energy can be viewed in one of two ways: profitable extractable (NEG>0) or nonprofitable extractable (NEG<0). For instance, in the Athabasca Oil Sands, the highly diffuse nature of the tar sands and low price of crude oil rendered them uneconomical to mine until the late 1950s (NEG<0). Since then, the price of oil has risen and a new steam extraction technique has been developed, allowing the sands to become the largest oil provider in Alberta (NEG>0). Sustainables The situation is different with sustainable energy sources, such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources, because there is no bulk reserve to account for (other than the Sun's lifetime), but the energy continuously trickles, so only the energy required for extraction is considered. In all energy extraction cases, the life cycle of the energy-extraction device is crucial for the NEG-ratio. If an extraction device is defunct after 10 years, its NEG will be significantly lower than if it operates for 30 years. Therefore, the 'energy payback time (sometimes referred to as energy amortization) can be used instead, which is the time, usually given in years, a plant must operate until the running NEG becomes positive (i.e. until the amount of energy needed for the plant infrastructure has been harvested from the plant). Biofuels Net energy gain of biofuels has been a particular source of controversy for ethanol derived from corn (bioethanol). The actual net energy of biofuel production is highly dependent on both the bio source that is converted into energy, how it is grown and harvested (and in particular the use of petroleum-derived fertilizer), and how efficient the process of conversion to usable energy is. Details on this can be found in the Ethanol fuel energy balance article. Similar considerations also apply to biodiesel and other fuels. ISO 13602 ISO 13602-1 provides methods to analyse, characterize and compare technical energy systems (TES) with all their inputs, outputs and risk factors. It contains rules and guidelines for the methodology for such analyses. ISO 13602-1 describes a means of to establish relations between inputs and outputs (net energy) and thus to facilitate certification, marking, and labelling, comparable characterizations, coefficient of performance, energy resource planning, environmental impact assessments, meaningful energy statistics and forecasting of the direct natural energy resource or energyware inputs, technical energy system investments and the performed and expected future energy service outputs. In ISO 13602-1:2002, renewable resource is defined as