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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (11095)	8/10/2010 1:36:41 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24231

New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment (EROI) of Corn Ethanol: Part 2 of 2 Posted by David Murphy on August 9, 2010 - 9:30am in The Oil The following is the second of two posts based on a recent paper published under the same title in the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability. I was the lead author for the article. The other two authors were Charles Hall and Bobby Powers. Part 1 of this series can be found at this link. In the analysis underlying our paper "New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment (EROI) of Corn Ethanol," we performed four major analyses relating to the EROI of corn ethanol. The first was a meta-error analysis, in which we quantified the error associated with the calculation of EROI of corn ethanol based on various estimates of the energy inputs and outputs found in the literature. The second was a spacial analysis of the EROI of corn ethanol. These two items were discussed in Part 1 of this series. In this part, we will discuss a two additional research areas from the paper. These two additional research areas are: A sensitivity analysis, in which we assess the extent to which corn yields and co-product credits impact the EROI of corn ethanol. An assessment of how much net energy was delivered to society by ethanol in 2009. We have also included our more general conclusions. netenergy.theoildrum.com spoiler alert... . . . The evidence provided in this research is clear: we do not know the exact EROI of ethanol, but even if we are remotely close (± 0.2), we are still, in the best case scenario, gaining an insigni?cant amount of net energy. Furthermore, Hall et al. (2009) estimated that only fuels with an EROI greater than 3:1 provide the requisite net energy to provide a fuel source and to maintain the infrastructure associated with the current U.S. transportation system. Fuels that have an EROI below 3:1 require subsidies from other energy sources to pay for all of the infrastructure associated with the transportation system of the US. The EROI of corn ethanol that we calculated is lower than the 3:1 threshold, indicating that corn ethanol requires large subsidies from the general fossil fuel economy, and as a result, drains energy from the US transportation system.