Yeah, that is interesting. But from the home page it looks like they are pushing cellulosic ethanol which, according to David Pimentel, is worse than corn ethanol.
But I think doing energy balance studies is not the way to go. It should be based on cost, not energy in versus energy out. If the cost of the energy input is zero, then it doesn't matter what the balance is. Likewise, if the cost of the process is high, say because of huge labor cost or high tech maintenance for example, then it doesn't matter if you have a good energy ratio.
It should be based on costs, and ethanol is
a dollar cheaper even including the tax credit
BIG OIL gets. It cost farmers here about 300 bucks to
do an acre of corn.Get 140 bushels an acre of which
1/4 will be for ethanol, and 3/4 for the rest.
The ethanol part is 35 bushlels makes 90 gal ethanol
worth 250 bucks and other products worth the same.
The other 3/4 or 105 bushels is about 6000 lbs
of cattle feed that makes 1200 lbs of meat and
other animal by-products.Meat worth $3000, by-
products a hundred. So what do we have for $300
put into an acre by a farmer, over $3500 of which
if corn is 4 bucks the farmer grossed $560.Finally
getting more......than he put in. Value increased
10 above farm level icosts seems very good,
to me. This figuring is a breakdown
based on estimates of 1/4 of corn crop used
in ethanol plants. You see the ethanol dollars is
a small part of cost and profits on the whole corn
crop, but the big factor is what food middlemen do and speculators are doing to the the prices based on all
the rumors and controversy...Ed