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That 40 to 1 return must be ignoring the energy used to produce the corn. What about nitrogen fertilizer for example? Producing it is very energy intensive. E3 biofuels claims their operation produces some fertilizer but I doubt they produce all that is necessary to grow the corn, some of the nitrogen and other elements are going to be absorded by the cattle. What about the other foods the cattle eat? They aren't going to eat only distillers grain. The other types of cattle feed take energy to produce too.
Estimating the EROEI of a cattle-methane-ethanol-corn plants will be even more complex than a typical ethanol plant. How are the energy requirements to produce the various cattle feeds going to be divided between the ethanol and beef production? It isn't appropriate to just ignore the other types cattle feed. After all, some of the manure used to produce the methane originated from the other materials fed to the cattle.
Ill tell you one thing for certain. The energy return on cow manure to methane will be much higher if we just throw the cow in the biodigester, and higher still if we use whatever we feed the cow directly in the biodigester, and produce no cows at all.
The energy return in this situation is predicated on societies choice to eat meat/dairy. If that part of the equation is relaxed, it allows the other variables to move higher.
Thats why straight energy return, out of context, doesnt give you the whole story (though more than just dollars do)
"no cows at all"?
Wait until NCBA gets wind of their new slogan "Beef is not what's for dinner..."
How about we make an an exception for Kobe cows? I mean, while we're using up energy on cows, lets at least throw in beer and massages for 'em before it's "off with their heads". Uhrmmm, marbling.
Just a thought...
/me runs from rabid vegans
Excellent comment, Nate. Just like we all learned in school, from the sun's rays to plants to herbivores to carnivores, energy is lost every step of the way. Getting more from a cow than was put into feeding the cow would mean that energy was created out of nothing, and that's impossible. Even oil, which would not be around if not for the sun and is great because it has soaked up solar energy for millions of years (and is thus more dense than solar energy), is terribly inefficient, too. The best bet is to go directly to the source.
I've said before that 80% of American cropland is dedicated to feeding livestock, and there are many other reasons why growing livestock (at the very least the way we're doing it) is in no way beneficial to humanity (much less to the livestock, themselves).
I have the solution. We just need a gene therapy that will make us capable of photosynthesis. Then we can skip the intermediate stages and not have to eat at all. Throw in some cheetah genes so we can run real fast and we won't need cars.
Nah, we should just take Alice’s magic potion and become 1/10 th of our size. Then we’d only need 1/10th of the oil we consume today. Oops, we’d have to shrink the world as well to cut down transport ...oh, then we’d be shrinking the oil fields too, oh dear, back to the drawing board! Something will come up!
No, No. I think you have something there. Small, photosynthetic, and fast.
Once it goes transgenic in the wild we'll have ... Triffids!
That really would serve us right!