Estimates for the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) for renewable energy (RE) resources vary 10-fold or even more for different studies. Given the critical importance for RE what can we do to improve the calculations?
I my opinion, to decrease the spread for "identical" entities:
1.Industry specific standardisation which forces all practitioners to be transparent on algorithms, studied product system, cut-off, and exclusions
2. Product/process category rules which lock every choice for all metrics which shall be calculated.
I am amazed by the number of definitions of "energy-pay-back-time" used by different researchers in renewable power supply. The same goes for different scope and system boundary.