Energy return on energy invested?

Energy return on energy invested is a horrible metric: calculated differently in almost every study on the topic, and fairly difficult to delimit conceptually.

Despite this, we have made an attempt to quantify EROEI, apples-to-apples, across our own different models, calculating the energy that can be derived, over a 30-year time horizon, per unit of full-cycle energy inputs, on a net basis after efficiency losses.

Global average EROEI is around 30x. Sources with EROEI above average are hydro, nuclear, natural gas and coal. Sources with middling EROEIs of 10-20x are solar, wind and LNG. Sources with weaker EROEIs are oil products, green hydrogen and some biofuels.

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