[douglas]

Of course it's not going to work if you expend all your movement first - you can only move once per day, and when it's activated on day 30 when all your normal movement is finished there's no time left to use the emergency movement.

Here's how emergency movement works:
Look up the movement days for the ship's normal movement speed in the FAQ. Find the day on which the "use component" order will be executed (either the first day you would normally move or on the same day as the last normal move before activating it). Every day on the chart after that that you would normally not move on gets an emergency movement point until they are all exhausted.

Example:
Ship has speed 10 and emergency movement 5.
Normal movement is on days 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29.
You order to move two sectors, use the component, and move some more.
The second move will be finished on day 5. The component will be used then.
Emergency movement will occur on days 6, 7, 9, 10, and 12.
Your ship will move a total of 15 times on days 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, and 29.

Note that in the case of the component being used before any movement at all, it will still not be used until the first normal move. The ship in the example cannot move before day 2 no matter what it does. Yes, this means putting emergency propulsion on speed 1 ships is useless because it will never under any circumstances be used until day 30, at which point there aren't any days left for the movement to be used on.