The Energy Return of Tar Sands

When evaluating energy technologies – whether conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy – one thing that I pay close attention to is the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). While there are legitimate criticisms of […]

Understanding EROEI

Introduction The concept of energy return on energy invested, or EROEI, is terribly misunderstood. I have heard people argue that EROEI doesn’t matter, only economics. This misses a very key point: EROEI is going to […]

Perpetual Confusion over Energy Balances

People continue to be confused about the energy balance of gasoline versus ethanol. The ethanol lobby, in my opinion, deliberately spreads this sort of misinformation to persuade people that producing ethanol is a wise usage […]

High Oil Prices = High Biofuel Prices

You know that forever I have beaten the drum that high fossil fuel prices would make biofuels more expensive due to their poor EROEI. If you are unfamiliar with the argument, it is essentially that […]

Bob Dinneen Responds to Rolling Stone

I know it’s been a bit heavy on ethanol lately, but I continue to get quite a bit of activity over the recent Rolling Stone article. That’s the whole reason for writing a FAQ. I […]

The Handy-Dandy Khosla Refuter

The web site Seeking Alpha has just published a new article on ethanol: Ethanol: A Few Myths Debunked To be honest, there are so many misconceptions and myths in the article that a better name […]

Postscript with Wang and Khosla

I think the thread on efficiency of ethanol versus gasoline left a lot of things hanging, and there have been some communications with Dr. Wang and Mr. Khosla since then. So, I wanted to more […]

Battling with the Critics

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. I am trying to spend more time writing on topics other than ethanol. But I get a lot of e-mails on that subject, […]

Vinod Khosla Debunked

Update: Vinod Khosla and I have discussed his claims. That conversation is documented here. Who is Vinod Khosla? When an influential person begins to affect energy policy decisions – decisions that will have a huge […]

E85: Spinning Our Wheels

Introduction The following is an expanded version of an essay that I posted to The Oil Drum entitled: E85: Spinning Our Wheels. The essay was inspired by comments made by Odograph over at The Oil […]