Your post is completely inaccurate. I have the advantage of having worked on these Studies in my work and actually seen them, but still... you are dead wrong. You seem to be making it up.
Yes the SAIC report does give a figure for capital. As I said, the SAIC report is an assumption. The whole thing. Believe it if you want. They say that they did an Order of Magnitude estimate. The way it is worded and the language is a bit suspect, but they do say that and they give a figure. It is just that the whole document is suspect because that report is an unconfirmed figment, an assumption.
I just looked on yahoo at JBI financials to make sure. I tried to copy the Income Statement, that did not work.
EBITDA includes:
-R&D
- SG&A (this is a bad joke in the case of JBI)
- Other expenses
- and Taxes, Interest and Amortization as you state.
None of these things have anything to do with ROI. They are accounting numbers that are entirely unrelated. Why would an outside firm be interested in anything other than Direct or Indirect Cost related to the investment? Now Ingham could take their analysis and produce an EBITDA number, but not SAIC.Depreciation and Amortization are irrelevant, you are correct, so why would they include it? Investors would need an explanation of what numbers were used and why. btw, there is a form of interest called Escalation on projects. It is basically increasing costs over time. And interest does not matter because it is all fed from operating money. Companies track Cash because they have to get Cash from a bank and pay interest on it.
Capital is just money. I am currently involved in a project with 10 figures in capital. Billions. It is just the Total Cost figure.
I have worked for almost 10 years on these projects, so I can speak with authority on what capital is, as well as ROI analysis.
Best of the Season from the Band... 
