156 comments on A Net Energy Parable: Why is ERoEI Important?
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I'll grant you most of that (and the E=mc2 stuff doesn't really pose a problem, matter is nothing more than "frozen" energy anway), but the comparison between switchgrass and corn, I don't agree with.
If switchgrass had an EROEI of 1.5, but produced (net, after all fuels and such are accounted for) 2 units of fuel per unit of land, and corn had an EROEI of 1.2, but produced (net, again) 25 units of fuel per unit of land, which is really better? Seems to me that in this (contrived, I know) scenario the corn would be better. Neither of us would have any trouble coming up with complete numbers that would make the above work out (switchggrass uses y units of fuel, and produces z units of mass per acre, etc...)
What is the point of EROEI again? It doesn't seem to be actually measuring anything significant. As near as I can tell, it's measuring the boundaries between the various corporations and occupations that run the system. Seriously, why bother?