"The team hopes to improve the technology so that it can be used commercially within five years, Shibusawa said."

I think this statement means that the energy in is greater than the energy out. I'm sure with the right catalysts it would generate a lot of income. and as the team said, they can be used commercially within 5 years.

However I do know that you can have a bio-pond gas generator where all the cow dung goes into to produce a lot of methane gas which is then used for electricity. They have one of these at my school and it powers most of the animal science areas. So you can get a bit of energy out of cow dung.