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Are Biofuels Still Economically Feasible?
thefickler writes "With falling gas prices, and the end of capitalism as we know it (otherwise known as the credit crisis), the
biofuels industry is not looking as viable as it once was. Indeed biofuel production has fallen well short of expectations, with biofuel companies closing down or reducing production capacity. It appears that the industry's only hope is government support."
Gasoline might look cheap, but it's not. Global warming now threatens the majority of Earth's species with drastic implications for food production. Fisheries are being destroyed and most North American crop production will be reduced. Losses of ice cover are already so large that a total stop to fossil fuel burning may not be enough to stop this unfolding disaster. The US and world can not rely on market forces to avert this large scale tragedy of the commons because everyone's short term economic interest is in doing the same stupid things.
Cellulose based fermentation might provide fuels for the few applications that really need it. The rest of our energy needs should come solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal and so on.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They didn't push the fuel hard enough to get it standard
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The biofuels of which you speak have always produced more pollution through their manufacture than they have saved through reduced car emissions, so their future is largely political, not economical.
Oh and holy crap what an inflammatory summary. Yes the banks are temporarily not lending at the lower interest rates, no this does not have any effect on capitalism.
The future of biofuel and food production is algae. It's the most primitive plant form there is and is therefore the most efficient at converting solar energy into an energy store (oil) or edible substances. A lot of work is going to have to be done to develop methods of growing and harvesting algae, but that's just engineering. Better get used to the idea of algae steaks as an alternative to soy burgers... Yum!
Are Biofuels Still Economically Feasible?
No
Were they realistically feasible in the first place?
Absolutely not. The quantity of land that would need to be re-purposed if a significant percentage of US oil usage was to be bio-fuels would be enormous.
Perhaps support of bio fuels will at least reduce our dependence on foreign oil... hasn't this been a concern for quite awhile?
Though I am enjoying relief from $4.00/gallon gasoline as much as the next guy, I would hold off on prognostications until summer arrives. I doubt oil will remain cheap for long. The current low is likely due to more factors than just demand destruction. Matt Simmons (author of Twilight in the Desert [no, not playing at a theater near you]) suggests the current lows have more to do with settling derivatives trades between oil companies more than anything else.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
So we destroy a food source just to fuel a very inefficient vehicle .... sure that is the best solution ... for idiots.
With biofuels you get: ... polluting the local water supply.
- 30% of the millage you get with the regular gas. This means you have to fill up the gas tank 3 times more than before. And bip-idiots call that efficient.
- Increase in the cost of FOOD. Since biofuels are more profitable (specially if subsidized), more farmers will switch from food to fuel farms.
- Higher pollution. Since the plants are no longer for food consumption, farmers can use what ever chemicals they want to "make more fuel"
That is just a few cons of biofuels .... I still can't figure out what is are the pros.
It depends on what nations you are talking about. In the USA, bio-fuels might be a non starter but in poorer [tropical] nations, bio fuels are a "Godsend."
These nations put in very little in bio fuel plants like the Jatropha, then get its seeds that can yield up to 40% oil by weight.
The plant is also resistant to drought and needs very little maintenance. The trouble with the USA is that folks look to corn whenever the bio-fuels subject comes up and in many cases, this is not economic at all.
Still? Were they ever economically feasible?
Seems like once you start jacking up the price of everything on the dollar menu to $3 because all the corn is going to make fuel, what you thought was a great idea (ethanol) looks foolish.
Palm oil = destruction of rain forest
ethanol = drives up food prices
I'm sure we can figure something out in the future, but right now this stuff has some pretty nasty side effects.
Many biofules are said to take more energy to produce them than they provide, so with dropping oil prices they are actually more feasible than they were when oil prices were high. Now if they can only pass laws mandating the use of these fuels then they will become extremely feasible.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Swear to God, I didn't have my glasses on and at first I thought it said "Are Brothels Still Economically Feasible?" I was kinda like, strange time for the world's oldest profession to die out...
The naysayers are wrong... biofuels aren't dead. The governments printing presses won't let them die.
Back during the 1970's there was a fuel shortage and the bio-fuels industry picked up. Then we saw $30 a barrel and lower oil that drove all the producers out of business. Some say it was a calculated move on the part of OPEC to make sure that no competition arises. I'm not sure I'd go that far as OPEC nearly destroyed itself due to cheating in that period...
It's not much of a surprise that it's happened again. (Gee what happened to that $200 a barrel mark the media was predicting by the end of the year). Bio-fuels were another way for the agriculture lobby to get more money for corn. So with cheap oil, everyone will go back to worrying about other things and in 10 -15 years when there is another disrupution and the prices sky rocket, people will once again start up bio fuel projects.
You'd think we'd learn, but to quote Mark Twain: History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Let's hope not. Biofuels based on corn and other food crops are bad for obvious reasons, but even non-food biofuels have their risks - among them degradation of the American/Canadian Great Plains, ecological degradation in the Third World, and the risk of invasive species (most of these non-food biofuels are fast-spreading grasses).
The most ecological energy policy is to stop the government from subsidizing oil (by building suburbia with land use restricitons), subsidizing coal, and subsidizing water. There is no magic fuel out there that will allow us to consume infinite amounts of cheap energy - nature made extracting energy expensive for a reason, and the government needs to get out of the business of trying to make it easier.
Steven Chu has been involved in overseeing the most cutting edge research into biofuels, and I expect he is going to be promoting the next generation biofuels very strongly in the new administration.
These fuels are very different than the kind of biofuels currently being produced, and will not have their shortcomings. They will not be made from corn.
We fight wars and support insurrections world wide to secure for ourselves and our posterity: crude oil.
This crude oil is then piped for millions of miles through inhospitable climates and unfriendly countries (more war and strife-support) and/or shipped through often-dangerous shipping routes (piracy, weather).
This crude oil is then refined into fuels and petrochemicals which are then re-shipped.
Petrochemicals end up in China where they are made into plastic garbage for whiny brats at walmart...after even more shipping.
Every step of this process requires siphoning some capacity to fuel the process (fuel for ships, trucks, pumps, refineries, factories).
Alt.fuels will shine like a diamond in a goats ass soon enough. The companies that make lay the groundwork now (or better yet, in the 90's) will be the winners.
THL phish sticks
As conceptually appealing as biofuels are, sadly they were never really viable. For the most part they compete for resources already needed by the food chain. And how many MILLIONS of gallons of fuel are consumed each day? No bio source can even dream of producing such quantities, day after day after day.
I think makers of internal combustion engines and their fuel suppliers, need to look at this as a temporary reprieve from the Governor while their case is reviewed.
Research into alternate energy sources for transportation must continue.
To give up this research just because petroleum prices are low, would be a grave mistake.
Heck, bump prices up a little and use the surplus to fund research instead of paying CEO salaries and shareholder dividends.
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Gasoline is cheap because demand has slackened. Isn't anybody scared as fuck that a mere 5% drop in demand can result in such a catastrophic drop in price? It's an inelastic price. That means that small changes in demand cause huge changes in price.
This is the future:
1) economy slows
2) price of gas drops
3) economy gets better and demand recovers
4) WHAM gas goes through the roof.
5) Goto 1
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Think about it:
1) A big cartel controls a lot of the world's oil.
2) This big cartel can tell when investing in alternative fuels is rising.
3) The big cartel can change prices when they want.
Jack us until alternative sources are feasible, and then make them unfeasible by lowering prices.
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
Ethanol in the US has nothing to do with alternative fuels, or replacing gasoline. It is primarily a subsidy to American corn farmers. Corn can never be a worthwhile source of ethanol.
Fact is, gasoline is cheap. Arguing about nebulous unknown "costs" in the future doesn't change it's price today. In fact, gasoline isn't just cheap, it's rock bottom dirt fucking cheap. The economics are simple, as long as gasoline is cheaper than any sort of biofuel, people will continue to use it.
This isn't the fault of the oil companies, who have been for years reshaping themselves into "energy" companies. The minute biofuel becomes competitive with gasoline, the oil companies will begin sinking their billions into controlling it. They already have the infrastructure, so it's logical for them to take it over.
Until some new process is created which can demonstrate large volume production of biofuel at prices better than gasoline, we're stuck with gasoline. The moment such a process is created, auto makers, consumers, and the oil companies will all switch on their own.
I'm currently studying bio engineering and majoring in agricultural economy. I once compared the amount of ethanol globally produced for use as biofuel to the amount of ethanol produced in the production of beer (leaving out other alcoholic beverages like wine or hard liquor). I came to a ratio 6/1000. I ask you slashdot: What is more of a waste?
Wasting our energy- food and watersupplies for the pleasure of people. Or saving on our carbondioxide-output and building the infrastructure for second generation biofuels.
Let I remind you that the recent problems with foodshortage were not at all a product of a bigger focus on biofuels. There were some major failed harvests in wheatproduction. The consumption of meat and milk rose steeply in countries like china which requires a lot of wheat. And the rising price of oil also had an effect on the costs of the farmers.
Up untill now, the foodprices have been lowering continuously for the past 50 years and I am not at all surprised that farmers are looking for alternatives like biofuels.
Research into biofuels is still going full speed. I'm involved in a project using switchgrass to produce diesel (and other products) directly through pyrolysis and the Fisher Tropsch process. Other projects are looking at using switchgrass as a feedstock for conversion to ethanol, or as a "lignocellulosic material" that can be co-fired with coal, reducing costs and pollutants.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
It's a recession, and businesses are closing down or scaling back? Unheard of!
Biofuels have always been economically viable. The question has always been economically viable to who?
A lot of people posting so far seem to confuse corn subsidy biofuel with biofuels in general. But there are other biofuels already which are not energy-negative such as alcohol made from sugar cane waste in Brazil, where the nonconvertible cellulose is burned to provide the heat input to the process. Here in the UK we have limited production of alcohol and charcoal from coppiced shrubs and timber processing waste; there are several other initiatives. Given that the price of oil is controlled more by speculation than demand, and given financial instability, we can expect it to change wildly over the next few years. Industries needing long term investment should be protected to some degree from the fluctuations. A working biofuel industry would help to stabilise the oil price, because it would introduce an element of competition into the fuels market. Speculators do not like competitive industries because it is harder to manipulate them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
There are fundamental fallacies to our existing economy. They assume a workable environment in which to do business, and that the environment is infinite and free. If you look at the economic cost of global warming over the next hundred years, the global price rises to hundreds of trillions of dollars. A few of the costs include;
A) Land lost by sea level rise
B) Damage caused by increase flood and drought
C) Loss of critical biostocks (crash in fish populations, ocean acidification, key land ocean and air species)
D) Storm damage
E) Increased spread of tropical diseases
F) Wars caused by loss of water, food, and habitable land
G) Loss of land for agriculture
H) Failure of environmental systems supporting a minimum quality of life
Algae based oil is an excellent fuel alternative. Another is bioengineering new fungii discovered to produce diesel fuel directly from cellulose. Both of these technologies are utterly plug and play in our current petroleum base infrastructure. Both sequester carbon from the atmosphere, so their burning adds no new carbon and using them for other purposes like petrochemical feed-stocks actually removes carbon from the atmosphere. Both create tremendous new economic opportunities, and if supported by the government and the current petroleum business point us to a workable gap stop solution until helium cooled pebble bed fission and fusion are perfected.
They just signed a long-term contract with China.
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081212/0460039.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081211/0459633.html
the Algae farmers did not comprise a big enough voting bloc for the US Congress to consider their viability in saving the current environment, of course by environment I mean keeping one's seat.
Corn Ethanol/Switchgrass etc was more about who was who than what was what
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If we had kept even moderately higher oil price levels after the scare of 73' then we would have a way less dependence on all the middle eastern oil. When the price went down after that it just killed the efficiency and alternate fuels industry that had sprung up, all the ideas(patents) to be bought out by oil companies. Now it could happen again, and in 20 years well wonder why we didn't ever do anything about our dependence on foreign oil.
We blame this crisis fully on the mograge market but some blame is surely to put on the oil prices, and now as they go back down we'll forget. Just like you would be crazy to have a nation import all its food, its stupid to import most of your energy, an equally important resource. There is a reason Japan has such high tariffs on food, and there is a reason we need to subsidize ways to make our economy less reliant and more self-sufficient.
These waves of volatility in energy are very bad for ventur capitilism into energy fixes but that does not meen they are bad ideas. Toyota makde great strides by continuing to invest in efficiency well afer the 70's scare and it worked. Governments need to realize this and help new companies that are not Toyota.
is that no one has come up with a scheme that is cheaper than simply digging the stuff out of the ground
as soon as someone comes up with a biofuels scheme that is cheaper than digging it out of the ground, game over, simple economic rules take over, and further savings are realized through economies of scale
2 things are affecting this breakthrough point:
1. its getting more and more expensive to dig hydrocarbons out of the ground
2. research is finding more and more shortcuts for turning biomass A into hydrocarbon B
obviously, there is issue #3: monetary fluctuations, supply and demand fluctations, etc., that affect that magical breakthrough point. temporarily in 2008, we reached that breakthrough point, but the oil price bubble popping has moved that point again into the future. but don't worry, we'll see that point again. india and china aren't getting poorer (more demand), and oil sources are just getting deeper and deeper (less supply)
personally, my money is on algae directly making octane, in ponds in the desert near an ocean, or in waterjugs in the ocean itself. that is, if i had some money right now, heh
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here in Brazil ethanol is used by cars more than gasoline.
We don't use it because there's a government subsidy or because we love the environment or any such nonsense.
Sugar cane ethanol is *cheaper* than gasoline.
Biofuels are seen as expensive in the US because you're using the wrong sources. Of course it won't be cost-effective to extract ethanol from corn.
When you use more energy to produce a biofuel than the amount of energy that would be provided to the end user, then it is hard to argue that the fuel was ever economically feasible. When corn that could be used to feed hungry people is instead used to prevent a **possible** catastrophe that **might or might not** be caused by humans, then I say that is an irresponsible use of our resources.
Capitalism is still alive - it's all about supply and demand. Too much supply or too little demand - price drops. Too little supply or too much demand - price rises.
It's all about the economics.
The big increases in corn prices (mostly, this gets complex, but I am a farmer-not a corn grower though but I know about this subject - so I'll make it simple for you) were due to the wall street thieves getting bumped out of speculating on repackaged mortgage debt instruments and taking their cash and getting into commodities skimming/speculating.
All those people do is rape industry after industry and then pass along the misery and use the controlled press to try and put the blame anyplace but their greed. Biofuels and natural gas are now our two most credible alternative sources for domestically produced energy for the existing vehicles and equipment we have out there, and knocking this industry off right now goes right along with what they did in the 80s when we had a renaissance of alternative energy. they flooded the planet with cheap oil then and squashed the alternatives. They are doing it again, right on schedule just when it started to look decent.
There are NO "electric tractors" or road trucks out there now for replacements, and even if there were, it would still be way more expensive to switch to them. Personal light vehicles are another matter, but again, there just aren't any electric cars out there beyond a pitiful small handful of big golf carts masquerading as cars and a few dozen Teslas and so on, again, it would take dozens of trillions to change over our infrastructure to all electric. You need something to feed those ICE powered vehicles.
There is no one size fits all energy solution, but knocking off the only credible thing we have to insure against wildass price swings in petroleum fuels along with supply issues (hello, the mideast is daily always one bad "executive decision" away from a huge war, not the tiny wars they have no,w I mean a BIG one, imperilling the supply) is remarkably short sighted and naieve. The farm I am on now could be powered with biofuels, the trucks and trains that get that food to you in your mom's basement could be powered with biofuels, but having to replace way over a million dollars in equipment with unobtanium brand electric equipment is crazy. Multiple that crazy by..EVERY farm out there and you fail it.
Biofuels create hundreds of thousands of new points of production for SOME fuel alternative, and increased R&D HAS been helping. Everyone in the industry knows corn is just a stepping stone, now you know as well, consider yourself informed now. We've been doing corn because that is what the farms are set up to produce in bulk, that's all. Farming is a specialist industry, you don't throw yout mp3 player at a server problem when a rack of blades is the correct tool. And we don't grow as much sugarcane in the US because *it can't be done most places*. We do grow sugar beets, and they have been used, but again, speciality production. And they just took a huge area out of sugarcane production down in the Florida to help with the long term water supply around the 'glades, so that the cities can have some water mostly so they can keep wasting it on fountains and golf courses.
There has to be thousands of really smart biogeeks working on better biofuels right now, telling them to stop what they are doing and slashing funding is GUARANTEED to cause massive energy shortfals off the practical kind in the future.
Jeebus, how soon do people forget? The same wall street pirates were responsible for a lot of the near 5 buck a gallon prices of fuel this summer. Wake up.
My guess is, you are both too young to remember previous fast oilshocks, and also not even remotely related to anything agricultural, because your statements and conclusions are 100% wrong. No offense but, get the data first. One of the points about insuring DOMESTIC supply is that it is a national security issue, you can't trust everything to the capitalist pig globalist market, haven't you seen how that works lately? Want to help Mexican campesinos? End NAFTA, everyone wo thought about it predicted
Yes, they are. Or will be. I don't feel that they were "there" just yet, but that progress is being made. Early oil production would be disastrous and our cars would be ridiculously priced, but improvements in the technology allowed us to enjoy cheap gasoline.
It will be that way for Biofuels too. The problem is we don't need 1 solution, we need several solutions combining to form a good solution. And hell, it may involve some old style oil/gasoline too, but at least we won't be dependent on one.
The current approach to biofuels is brain-dead anyway. Sugar beets grow easily in the right climate and have such a high energy density per production cost that it makes sense to convert them to ethanol. No US crop compares. The notion that we can do as well from low-density biomatter, like corn stalks, is just plain asinine.
That doesn't mean biofuels are a bad idea altogether. I saw a carbon sequestration scheme a few years ago where algae was used to scrub carbon from coal plant emisions. After sufficient growth, the algae could be harvested and converted to biofuel. That sort of process where the biomatter growth is an in-between step without an inherent cost is not an altogether bad idea.
But growing corn to make ethanol is ridiculous.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
There are plenty of sources of biomass that are waste. In fact the US has an abundance.
Biomass waste goes well beyond the 'resturant running a few cars'.
How about the tonnes of used coffee grounds?
The millions of acres choked with Kudzu?
Agricultural waste?
Seaweed?
Just because the US policy on biofuel is as dumb as the policy of fossil fuel, doesnt make biofuels any less viable in the real world. And the fact that we are running out of oil means that the price will only go up. Not to mention the price of other oil based products.
Then bear in mind that the rest of the world pays more and uses less, so you are behind the curve in terms of efficiency and economics.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
You guy do understand, that if we mass produce crops, it will have an irreplaceable impact on our oceans right?
The upside is make O2 down side is contaminate the oceans with CO due to the massive change to soil.
I prefer a more NUCLEAR friendly future ^_^.
just make it cold fussion.
I was under the impression that the Pimentel study had been discredited, and that many of his assumptions were poor.
http://biomass.age.uiuc.edu/index.php/Fermentation
The article was refuted by Dr. Bruce Dale a year later in testimony before US congress and that according to Dale, at least 6 gallons of ethanol are produced for every gallon of gas or diesel fuel.
Another refutation was published in 2006 in Science magazine:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/506
Why do people continue to cite older articles from 2001 and ignore later ones that do not support their views?
The best question to me is, why are we continuing to persist with a failing model? Its one thing for research, but quite another to replace petroleum with something it takes more petroleum to make than it will save us in its use.
Is it because in our state we see a day where we have diminishing petrol and rising demand?
Would US automakers be in the position they are now if they were making fuel Efficient cars?
Perhaps if gasoline distilled from non-renewable source is taxed ruinously (US$3/gal federal) they would be. Not holding my breath though.
Sooo... Soylent Green Fuel then?
It's PEOPLE! Soylent Green Fuel is PEOPLE!!!!! /Heston
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Simply put: do you want to eat or do you want to fill 'er up?
Every area that goes into producing bio-fuels cannot produce food anymore.
In addition to our current way of producing food not being sustainable without the availability of cheap oil, using agricultural areas to produce crop that isn't even eaten is insane.
Does anybody actually have an idea how small the world's surplus on corn etc. actually is? Does anybody have an idea how much land would have to be wasted (literally) to produce enough crop to satisfy the world hunger for fossil fuel?
I don't think, one earth would be enough.
I don't believe, bio-fuels make any sense at all - even economies aside.
Stop the lunacy!
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Seriously.... the idea of creating a bio-fuel economy out of corn is f'n retarded.
I'm GLAD these companies won't be ruining the corn economy of the WORLD for such a piss-poor return.
Now HEMP on the other hand is a WONDERFUL source of ethanol and can be used in just about every internal combustion engine in widespread use in the country.
Bummer that our govt now consists of a hypocritical bunch of assholes that won't admit wrongs as they are and work to change them.