DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25311358
title: Final- and useful-stage energy returns on investment (EROI) of fossil fuels, and final-stage EROI equivalent of renewable energy

description: IntroductionThis dataset presents the estimated EROIs in the Nature Energy paper "Estimation of useful-stage energy returns on investment for fossil fuels and implications for renewable energy systems" (Aramendia et al. 2024).The methodology used to build the dataset is explained in-depth in the paper, and the code used is available in the associated online repository.<b>Please read the information below prior to using the dataset.</b>ContentThe repository contains the EROIs calculated for fossil fuels ("Fossil fuel EROIs" folder) and the EROIs equivalent calculated for renewable energy systems ("Renewable energy EROIs equivalent" folder). These data are available at both the global and regional levels.Fossil fuel EROIsFossil fuel EROIs are provided at the primary, final, and useful stages. For calculations by end-use category and final-demand sector, values are only provided at the useful stage, as the same primary and final stage values apply to all end-use categories and final-demand sectors.Values at the final and useful stages are specified by energy carrier considered in the calculations:fuel+elec+heat: all energy carriers of fossil fuel origin considered, including electricity and heat of fossil fuel origin;fuel: electricity and heat of fossil fuel origin are not considered;electricity: only electricity of fossil fuel origin is considered;heat: only heat of fossil fuel origin is considered.Note that "heat" refers to "Heat" used as final energy carrier in the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Extended World Energy Balances (EWEB). "Heat" does not therefore not include a fuel (say fossil gas) used for a heating end-use (say in the residential sector).The values are aggregated in five fossil fuel categories: all fossil fuels aggregated, coal products, oil and gas products, oil products, and fossil gas. Furthermore, values are provided including and excluding the indirect energy requirements of the fossil fuel industry, which refer to the energy requirements of the fossil fuel industry supply chain.Note that the regional EROIs refer to the average regional EROI from a consumption perspective. As an example, the EROI reported for "Oil products" in a given country would refer to the average EROI of an oil product consumed in the given country (and not produced in the given country).Renewable energy EROIs equivalentThe renewable energy EROI equivalent refers to the final stage EROI for which an electricity-yielding renewable energy system returns the same amount of net useful energy as a given fossil fuel (see Aramendia et al. 2024). The renewable energy EROIs equivalent are also reported at both the global and regional levels, for the five fossil fuel categories, and both including and excluding the indirect energy requirements of the fossil fuel industry.The renewable EROIs equivalent are reported either when considering only fossil fuels used as fuels, or when considering all carriers of fossil fuel origin (including electricity and heat). This information is contained in the "Energy.Carrier.Considered" variable.An additional variable indicates the assumption regarding the origin of energy used to manufacture the renewable energy technologies (fossil fuel versus renewable origin), see Aramendia et al. 2024.Caveats and limitationsPlease note that the released dataset is heavily reliant on the IEA's EWEB, and that its quality is therefore highly dependent on the underlying IEA's EWEB quality. This is particularly relevant for values reported at the regional level: for some regions the data is of poor quality/precision. This notably explains EROI values of "Inf" (or extremely high values), which occur when no energy use (or very little energy use) is reported in the IEA's EWEB for a given fossil fuel industry. Issues of infinite EROIs, or very high EROIs may be less apparent when including indirect energy in the calculations, because those are extrapolated at the regional level using global calculations (see Aramendia et al. 2024). However, in such cases the EROIs including indirect energy requirements will provide a poor representation of the fossil fuel industry in the considered region, because the EROIs will be mostly derived from the indirect energy calculations at the global level.Therefore, we recommend that anyone using the EROI values at any regional level carefully assesses the consistency and quality of the data prior to conducting any analysis.Files informationAll files are encoded in UTF-8;Fields are comma separated: ",";Quotes are only used when needed (i.e. when/if a comma appears in a field), using a double quote ";The end-of-line characters is "\ n" (without space).To read the files using R, one can use the following command: <i>readr::read_csv("filepath.csv")</i>.ReferencesAramendia, Emmanuel, Paul E. Brockway, Peter G. Taylor, Jonathan B. Norman, Matthew K. Heun, and Zeke Marshall. 2024. “Estimation of Useful-Stage Energy Returns on Investment for Fossil Fuels and Implications for Renewable Energy Systems.” <i>Nature Energy</i> xxx: xxx. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01518-6.