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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
It depends how and from what you make your ethanol. And how you farm your feedstock of course...
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Brazil does just fine with it's sugarcane:
http://www.eroei.com/articles/16_jun_05_brazil_fu
Surely you jest, man. Ethanol is most certainly a worthwhile endeavor. How else would ulgy people...
Oh. You mean Ethanol energy production. Yes. Of course.
Plastic Rabbit, New Gizmo?
Gasoline takes more energy to produce than you can get from it. That energy just came from the sun a million (?) years ago. Gasoline is a means by which we can transfer solar energy to our cars without sail-ssized solar panels.
Consider ethanol as a means to store energy from nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, hydro or other clean energy sources and transport it to your auto's engine.
I'd like to see ethanol compared to chemical batteries, fuel cells or others on an basis of efficency & cost.
Yeah, producing ethanol from corn does produce more energy...
However, growing other plant materials (from waste or whatever) is much more efficent.
Ethanol will work... just not from corn.
Did anybody think the transition would be easy?
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").
TFA doesn't tell us who paid for the research.
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.
The whole point of ethanol is that there are far better ways of producing fuel-use ethanol than corn fermentation, which has been debated for years in terms of its energy efficiency.
The enthusiasm for ethanol by real scientists is from the very promising means for producing ethanol from cellulose-based feedstocks, in other words from cheap plentiful surplus materials. While this wasn't cost-effective as an energy alternative when gas cost 80 cents a gallon, at 2.25-2.50 a gallon, cellulosic ethanol is quite competitive on a dollar-per-mile basis, and it can extract energy from cheap, easy to grow feedstocks or waste-cellulose material that would otherwise end up in municipal garbage dumps.
AND we have what could be an easy way to generate hydrogen from water using sodium. Now, with this in mind, tell me why ethanol is needed?
Because hydrogen isn't a practical energy carrier. Even at tremendous pressures (like 500 atmospheres) it doesn't even come close to the gravimetric or volumetric energy density of gasoline.
Ethanol has about 2/3rds the volumetric energy density of gasoline. This is worth while over hydrogen, even if the stuff takes more energy to make than it yields. Just think of the energy required to compress hydrogen to 10kpsi. One might joke about running an automobile on this pressure alone.
The bottom line is that energy input versus output will be moot once everyone realizes that we'll need nuclear to be sustainable. We just need a good, dense energy carrier.
FWIW, hydrides have become the hydrogen carrier of choice in nickel metal hydride batteries because you don't need tremendously high pressures to get good volumetric density. But to put it in perspective, they're still only carrying about 2 percent hydrogen by weight. Some day, a nanotech breakthrough may make it possible to increase that by an order of magnatude. When this happens, we'll have electric cars that you'll take in after a few thousand miles to get the battery changed.
More
I'm from an Aggro state, and he's entirely correct...
The whole point of Ethanol is that by using Ethanol, we can use more of the corn produced in the US, therby having to export less. Also, by using Ethanol, we can import less oil. Even if it takes 29% more energy to produce Ethanol than it returns, What it doesn't say is that a LOT of Ethanol produced in the Aggro states run on power grids that get most of their power from dams/windmills.
We support the Agriculture by buying up all of the left-over crop of corn/soy from last year, we make it into a fuel to dilute the gas we import from the Middle East... Ethanol is much more valuable than left over corn/soy... and without it, small farmers in the midwest would go bankrupt...
Slashdot has covered this before and I will repost my comment from back then:
While production of ethanol can be inefficient rarely does it result in a net energy loss. Several different studies show anywhere from a 38% net gain in energy to over 100% depending on methods use. The generally cited claim of a net energy loss from producing ethanol all seem to come from only one paper written by David Pimental [the author of the paper quoted in this article]. To support his claims he seems to have taken a worst pratices view for every step in the production process, a realworld combination found in less than 5% of current ethanol production. The more comphrensive studies I've been able to find show a slight, albeit not stellar, net gain in energy. The most recent (2002) by Michigan State shows a net gain of 0.56 MJ/MJ of input for corn based ethanol production. If one looks at Cellulose based ethonal production, studies show almost a 2.5 net energy gain and it is easier on the environment since it requires less maintenance and fewer fertilizers.
For reference this site has some good links, including a rebuttal of the Pimental paper (as well as showing the Pimental article).
www.econet.sk.ca/pages/issues/ethanolinfone tenergybalance.htm
Corn syrup is an inferior product but it can be had cheaply in the USA because of the massive subsidies paid to ADM.
Have a Coke anywhere else in the world and it will taste good. Coke in the USA is undrinkable unless you can buy Passover Coke (once a year in certain markets) or Mexican Coke (in a glass bottle, yum) both of which have real sugar.
Also note that you can get REAL Dr Pepper from www.dublindrpepper.com
Lasers Controlled Games!
1) No fusion method has actually broken even on this planet, and even if it did, it's tabletop. Not a car. It would probably be 30+ years away from actual use.
2) That sodium crap is *definitely* an energy loser, as sodium metal isn't just sitting around and takes a lot of energy to reduce to its metallic form from the ionic form in which it's actually found. It's also just basically reversing the reaction that generates sodium in the first place. Talking about getting energy from that is like talking about the relative merits of a perpetual motion machine.
3) Ethanol burns in cars. Now. With actual internal-combustion engines that exist.
The relative ethanol break-even is important to a degree, but it (or something like it) is needed now to get more oxygen in fuels which helps prevent incomplete combustion (read: air pollution). MTBE (methyl t-butyl ether) was used previously, but is worse than ethanol in groundwater. Ethanol is worse for aerosol formation in the atmosphere I've heard (ie, more smog), and is a bit more expensive. We use ethanol these days instead of MTBE thanks to ex-Sen Daschle, protecting his state's corn lobby.
Bottom line? We have to use ethanol, or something like ethanol, to clean up gasoline if not for a fuel. We also need something realistic to bridge the gap between fosil fuels and the further-out alternative fuels.
Sadly, the words of "Chernobyl" are so well rehearsed by this community that they fail to realize the fact that Chernobyl was running at 130% capacity at the time -- a situtation which does not happen in current reactors due partially to the government regulations, partially to the IAEA, and partially to political pressures. That, and it's fucking common sense for crying out loud! Nuclear scientists and engineers know what they are working with now more than ever.
Modern day physicists if asked honestly, know that the answer lies in atomic energies for our future. It is cheap, clean, produces no greenhouse gases, and leave a microbe of waste as compared to a petroleum based economy. If the US and its politics weren't so oil hungry and to boot -- money hungry, they would be investing in the fusion experiement that is now going to be located in France. Granted it probably won't produce much power to boot... but it would be 100% clean and without any radioactive waste. The implications for potential power are huge, unfortunately most US lobbyists have convinced our government to turn their back on the future and concern themselves with just strengthening a limited fuel.
Sorry for the tirade, but I hate to see talks about biodiesel and ethanol (which is actually really cool, it produces higher octane numbers than gasoline!), and the arguement the author makes without bringing up our energy situtation that makes this point oh, so relevant.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
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.
The half life of U-235 is 704 million years. Tf it had a short enough half life to be gone in 150 years it would be gone already. The planet hasn't received any new supplies of uranium since it coalesced from interstellar dust four billion years ago. Hell, even if you believe the earth is flat and was created by the Almighty 6000 years ago like it says in the Bible, it would be gone already with a half life that short.
We may use it up in 150 years, but there are ways around that too, like fast breeder reactors, which can produce more fuel than they consume.
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.
While you can produce ethanol from many sources, current US corn-based ethanol production could not survive without heavy subsidies. With the current subsidies in place there is no incentive to improve efficiencies.
Modern field corn production requires large amounts of fertilizer, in particular anhydrous ammonia, to produce the 150+ bushels per acre that we currently enjoy.
Ammonia prices have steadily climbed over the past decade as the price of natural gas climbs. Ammonia is made using the Haber process to combine nitrogen from the air with hydrogen obtained from natural gas.
I come from a long line of farmers:
In my great-grandfather's day, corn production rates were pitiful.
In my grandfather's day, the Haber process and corn hybridization produced bumper crops.
In my father's day, he stopped growing corn. Combined with the US embargo of Canadian beef it just wasn't worth the effort.
Just be aware that Pimentel releases this "finding" every other summer, Looking at the dates below, he's a month ahead of schedule this year.
P imentel-ethanol.html
P imentel-ethanol.html
l .toocostly.ssl.html
o nneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf
d =UBB14&Number=946804&Searchpage=1&Main=941398&Word s=%2Bethanol+%2Bmoney+DrStink&topic=&Search=true#P ost946804
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/8.14.03/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethano
I can't speak to this newest report, but Pimental's work has been repeatedly critiqued, and one of the main compliants it that he uses out of date numbers for yield and conversion efficiency:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html
http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf
http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_rooster.html
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05Arg
http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm
All that having been said, Pimental is right that soy and corn alone cannot replace our petroleum addiction. You can read more about this in the archives at TDIclub.com.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Boar
See here. Brazil has had their "Proalcool" program for the last thirty years, and it's just coming to fruition now. They use a less energy-intensive process, with sugarcane instead of corn, and doing so, they've managed massive cuts in their oil imports. That's not really something you can fake.
Corn may be a bad source of ethanol, and Archer Daniels Midland may be liquid evil poured into a suit, but that doesn't mean other folks can't do it right.
See a rather good writeup of the issue.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
this *fact* is brought to you by the letter P, as in physics
No, this "fact" is brought to you by the letter "P", as in "Pimental". Pimental is an an anti-ethanol crusader. Every last study since the 1970s that has said that ethanol is net-negative has either been authored or coauthored by him. I can't locate a single "net negative" conducted without his involvement, amid the many "net positive"s.
All of his previous papers have been widely criticized on relying on grossly outdate information. Using modern information, about a dozen studies have been conducted by widely varied researchers; each come up with between 30-70% net positive, with the higher numbers relying on more modern technology, and the lower on "average" technology. I can only assume that Pimental's latest is more of the same as his previous. His second paper simply reused the data in his first, despite it being outdated the first time.
This is, by the way, a discussion of ethanol from corn, as opposed to ethanol from sugarcane which is more efficient (see Brazil).
Now, even if ethanol *was* energy negative, that's still irrelevant. Everything in the universe is energy negative; we only change forms of energy to produce the work that we want. For example, during WWII, the Nazis made large amounts of oil from coal. It took a lot of energy from coal to produce the oil at the time; by the sort of calculations discussed here, it was a "net negative". Yet, it powered the Nazi war machine.
What matters is if you're making something that allows you to get work done. If you power ethanol production from burning ag waste (common to do so at least partly, for heating), coal power, nuclear power, etc, you're making something that you can burn in your car from something that you couldn't - you're producing something that can get work done. Nobody is advocating burning oil or ethanol to produce ethanol here, just like the Nazis didn't burn oil to power coal liquifaction.
But, this is all a tangent: only in Pimental's little world of outdated farming energy consumption data and ethanol production efficiencies is ethanol "net negative".
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
You know, it isn't that hard to find the real numbers behind these studies. Here are the production and cost figures for a real live plant:
For a small 40 million gallon ethanol/year plant, the BTU inputs are 2 trillion BTUs per year for natural gas, electricity, and corn. The output in BTUs is 3 trillion BTUs. In order to push the numbers into negative territory, the ethanol critics have to generate more than 1 trillion BTUs of additional energy costs. I have not read the Berkeley study, but I bet it includes the food that the employees eat, the cost of generating the paper in the books they read, and all sorts of other absurd numbers.
Here is the actual data for a brand-new (2005) 40 million gallon ethanol plant that uses 15 million bushels of corn per year:
Inputs:
Natural Gas:
4,000 Mcf per day of gas at a cost of $3.95 per Mcf
Natural gas: 1,028,000 BTU/MCF = 1,496,768,000,000 BTU inputs for natural gas
Electricity:
30,000,000 kilowatt hours per year for an estimated price of $.040 per kilowatt- hour
High estimate: 8,962 Btu per KWH
Low estimate: 3,416 BTU per KWH
Taking the low estimate, 102,480,000,000 BTU
Corn:
339,196,122,625 BTU for fertilizer (122 bushels per acre, 15 million bushels, 124 pounds of nitrogen per acre, 22,159 BTU/lb for fertilizer)
Total inputs:
Input BTU: 1,998,444,122,625 Input total
Outputs:
40 million gallons of ethanol, 128,000 tons of distillers grains and 115,500 tons of raw carbon dioxide gas.
LHV: Low heat value--76,000 Btu per gallon of ethanol.
HHV: High heat value--83,961 Btu per gallon of ethanol.
Low: 76,000 x 40,000,000 = 3,040,000,000,000 BTU
Surplus:
1,041,555,877,375 BTU
do you have anything other than the author's name
Yes. Every study not conducted by him that I have ever located. Need links? I can also link you to critiques of his previous work if you would like, and to how he ignored the critiques and used the exact same numbers again.
Want examples? Pimental assumes that all corn is irrigated (only 16% is, and that corn is rarely used for ethanol production - and Pimental even notes this, but assumes all corn is irrigated anyways!). He ignored life-cycle analysis standards. He includes one-time energy charges such as farming equipment and ethanol plant production, ignoring that oil companies have similar scale one-time energy charges for oil rigs and refineries. Pimental used energy calculations for fertilizer production from the UN's data for worldwide average costs, while the USDA and others use the energy cost of US fertilizer production (these are widely different numbers - a 2.5-fold difference). He uses 1979 ethanol plant efficiency, ignoring the huge process improvements made since (which halve the energy cost per gallon). Etc. He makes no attempt, whatsoever, to be balanced, and repeats the same inaccurate representation over and over.
my point was that with oil nature has done most of the work
You're ignoring the issue: You can't burn ag waste in your car. You can't burn coal in your car. You can't burn nuclear in your car. You *can* burn ethanol in your car. Even if it were energy-negative, which it's not close to being, you'd still be converting a non-car-usable source to a car-usable source.
But we are using oil and natural gas to do something that does the work of oil and natural gas!
False. Over half of our country's electricity comes from coal, and another 20% from nuclear, plus about 10% from renewables. Electricty generation from oil (you can't burn natural gas in most cars) was a mere 3.2% of our national electricity in 1999 (natural gas was just over 15%).
*Furthermore*, almost all ethanol production plants utilize on-site heat production, using electricity only for things like the mashers. Heat is the big energy cost for ethanol production. Typically either coal, ag-waste, or both are burned (occasionally, natural gas is used). When was the last time you shoved coal or agricultural waste into your car?
stop attacking the messenger
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".
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
As far as there having been plenty of nuclear accidents so fucking what. We've had plenty of airplane accidents, including a non-accident that killed 2752 people, more people than killed in every nuclear accident that ever happened, yet despite that people still fly, including the eco-weasels who bitch about nuclear power and greenhouse warming, flying to their international conferences on greenhouse gas spewing jet aircraft.
Further problems with nuclear include the unsolved problem of waste disposal,
How to dispose of nuclear waste. Reprocess waste to recover long lived fissionable isotopes that can be used in power reactors. Take shorter lived, hotter isotopes and bury underground for 1000 years (which is manageable with today's technology, the fucking pyramids have lasted for 5000 years) and let it cool down. Problem solved.
the high cost of producing nuclear power (it's actually much more expensive than many renewables),
Factored in all of the subsidies renewables receive? No, you haven't. If you did they come off much worse and nuclear comes off much better.
nuclear weapons proliferation,
Bad guys are going to get WMDs regardless of whether or not nuclear power is used.
and of course apart from the Three Mile Island meltdown (26 years ago) and the criticality accident at the uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura (just 6 years ago), there have been plenty of other nuclear accidents.
Plenty of plane accidents too, yet despite that people are still flying, including environmentalists.
Oh, and as far as uranium running out, yeah right. Fuel costs are a minor cost in the cost of a nuclear plant, increase the fuel cost by a factor of 10 and you still aren't impacting operations.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.