One part of shifting from fossil fuels to, well, anything else is that the energy math looks worse because we’ve gotta account for all the stuff that we got for

One part of shifting from fossil fuels to, well, anything else is that the energy math looks worse because we’ve gotta account for all the stuff that we got for free before by burying the raw materials for a million years. Realistically, though, transportation fuels have two sets of criteria for viability - the net energy produced, yes, but also then everything that makes a transportation fuel useable: density, transportability, safety, ease of loading, ease of getting the energy out, etc. They’re really closer to a battery than an energy source: how much energy did we put into this system, and how much can we get back out. You want that ratio to be as close to 100% as possible, but the fact that it takes more energy to produce than what you get back doesn’t automatically make it a bad transportation energy source if it has a variety of other useful factors. Granted that Corn generally is particularly bad for this (I once heard a joke that the only thing corn was especially good for producing was lobbyists), but biofuels generally can still be viable even if the energy net is negative if they meet our other needs.