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Ethanol More Trouble Than It's Worth?
call -151 writes "Yahoo reports this story by researchers from Cornell and Berkeley who show what a number of people had suspected- it takes significantly more energy (at least 29%) more energy to produce ethanol than it yields. Since ethanol production plants don't use ethanol themselves for their own energy needs (with presumably negible delivery costs) this has been widely suspected but not so bluntly stated: "Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment." Ethanol producers dispute the study, predictably, which deducts the multi-billion US dollar subsidy. It's not clear how this compares with this earlier Union of Concerned Scientists article that claims that the yield from corn kernels is net 50% positive- and the UCS is usually quite unbiased on these things."
No matter what independant researchers say, Ethonal is not going away any time soon. Why? I can explain in three letters:
A.
D.
M.
When the corporation who puts out the vast majority of ethanol-producing corn has members of both parties in their pocket, legislators are going to continue to preach the advantages of "clean, renewable" corn-based fuel.
(Also, they would prefer that you pay no attention to the fact that Ethanol produces less CO2, but more of other gasses, such as O3. We've got an environment to save, dammit! How dare you question the advantages of A.D.M.'s Ethanol!!!)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Convenience is. You can use clean energy to produce the ethanol, such has hydro-electrics or nuclear power but it's much harder to use it directly in a car. You can use ethanol in your car though. So throwing money in developping ethanol is not pointless because a) research will make the efficiency ratio increase b) ethanol is a convinient way to store energy for vehicles
\u262D = \u5350
Ok, perhaps "hydrogen energy" has some meaning like "solar/wind energy used to produce hydrogen", but certainly not in the context above ("solar, wind and hydrogen energy").
Most people usually don't figure the cost of keeping an extra aircraft carrier-centered battle group around to guard Mideast shipping lanes and a couple of ill-planned invasions here and there into "oil subsidies", but if they did, I'd bet you find that the cash devoted to ethanol isn't that much at all.
As long as a third of our budget is military and a chief focus of the military is to keep the oil flowing, it makes sense to pursue other energy options.
Now, with this in mind, tell me why ethanol is needed?
Because it's a huge, politically correct opportunity to subsidize voters in agro states, and to buy off the eco-crazies with something that sounds emotionally warm and fuzzy. It's not about fuel, it's about throwing a bone, no matter how pointless, to the sustainablites while real research into actual solutions is conducted on other fronts (say, in France, believe it or not).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Perhaps the UCS is also considering a clean energy source powering the ethanol plant. The current plants may not be using clear tech now, but in time that would change given enough ethanol flowing in the marketplace.
The question is, how well will that market deal with things like the inevitable droughts. Will we be flexible enough to use another crop, or even another tech to make up for the shortfall, or will we be skating on razor thin margins from now on, dealing with rolling blackouts, etc?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Absolutely not. Subsidizing is not the way to go. If you want to improve the environment then eliminate subsidies:
- By eliminating the subsidies used to build freeway systems that allow urban sprawl people will be enouraged to live closer to their places of work and play. PLEASE NOTE While I am opposed to sprawl I am not anti-sprawl. Developers should be allowed to build on their land more or less as they see fit. I am opposed to the spending of public funds to make said private land more valuable. If the developers want to get together and build a 5 line highway out to Clear Hidden Creek Golf Ridge Mystic Forest Hills Estates then so be it. So don't even go there.
- Start charging fair market value for oil/gas lease and exploration rights on public lands.
- Guarantee tax exemption for any and all new forms of energy or energy generation for the five years immediately following patent approval.
Personally I am an advocate of nuclear power. Pebble bed reactors are clean, safe and can take advantage of economies of scale. Somebody (GE, probably) has developed a "disposable" reactor that is comparitively maintenance free, designed as a free-standing generator that can be placed in a village. At the end of its 20-25 year lifespan it is trucked away, waste and all (which is not removed from the structure while on-site) and a new one dropped in its place.If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
$0.51 per gallon of Ethanol. That's not how much Ethanol makers charge us for their fuel. It is how much the Federal government subsidizes every gallon of Ethanol made.
If Ethanol is such a viable replacement for gasoline made from oil, then why does it need a 51 cent subsidy? The fact is that no ethanol maker can make a profit without that subsidy.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
However it was during the era of the switch that Pepsi used the challenge since Coke was suddenly lacking the fruity sweetness that cane sugar gave it.
Coke actually has each plant send syrup samples to Atlanta for testing on a regular basis to ensure consistency. Of course there is still the question of HFCS.
Lasers Controlled Games!
The Union of Concerned Scientists is a special interest group with a convincing name. I've read their study on a "cleaner" Ford Explorer. Supposedly they "designed" one which could get dramatically improved fuel economy for a negliglbe price increase. However, close inspection revealed assumptions like: Aluminum parts are the same price as steel parts 6 speed transmissions cost the same as 5 speed transmissions And then they assumed modifications like these resulted in a several MPG benefit! I've built my own vehicle simulations in MATLAB and shown that their studies are total BS. Not even in the right ballpark. Their "studies" are more marketing ploys to push their interests.
Here in the Golden State we have to buy special California formula gas that claimed to run cleaner then the rest of the nations. (It may even work if you ignore the 3-5 MPG loss in fuel efficiency) The relevance here is that Ethanol is one of the big ingredients in this gas.
A few years ago, One of the major gas producers found that it could make a much cleaner burning fuel using only petroleum based chemicals. It would cost less and save the air. Unfortunately the Feds stepped in an demanded that ethanol continued to be used instead.
Just follow the pork folks.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Yeah, and the trend towards bigger serving sizes and the general increased consumption of pop has nothing to do with it.
When I was a kid, pop was a rare treat. I still to this day rarely drink the crap. And I'm quite healthy.
The people I know around my age that either have been drinking pop very regularly since they were kids, or whom now drink a few pops a day are almost invariably obese.
Even worse though are the number of kids you see today that are a) obese and b) have a can of pop permanently attached to them.
It only takes common sense to see the obvious correlation. Large amounts of liquid sugar are not good for us. It does not matter one little bit where the sugar is derived from.
Heck, beer is down right healthy for you compared to pop.
No Comment.
Wow, what horrible timing. The planet's 4 billion years old and all the uranium is going to decay in the next 150 years.
Half life for U-235 is 700 million years.
Half life for U-238 is 4.5 billion years.
You need to invest in hydrogen energy technologies in order to make any use of hydrogen as a medium to store energy.
You are the one reading into the statement your own bias, they never said anything about producing energy from hydrogen, its entirely your assumption. "Hydrogen energy" makes perfect sense, you use hydrogen as an energy source. You just have to use some other energy source to make the hydrogen in the first place, kinda like with everything else we use.
Its not like oil produces more energy than it took to make either, we just didn't expend that energy ourselves.
It hasn't been that long since we had articles about farming algae for vegetable oil, which can be made into biodiesel fuel. That sounded really promising to me.
The whole reason for going with algae was that it has the potential to be more efficient, as compared with bio-fuels from more conventional sources. (It was stated that some species of algae are up to 50% oil, by mass. How does that compare with peanut plants? Or corn? Yeah.)
And yet. . . algae isn't part of the wider discussion. People are still arguing about corn. Now, I realize the algae thing is all hypothetical -- looks good on paper, not yet proven practical. And yes, it takes time for new ideas to gain mindshare. But IMO we need to be pushing research into more ingenious, cutting-edge ideas like this. Many of them won't pan out, but some could, and it could make a huge difference.
Yes I would really appreciate the links, thanks.. Thank you also for making points (which had I RTFA I might have already knows) which I can agree really blow holes in his work without turing to flame.
Over half of our country's electricity comes from coal
Not exactly a clean source of energy.
When the guy repeatedly uses 1979 ethanol plant efficiencies (we're twice as efficient nowadays), pretends that all of our corn is irrigated (only 16% is), uses worldwide energy costs for fertilizer production instead of US costs (a 2.5fold difference), and other gross distortions, then repeats them after being corrected, there's good reason to call him "dishonest".
That may be but you got me with the first paragraph attacking his methodology not the previous comment with flippent attacks on someone I have never heard of..
Who CARES what the produciton energy required is really, it's the result of the end product's USE that matters!
The point of the study is that they're using a gallon of regular petrolium fuel to produce, effectively, less than a gallon of ethanol.
I wonder, what would be cheaper/easier to produce: Growing corn or potatoes for alcohol production for Ethanol, or drilling thru MILES of rock to get to oil in crude form?
Hard to say - depends on where you're drilling, and on where you're farming. To grow plants, you need fresh water, abundant fertalizer, heavy equipment, rich soil, easy road and freight access, and perfect timing (or the crop is ruined, or the produce spoils on the way to processing, etc).
Drilling a well can involve an acre or two of land. Producing the same hydrocarbon type fuel through growing plants can involve thousands of acres.
These comparisons aren't as obvious as they might seem.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.