Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10
E
NERGY
C
OSTS
Valuations and Changes
A ramp has been built into probability
the universe cannot re-ascend.
For our small span,
the sun has fuel, the moon lifts the lulling sea,
the highway shudders with stolen hydrocarbons.
How measure these inequalities
so massive and luminous
in which one's self is secreted
like a jewel mislaid in mountains of garbage?
John Updike, From ''Ode to Entropy'' (1985)
discipline, initially labeled energy analysis (IFIAS 1974;
Chapman, Leach, and Slesser 1974; Verbraeck 1976; J.
Thomas 1979). Its goal is to quantify direct and indirect
uses of fuels and electricity in the discovery, extraction,
transportation, and conversion of energies, in the extrac-
tion and processing of raw materials, in the production
of food and industrial goods, and in the provision of
services.
The latter category involves high shares of human la-
bor whose physical quantification is clearly problematic.
Why should an individual's labor input—food energy
intake or total energy support burden, usually derived
from average annual per capita commercial energy con-
sumption—be charged toward the cost of a particular
task? If she did not process insurance claims, would she
not eat? Or unemployed, would she not claim a share of
the nation's energy flow? Once the decision is made to
account for the energy cost of labor, which approach is
more rational: the minimalist choice of counting just the
Industries with relatively high shares of energy costs
in total operating expenditures have always closely moni-
tored their fuel and electricity consumption, but during
the era of low energy prices other enterprises, interested
primarily in minimizing labor and material outlays, rarely
knew how much energy it took to make a product. This
neglect was promptly remedied following OPEC's first
round of oil price increases with the emergence of a new
