I am developing an idea and a “model” (and you could call it a hypothesis, but its much less formal at the moment) how to compare different types of energy sources from the perspective of an energy investor. Basically if you have some energy source and you want to build more of those, how would different sources compare. This comparison is similar to EROI, but tries to take capital requirement into perspective. Basically this should be best approach on deciding which energy source you want to choose considering there are time constrains, like in a real economy, so definitively you should choose the one that gives you the best ROI on the shortest of time. Thats what the Δt is for. I never heard about similar comparison before, so I am hoping the idea is original. The interesting part that when trying to play with my model (using some made-up data), I found out that both renewable and nuclear share a similar trait – such that when we factor in the Δt they don’t look so attractive, that is they both require a lot of time to pay off, and that mean a lot of capital (energy) has to be invested in advance. This insight might change when I will input actual data (considering I will find all the values), but still fossil fuels have a much shorter Δt (how fast you can get the return) and that’s a serious advantage. I am trying to include the carbon tax into equation, but it is basically a variable that equals:how much should it cost, so it would not be profitable to do this.
I will also try to calculate a yearly ROI for the energy sources in comparison, so we can see how well they do as an investment of as any investor knows a few percentages in cumulative return can be a huge difference, so I am looking for another unit to compare them instead of percentage (maybe doubling time?).