The Rising Costs of Fossil‐Fuel Extraction
An Energy Crisis That Will Not Go Away
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7579299 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bart Hawkins Kreps (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 695-717 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Economics and Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9246 • E-ISSN: 1536-7150 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ajes.12336 |
| OpenAlex | W3044622642 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
In biophysical terms, such as energy return on investment (EROI), energy sources for the global economy have grown more expensive over the last few decades. This trend is likely to be more pronounced in the near‐term future as conventional oil and gas are depleted and difficult‐to‐extract unconventional oil and gas become a larger part of the fossil‐fuel supply. On the one hand, this will lead to “energy sprawl”—the growth of the energy sector, as this sector consumes a much larger portion of the energy it extracts—leaving less energy surplus for other sectors. On the other hand, we will see an unsustainable imbalance between the fuel prices that fossil‐fuel companies will need to meet their costs and the fuel prices that the larger economy can afford to pay. This article reviews the historical role of inexpensive energy in economic growth, discusses the declining availability of conventional oil resources, and examines the increasing reliance on expensive, unconventional petroleum resources such as shale oil in the United States
Business · Economics · Energy (signal processing) · Energy supply · Fossil fuel · Investment (military) · Natural resource economics · Oil shale · Petroleum · Unconventional oil · Waste management · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics · Engineering · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · Natural Resources and Economic Development
| Citations per year | 0.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |