoules associated with each of those inputs to that total as well.

## Emergy Ratios

- Emergy per Unit Ratios
- Transformities: The ratio of emergy inputs to energy output – sej/J (solar emjoules per joule)
- Emergy per mass: the ratio of emergy inputs to mass output – sej/g (solar emjoules per gram)

**Notes:**
This discussion of transformation and concentration as you move through a process from beginning to end leads into another round of definitions - the very important emergy per unit ratios.  Next to the definition of emergy, emergy per unit ratios are probably the most important emergy concept.  The definition is simple: for every unit of output, a joule or a gram, there is a specific amount of total emergy required.  If we are evaluating material we call this ratio the emergy per mass or specific emergy similar to other intrinsic properties such as specific heat capacity.  If we are evaluating energy, the ratio is called a transformity.  Remember that at each step up the path in the previous diagram a transformation in energy form occurs.  This ratio measures the relative quality of that transformation

## Transformities

**1E10**

**1E7**

**1E5**

**1E4**

**1**

**1E3**

**1E5**

**1E6**

- Energy Transfers
- Joules/time

- Transformity
- Solar emJoules/Joule

- _Solar emergy (sej/t)_
- Energy J/t)

- _1E10_                _1E10_                _1E10_                  _1E10_
- 1E10                 1E7                  1E5                    1E4

**Notes:**
Recall the diagram with the sun to the lion  from a few slides back.  At the top of this slide is a summary of this energy concentration process, and the middle bar graph shows the decreasing levels of energy available at each stage.  The original energy coming into the system from the sun is being tracked or “remembered” all along the chain from left to right, and since no other energy is crossing the boundary at any point, this original value (1E10 Joules for every unit of time) is the “energy memory” for each transformation step.
When the emergy at each step is divided by the energy outflow, a ratio is calculated that is known as the transformity of the item at that point in the hierarchy.  The bottom bar graph illustrates these ratios, and you can see that the ratio increases with progress up the hierarchical chain.

## Transformities

- The energy along any pathway can be quantified
- Energy is lost to the system at every transfer process
- The ratio of total energy coming into the system to the energy leaving any component is a useful number known as the emergy per unit ratio.
- If the unit is energy, ratio called transformity

**Notes:**
It is important to remember these things about transformities and other unit emergy ratios.

## Emergy Ratios

- Emergy to dollar ratio, em$
- important economic interface
- economic activity supported by natural resource base
- translate resources used in any year into emergy
- divide by the currency in circulation for that year
- direct link between environmental services and economic valuation

**Notes:**
There are a lot of ratios and indices that can be derived using emergy, but I am not going to list them today.  However, there is a key ratio that allows us to put all items on a common basis, even economic values, and that is the emergy to dollar ratio.
Based on the fundamental principle that all human activities, particularly the economy, are based on natural resources, there is an intrinsic link between environmental services and economic measures such as gross national product.
Because emergy is a donor-based assessment, all of the natural resources that the economy is built upon can be evaluated by determining how much energy was required to concentrate the resource into useable form.  Even the services paid for when retrieving or processing a raw material can be converted to a donated energy by determining the actual person-hours used and the level of training involved and using this data rather than the dollars paid. 

## Emdollars

- Calculation for US: _(8 + 32 + 23 + 15) E23 sej/yr_ =  1.44 E12 sej/$
-                                                5.4 E12 $/yr

- 1992

**8**

**32**

**23 Fuel**
**15 G&S**

**GNP**
**5.4E12 $/yr**

- Environmental
- Production

- Economic
- Production

- Non-
- Renewable

- Renewable

- Assets

- $

- $

- Imports

- Fuels
- Goods &
- Services

**USA Macroeconomic**
**Overview**

- Exports

**Notes:**
Here is an example of the calculation.  This highly aggregated diagram shows that 8 E23 sej/yr are used within the US in the form of rain and tides, averaged over several decades.  Another 32 E23 sej were extracted in this particular year for use within the region.  These would mostly be coal, oil and ores, and this is the amount actually consumed within the region.  In addition, another 38 E23 sej are imported each year.  For this year, 1992, there were 78 E23 sej circulating (used) within the U.S.
Economists have a measure of economic activity known as the gross national product that measures currency in circulation for the year.  That this indicator is flawed is readily admitted by most economists.  However, there is no other common economic indicator of money used at present.
What we have then is two values describing economic activity in any given year: one is the emergy value of the natural resources in circulation being used to support the economy, and the other, the gross national or state product, is the dollars circulating in the opposite direction processing or purchasing those resources in one form or another.  This ratio of emergy to dollars can be used to convert dollar data for a given year into solar emjoules or it can used to convert solar emjoules into a value – emdollars (em$) – that is comparable to dollars.  

## Sample Evaluation

**Notes:**
Let me take you briefly through the procedure for doing an emergy evaluation so that you will see there is no great mystery to the methodology.  
This diagram represents a typical farm system designed to produce a crop of some vegetable, lets say an orange for example.  While the amounts of materials and energy (and please remember that materials are a form of energy as well) might be a little different from one region to another, overall the inputs are very similar, as are the resulting emergy values.  Environmental services are directly used in this system in the form of sun, rain, wind, geologic weathering and the recycled nutrients available in soil.  The environment is indirectly used through an array of purchased materials such as electricity, fertilizers and other miscellaneous goods and human services.

## Environmental & Economic Inputs

**Notes:**
We divide many of our tables into categories of energy source.  This allows later determination of sustainability or in other words, the real amount of area required to support this particular process.  

All of these inputs have had their emergy value determined in previous studies and that allows us to track all of the inputs in terms of emergy.  Phosphate for example enters the system in the form of fertilizer

## Backtracking to the Sources

- Rain

- Sun
- Wind

- Geology

- Tides

- P

- Wetlands

- Acid
- H2O

- Limestone
- W/Marl

- Phosphate
- Rock

- Fertilizer
- Production

- Fuels
- Electricity

- Goods &
- Services

**Notes:**
Which comes from mined rock which was formed over a long period of time using renewable energy resources.  The emergy value of all of these renewable sources has also been  determined, but I’m not going to go into that here.  The important point is that all inputs need to be backtracked to their individual source energies in order to fully understand the total energy, or emergy, required.

## Top 10 Important Emergy Facts

- What it can and can’t do
- How it works

**Notes:**
Now that some basic definitions are in place, I would like to talk about the actual utility of the methodology.

## #10

- Emergy accounting is an ecological economic methodology that quantifies relationships between economy, environment and culture using a common metric

**Notes:**
Counting backwards 

## #10

- Fundamental principle: economy, all human activity, dependent upon natural resource base
- Fundamental principle: all interactions are measurable using energy measurement or calculation
- Fundamental principle: no high level interaction can occur without other lower level supporting interactions

**Notes:**
This is based on three fundamental principles that have been introduced already

## #9

- Emergy analysis uses an energy systems approach:
- boundaries are broader and analyses more comprehensive, can be used for all scales
- allows pinpointing of inputs that might be altered to improve the picture presented by the results

**Notes:**
Energy systems theory is the basis for the entire emergy methodology.

## #8

- Emergy provides an avenue for quantitatively investigating and understanding difficult problems in human perception such as the aesthetic and symbolic values held by people and that influence willingness to pay

**Notes:**
#8 is conceptual at this point, and one area of focus for the project here at EPA

## #8

- Emergy, as an established methodology, in mid 1980’s
- In last 15 years, evidence for human perception coming close to donor-based valuation with growing knowledge or exposure

**Notes:**
Even economists are beginning to document that willingness-to-pay is directly related to closeness to the item in question, either geographically or influence on the person’s life at the time.  With increased exposure to the connectedness of life at a larger scale, people’s views on value change, and anecdotal evidence so far supports the idea that their values begin to approach the emergy values for the system or item.

## #7

- Emergy analysis can determine if a resource is capable of supporting long term economic growth

**Notes:**
Or the net emergy value of the resource.  Let me use a case study to illustrate this point.

## Emergy Applications

- Emergy analysis of shale oil presented in testimony before Congress in 1976.
- Findings:
- No net emergy in shale oil
- Policy Recommendations:
- Congress advised against appropriating funds for shale oil

- Shale mine
*Photo Patriot Energy*

**Notes:**
Bottom line, NO NET EMERGY. But because shale oil appeared to have a net ENERGY value, billions of dollars were spent in its development.  Today, all but one or two of these initiatives have been abandoned and no return was ever realized from the expenditure.

## #6

- Evaluates development alternatives and ranks them by greatest benefit/impact.

## #6

- Uses systems approach to identify all consequences, gains, losses associated with each alternative
- Emergy net benefits quantifies differences
- Relative ranks fall out

**Notes:**
Evaluating every pathway in terms of emergy allows researchers to assign a positive value to benefits and a negative to impacts or costs.  This can be done for many alternatives competing for the same geographic region, for individual inputs and impacts from a single or multiple plans, and for net benefits for different groups of the population.

## #5

- Emergy provides a standard for equitable exchanges in terms of real wealth

**Notes:**
One important use for the emergy to dollar ratio is as a tool for evaluating equity of exchange between countries or regions.  Because every region has a different amount of emergy circulating in relation to the money circulating, currency used as payment for goods carries with it an implied emergy amount indicative of the real wealth supporting the region.

## #5

- Environmental
- Product sold

- Money from
- purchaser

- Price

-    _Emergy of product_       =      _(flow)(unit emergy)_       = benefit ratio
- Emergy of money paid        (price)(emergy/currency)      to purchaser

**Notes:**
Comparing the emergy values exchanged allows a direct assessment of the trade equity – is the purchaser getting a deal, is the seller making an inordinate profit, or are both parties getting fair value.  Although, in some ways, barter addresses this issue more fairly than money exchange, even direct exchange of different goods would benefit from an emergy analysis! 
This slide presents the actual calculation of the this equity ratio for trades.  We are comparing the emergy of the product sold to the emergy of the money used to buy the product.  Multiply the flow of goods by the unit emergy to get the total emergy sold.  This is the numerator.  Multiply the money exchanged by the emergy to dollar ratio for the REGION DOING THE PURCHASING.  If the ratio is 1, then the trade is equitable.  If the ratio is less than one, the seller is the beneficiary.  If the ratio is greater than one, the purchaser has the benefit.

## #5

- Different emergy consumption leads to trading disparity
- Uses emergy to dollar ratio for each respective country

- Brazil
- 8.4E12 sej/$

- Japan
- 1.5E12 sej/$

- $1

- 8.4E12 sej

- $1

- 1.5E12 sej

- 5.6:1 Japan wins

**Notes:**
Using this method to compare trade, let’s look at trade between a highly developed nation, Japan, and a developing nation, Brazil.  The emergy to dollar ratio for Japan was 1.5 E12 sej/$ at the same time that Brazil’s ratio was 8.4 E12.  This means that Japan relies more on imported and purchased goods in order to maintain the natural resources necessary to support their economy than Brazil does.  You probably already knew, at least intuitively that this would be true, but emergy allows us to see quantitatively how big the difference is between the two countries. 
Now, let’s say that both countries want to exchange what they consider is an equal ECONOMIC value.  They sign a trade agreement that, after converting their respective currencies to US dollars, for every dollar that Brazil spends on Japanese goods, Japan will spend an equal amount on Brazilian goods.  If they keep this arrangement up for long, Brazil’s economy will falter, while Japan’s will become stronger and more affluent at Brazil’s expense (sound familiar?).  Why?  Because although the dollar exchange was equitable, the REAL WEALTH being exchanged was disparate with Japan getting almost 6 times more real wealth than Brazil for every dollar spent.

## #5

- More equitable trades

- Brazil
- 8.4E12 sej/$

- Japan
- 1.5E12 sej/$

- $5.60

- 8.4E12 sej

- $1.01

- 8.4E12 sej

**Notes:**
Using the same technique, we can determine what an equitable exchange between these two countries might actually look like.  The treaty should probably have been written to make emergy the tool for determining equity.....for every 8.4 E12 sejs the Brazil provides to Japan as raw materials, Japan agrees to provide 8.4 E12 sej in trade, either as money or as finished goods.  The dollars are unequal, but the REAL WEALTH  or natural resource values are better matched.  This would lead to less exploitation of developing nations and a more level trading field.  

## #4

- Uses quantified magnitude of difference (#6) and equity of exchange (#5) at different scales of perspective to demonstrate who benefits and who does not from development projects

**Notes:**
This is best illustrated using a case study.

## Emergy Applications

- Findings:
- More emergy goes to developed nations in Ecuador’s shrimp than is received in $ return
- Emergy benefit to shrimp farmers
- Emergy deficit for local economies and Ecuador
- Policy recommendations:
- Less intensive culture
- Restore mangroves
- Promote alternative development

**Notes:**
Ecuadorian mangroves have always produced a high level of shrimp and fish for the people living in Ecuador.  A decision to allow a few individuals to remove the mangroves and create shrimp aquaculture ponds was made based on the amount of money that would enter the country.
Some people at URI invited Dr. Odum to do an emergy analysis of this development scenario.
Today, the shrimp farmers have prospered, but Ecuador is unable to get out from debt, and the native inhabitants can no longer afford the fish and shrimp they once flourished on.  This outcome is complicated by the import of oil and loans for other , but if you would like to read an account of the entire project, read Chapter 21 in the book Maximum Power.

## #3

- Transformities and other unit emergy ratios tell you where things “belong”, and where they don’t

**Notes:**
Energy systems theory, and therefore emergy, demonstrate that a natural hierarchy of energy use and transformations exists. 

## #3

- works well in process at same point in hierarchy
- disrupts natural organization and process when out of place in hierarchy
- self-organizes to maximize output relative to higher emergy input

- Transformity

- Territory of Influence

- Agriculture
- Pesticides
- Fertilizer

- Creeks
- Lakes
- Estuaries

- 1E4 sej/J

- 1E6-1E9 sej/J

**Notes:**
This graph illustrates conceptually that items with increasing transformity have increasing territory of influence.  Using the lion example from the beginning of the presentation, the fact that the lion’s transformity is much higher than the grass component required as support for the pathway leading to Mr. Lion.  And the amount of territory over which this lion roams, both using and feeding back to, is demonstrably larger than the territory needed to support plants.
Applying this to concept to contaminants or other chemicals used in commercial enterprises is an example of using transformities to determine where an item is best suited for use and where it will disrupt the natural stages of succession or productivity.
It is important to note that while high transformity items create stress when introduced into lower transformity systems, the system will reorganize to accommodate that higher transformity input.  These changes may be unacceptable to humans, but the system is just doing what comes naturally - maximizing power.

## #2

- Emergy flows do not inform us about good or bad, but will tell us what systems will prevail under different resource availability scenarios

**Notes:**
And that point leads us to this one

a lot of people look to emergy to support their belief that using too much oil or some other environmental impact is bad, but emergy does not take sides.  It is just a tool for assessing the environmental services not normally accounted for in any other value system.
Emergy is useful in helping policy makers determine the long-term path for their community or nation, using the criteria of maximum power and quantifying alternatives.

## #2

- Maximum power principle
- system that maximizes its ability to use energy inputs will prevail
- dependent upon energy available
- not necessarily maximum input (optimum loading example 62%)
- Comparing emergy required to energy and emergy available gives an indication of sustainability

**Notes:**
In addition to the maximum power principle, using emergy to quantify what is really required to reach any endpoint allows us to look ahead to see how far reserves will take us and how much renewable energy will be required to make up the difference.

## #1

- Measures *real wealth* embodied in an economic or environmental product
- Real wealth is what an environmental product or service provides when used for its intended purpose within a system

**Notes:**
And I will end with perhaps the most important utility that emergy offers:

## #1

- The same car traveling on a gallon of gas will only drive so far regardless of how much the gas costs
- This ability to do work is its real value

## In Conclusion

- Emergy is a new tool, not a new science
- Allows direct comparison of typically disparate functions
- Emergy overcomes deficits in economic analysis by including externalities
- Does not reach same conclusions as economic evaluations
- Bridges the gap between environmental and social sciences