Concepts
Energy Return on Investment
Also Known As EROI
Systems Measure
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The ratio of usable energy a source delivers to the energy spent obtaining it. Early gushers returned perhaps a hundred to one, unconventional oil and biofuels far less, and the measure gives a physical floor beneath energy economics: a society cannot run for long on sources that return barely more energy than they consume. Published estimates vary widely with the chosen system boundaries, a known methodological dispute in the literature.
Facts
Disputed
Formulated YearNet-energy analysis debates trace to the 1970s; Charles A. S. Hall's 1984 paper on the cover of the journal Science is the widely cited landmark that popularized EROI as a named metric. Concept DomainEnergy systems analysis 1 Sources
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