The WELMM Approach to Energy Strategies and Options

The development of energy resources requires more and more natural or human resources: on the one hand because of the difficulty of "harvesting" primary energy resources. and on the other because of the complexity of the sequence of processes necessary to convert these primary resources into useful resources for an economy (final energy). In this context the WELMM approach has been designed to evaluate the resource requirements for the development of energy resources. WELMM focuses mainly on five limited resources: Eater, Energy, Land, Materials, and Manpower. The WELMM evaluation is implemented at the level of the major facilities concerned in the harvesting and conversion of primary energy resources into find resources. All the WELMM data are stored in three different data bases (Resource Data Base, Component Data Base, and Facility Data Base). They are meant to be used to enlarge and complete the traditional economic comparison of energy processes, energy strategies or energy options.