Slashdot Mirror
Dept. of Energy Rejects Corn Fuel Future
eldavojohn writes "The United States' Department of Energy is stating that corn based fuel is not the future. From the article, "I'm not going to predict what the price of corn is going to do, but I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn," U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in an interview. Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up. In related news, Fidel Castro is blasting the production of corn fuel as a blatant waste of food that would otherwise feed 3 billion people who will die of hunger."
Sugar cane ethanol is the viable alternative, if you are going to use biomass based fuel. Brazil is doing it since the seventies, it already works on most cars that use gas with little to no modification (Fiat, GM and other auto companies already produces them in quantities there) and it is almost a closed cycle, using barely to no fossil fuel on its production. This (warning, PDF) is a good summary on the benefits of sugar cane ethanol, of course we can wait for hydrogen or whatever is the technology of the future, just like we are waiting since the seventies, but if you want something that already works, sugar cane ethanol is the way to go.
Do you know that the only reason that makes U.S. not to get more ethanol from Brazil is protectionism via subsides and import quotas? Fidel got it right on this one, in order to protect the few (and rich) local corn farmers (not to mention the oil barons), U.S. impedes cheap sugar and ethanol to reach the U.S., artificially increasing the demand of corn for ethanol production, driving corn prices up and, this way, making things harder for poor people on U.S. itself and, indirectly, on Mexico too (thanks Nafta). Check this article and see, it is past the point of speculation and conspiracy theories.
Law of unintended consequences in action here. It could be different. Unfortunately, I'm not a citizen of U.S., so, I'm not part of the democratic process there. But a lot of you are, and only you could make the difference. You can wait for the Tesla electric car all your lives (maybe it will fly too, if you wait time enough) while complaining about dependence on fossil fuels and financing wars on it, or you can make the difference now and take a stand on it.
Before you say it, no, we don't need to think of the children. Industrial hemp contains less than 0.3% THC, as opposed to the 20%-30% that is found in unfertilized female plants that are grown for drug use. But God forbid anyone grow hemp: we all know what evils marijuana can cause.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
I believe the grandparent poster meant direct, electric-only wheel power, not the "dual-forces on one driveshaft" approach current hybrids use.
Diesel-electric locomotives have no direct mechanical linkage from the hydrocarbon-fueled engine to the wheels on the track. This is exactly the kind of car I am waiting for. I'm a EE, so I like the idea of electricity as the main transport of energy in a car. And the hydrocarbon engine plus generator could be replaced in the future by better technology. So IF someone made an inexpensive, reliable fuel cell, it could take the place of the engine.
The European Union continues to subsidize thousands of farmers, allowing them to produce huge amounts of surplus food every year that costs EU taxpayers a fortune. There is no political will to curb this waste as (especially in France) the farmers have too much political clout). So, there is no need to consider planting new crops specifically for fuel. The resources already exist, though greater efficiency may come from changing the crops EU farmers currently grow to ones more suitable for biofuels. Growing crops in the EU for biofuel, therefore, could solve two problems contemporaniously: EU waste converted into much needed fuel. Alternativly we could all scrap our cars and take the bus!
Even more surprising than the absurd 3-billion-deaths number, is how people are more than happy to harp on it, than to focus on the fact that many people do indeed die of starvation.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Sugar is a good way to go. Sugar is very fast growing which is why ethanol in Brazil is pretty cheap: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/17/AR2005061701440.html. There flexi-fuel cars can run on gas (which is at least 25% ethanol) or E100 (100% ethanol).
A massive usage for corn is in fattening cattle. This is a hugely wasteful way to feed people compared to a more direct approach such as eating the corn or soy or whatever, Processing into beef is very wasteful. This would also drive up beef prices which would make McDonalds unhappy with DoE
There is no reason why there should not be a multi-input strategy. Corn can grow where sugar cannot. Algae can grow where corn and sugar can't. It is silly to really argue for one over the other. Rather make a multi-input ethanol industry.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Furthermore, we already use too much corn (not the best choice of words, but I'll explain what I mean). Besides the corn we eat in its regular form, corn syrup and other corn derivatives are used in a large portion of our diets in the US. Also, corn is used as the vast majority of feed (estimated at 92% in 2003) for livestock. Corn is a major part of our entire food infrastructure. We are already in serious danger if a corn famine ever arose, but the effects would compound if we base our fuel on corn as well. Diversification is important for any country, especially with an economy as large as the US. Of course, this might never happen, but we all know it's possible (Ireland). By the way, I live in Illinois in a small town of 4000 people surrounded by corn fields. I'm not saying this because I hate corn, but dependence on a single crop is a thin line to walk.
That said, now that farmers might actually have a CASH crop and end the govt subsidies, people don't want to pay fair prices for food... funny how "free market" raiders don't like when another industry can lock up some profits at their expense. It does seem "wasteful" to use the food crop for fuel, but poverty and hunger are not due to lack of food like Casto and others would like to think... we ship more than enough food to the starving nations to feed them, their leaders sell it or burn it instead of helping the people... the GOVTS simply don't care about other people. We grow lots of crops to not use expressly for food that corn can be used for both food and fuel is a good thing! Like how soy can be used for all sorts of things.
Frankly, we need to get more "eco-friendly" all life comes from the Sun... even coal and oil were once vast herds of dinosaurs and lush forests before being buried by massive amounts of earth being flipped over... last I checked we're not making anymore dinosaurs for oil anymore. If we can get slightly less power from a plant without waiting the thousands of years to make oil we should go for it.
It's called "Iowa". Eliminate the Iowa caucuses as the "first in the nation" that every Presidential candidate must suck up to (and convince his party to suck up to) and you'll never hear about corn-based ethanol ever again.
Much of this restructuring has to happen in the poorer countries, and they are unwilling to restructure.
Take a look at North Korea, where the government makes the (mis)allocation of resources to military expenditures rather than food supplies. Take a look at Sudan, where the government has no interest in the health of its citizens, or Somalia, where there is no functioning national government.
By and large, the countries which have opened themselves to Western-style Keynesian socialist markets are developing themselves out of food security issues (China, India, and other developing 3rd world states). The other places, where nationwide starvation remains a chronic issue are either the result of natural catastrophe (Bangladesh), or broken governments (North Korea).
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
But ethanol is such a poor fuel compared to biodiesel I am amazed it gets the attention it does.
There's no technical reason for it. It is pure politics and the media exploiting(mocking) the anger with the petroleum companies. And it's putting more rainforests at risk. I don't what it does to the soil. I'm sure it will make Monsanto rich. As long as we continue using our present day jalopies, biodiesel is the one true fuel for rapid oxidation. And for the best bang for the buck(best yield per acre), algae is the way to go(about half way down the page). Heck you can grow the stuff in(on) the ocean. No need to use up valuable real estate, but in case you want to anyway, "More recent studies using a species of algae with up to 50% oil content have concluded that only 28,000 km or 0.3% of the land area of the US could be utilized to produce enough biodiesel to replace all transportation fuel the country currently utilizes. Furthermore, otherwise unused desert land (which receives high solar radiation) could be most effective for growing the algae, and the algae could utilize farm waste and excess CO2 from factories to help speed the growth of the algae."
What?
Not everywhere is like the land of the plenty were the supermarkets are stocked with food.
Yeah, well it would be if everybody would stop shooting at each other for a second.
What?
When I went to college (in Morris, Minnesota) there was an ethanol plant in town and I researched ethanol production just to provide some context to the awful smell (think rotting sileage) that hit my apartment complex when the wind was right. Even back in 1990 there was little justification to use ethanol because of the high energy use for production, the increased end-unit costs because of the need to blend at the POS (because ethanol absorbs water it needs to be mixed into the blend near the end delivery point) and the other implications for vehicles (reduced power/volume, injection issues, etc). The investment that the government has made has been misplaced. It purely subsidizes this waste instead of promoting the development of more efficient production/end product. The plant in Morris is still producing the exact same product in the exact same way, the only difference is now (16 years later) they are making money hand over fist.
Finally, corn requires a tremendous amount of water to grow. When we grew corn we didn't irrigate but big corporate farms cannot resist. The Oglalla aquifer is draining, which is a big deal. Irrigation for crops of all sorts are the primary culprit but the impact is larger -- most of the 'breadbasket' of the US is dependent in many ways on the viability of the Oglalla aquifer.
I am stunned and pleased that the DOE has stepped up and stated what should be the obvious. I hope that people following the stories realize that subsidies without measurable and definable goals have no place in our "free trade" economy (tongue in cheek there).
Im not sure I undstand your kneejerk outrage.
:P
Half of all cuba's exports earnings are from sugar. Cuba used to supply 35% of the world's sugar, but now only 10% (though that's still a lot for a little island). The decline is primarily due to the price of sugar dropping 58%. Therefore if sugar was used for ethanol, it's price would increase like corn's price is doing now, and Cuba's sugar exports would approach previous highs.
Which is all to say, there's not really anything wrong with that. Sugar is better at making ethanol than corn by a longshot, and there's nothing wrong with a little national self interest, even from zombie communists
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Chavez, therefore, has a vested interest in making sure that the price of oil is not affected by either the promise or reality of alternate fuel sources. He is also pushing against a US/Brazilian alliance to increase Latin American use and production of cane-based ethanol - he does not want to see either country increase their influence in the region. Brazil's Lula da Silva is hardly a US puppet (he's a leftist), but he doesn't hide his dislike of Chavez and has had a fairly good working relationship with Bush. Plus, cane-based ethanol has been an incredible boon to Brazil, vastly reducing Brazil's need for oil. It's also 6-8 times more productive than corn-based ethanol - done correctly, it makes real economic and environmental sense (if used as just one of many ways to move to a post-oil energy economy). Castro's editorial is just a followup on a conversation he and Chavez had on Chavez's talk show, "Alo Presidente". While it was billed as a "spontaneous" discussion, at several points Castro made references to talking points given to him by Chavez.
Castro may be many things, but he's not stupid - Chavez is the best thing that has happened to him in years. If he has to sell-out a declining industry (Cuban sugar cane) in order to do so, he will.
No. That's comes after World War II. I wish I was being sarcastic. We spend way too much time talking about the Civil War to leave room for discussing any of those icky parts of history where America might've done something controversial like the Bay of Pigs invasion or the Vietnam War. (At least, that was my experience growing up in a former Confederate state.)
We're just lucky to get a very small warning about McCarthyism and some coverage of the Civil Rights movement. All US history south of our borders post-Spanish-American War is pretty much not taught in high school -- especially anything critical of our actions during the Cold War. Too much of what is going on today can't be understood if your knowledge of world events pretty much ends at WW2. Why the US's enemies are enemies and why many of our allies who don't share our values at all are allies is pretty much a mystery to the vast majority of the electorate.
It gets me depressed about the future every time I think about it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Never complain about history classes. Not only is said that "history is written by the victors", but it is heavily culturally based. I'm not talking about propaganda, just about the focus that you get in school. Now, I have read much more about American history on slashdot than I had at school. I, however, got fed the whole creation of the European Union with all its boring treaties and whatnot. Americans probably get that as a summary "The EU was created in as the ECSC in 1951 and evolved (or Intelligently Designed) from there on". My contemporary history consisted mainly of EU blah-blah, and at least I understand my part of the world thanks to it.
Overlaps are probably in history are the things that happened a real long time ago: pre-historic times, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. The sole exception would be World War II, which still differs from content. Europeans get the mantra "look how, horrible, horrible, horrible, it was... let's never do that again", Americans get the mantra "Evil Hilter! We, heroes, had to get over there to save the World".
Geography is the same: we got to learn the name of every country of the world and their capital, plus the internal structure of our own country", you do the same (I hope)... The internal structure is just different ;-) I expect a Frenchman to know about his Departements, a German to know about his Bunderlander and an American to know about his states. I don't know them, because I'm neither. So don't ask me what the capital of Utah is. I don't know... If you're an American, you should though.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The problem is that this isn't a free market.
US corn has a 44.64 cent / bushel average subsidy to start with. Each bushel makes about 2.5 gallons of ethonal which is then subsidized by 51 cents/gallon plus another 10 cents per gallon if you produce less than 60 million gallons.
The latter subsidies distort market conditions and take away corn from feedstocks hurting ranching and other industries.
At the same time we impart a 54 cent/gallon excise tax on sugar ethanol from Brazil. The reason is we have the same excise taxes per gallon as for gasoline. The problem is that ethanol produces about a third less energy per gallon, so the tax burden for its use as a fuel is higher. Brazil has economic leverage in that sugar cane is more efficient than corn when used to produce ethanol and they have a more suitable climate for growing it. It costs them about 50 cents/gallon to produce; we subsidize corn by more than it costs Brazil to produce. That said this picture is a little distorted as Brazil subsidizes their sugar crops and ethanol production.
Its not a matter of people paying fair prices for food, though they aren't if you want to argue from a free market perspective.
The issue is that corn ethanol can only exist because of very large market distortions and just doesn't supply a viable economic alternative fuel source.
If you want ethanol, fine, it is a reasonable goal, but leveraging corn isn't the best way to reach that goal. We can't compete with our corn ethanol on the world stage. All we are doing is playing protectionist sleight of hand games with the underlying economics. It lets politicians talk about how they are helping local farmers and talk big about having a vision for the future about energy self-sufficiency, but its all a shell game.
Now isn't the time to subsidize, it is the time to seriously evaluate if we want to construct an enormous infrastructure for corn ethanol production that doesn't make sound economic sense and that we will be stuck propping up indefinitely.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.