I still don't think you understood Phil's comment.

Presumably, you won't be able to make sense of this either:

"In addition, production of ethanol is energy efficient, in that it yields nearly 25 percent more energy than is used in growing the corn, harvesting it, and distilling it into ethanol."

• http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

The problem appears to be that you are incorrectly imagining that the other people in the discussion are trying to account for factors such as sunlight.