The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 614
However, let me turn the tables on those who are overly concerned with the use
of corn for ethanol and how corn syrup and corn starch prices might cause the
rising prices of snack foods, soft drinks and candy. We are in the midst of a
national obesity epidemic. Perhaps we shouldn’t be eating so much junk food.
It would be better for the health of all the non-starving humans if we didn’t eat
so much crap. I think if Robert Bryce needs a crusade to get involved with, this
would be the one because this really has a worthwhile moral cause.
EROEI
EROEI, it’s almost like a space alien’s name. Robin Williams could have used
in on his old TV show. But of course, it means Energy Returned On Energy
Invested. This is sort of the equivalent to the financial community’s ROI, Return
On Investment. Ultimately, both EROEI and ROI are used to tell you if you’re
wasting your time.
Here’s a simple illustration, if you need one: Say you want a really good bowl
of fruit salad for lunch. You could go to COSTCO and buy a bunch of fruits that
you take home, cut up and eat. Or you can go to COSTCO and buy one of their
ready-made fruit salad bowls. The ready-made costs a little more than the individual fruits, but you save all the cutting time and you only have edible bits, not
all the wasted pieces.
You have to make a decision. You ask yourself if it’s worth your time to go
through the effort of cutting the fruit, particularly the pineapple. You determine
what your time is worth and then add that pro-rated dollar amount to the cost of
the fruit and then you can compare which gives you better value.
So the oil industry used EROEI to make a case for why it’s not worth the effort
to create an alternative fuel to gasoline. To help do this, the oil industry hired
two university professors to create the study. One professor, a professor of entomology (the study of bugs) is named David Pimentel, he’s from Cornell (a
prestigious Ivy League school) and the other is Tad Patzek, who was a professor of geology at University of California at Berkeley (also a very prestigious
school). By the way, Robert Bryce describes Tad as a personal friend. It’s really
not important, but Bryce mentions it in the book, so I figured I should do it too.
Unfortunately, EROEI is not necessarily as straightforward as using ROI. For
example, you can say, “I invested $1,000 dollars in a savings account that paid
5% interest (we wish) and at the end of the year when you withdraw the money
you have $1,050. So your ROI was $50. Simple.
