Energy Return on Investment

Basics

• The energy that is returned, after all the energy used to produce, as well as maintain (and eventually dissasemble/recycle etc) the device/system for it's entire Product Life Cycle
• One of the most important metrics in a LCA (Especially in power plants, or more likely in OSE's case smaller devices)
• Also an intresting way to see technology develop, Photovoltaic Panels were considered very low, or even negative, in the early days, but are now ~10x Net Energy Gain
• Another intresting usage of this metric is in analysing diminishing returns behind Fossil Fuel Phase Out , and the potential "economic Peak Oil / Resource X (in the case of areas such as Lithium Battery Recycling vs more mining) " (ie there may be some "unconventional petrolium reserves" that could be used, but the ERoEI is low enough to make it no longer viable as a business model, especially in comparison to ever cheaper renewable power / Bio-Petrochemicals

Internal Links

• See Energy Stored on Energy Invested

External Links

• The Wikipedia Page on Energy Return on Investment
• The Wikipedia Page on Net Energy Gain (Is this different enough to deserve a dedicated page?)
• The Wikipedia Page on Unconventional Oil (Oil Shale was nearly negative, and have been pushed to be BARELY viable (~3x) ]
• An Article on How PV Solar Has Progressed in ERoI
• The Wikipedia Page on Ethanol Fuel Energy Balance (Essentially the ERoI of Bio-Ethanol Production)