Posted on 06/24/2005 2:18:04 PM PDT by mikemikemikecubed
A lot of times, trying to get something done here in Washington can get pretty frustrating. There's bitter partisanship, petty politics, and a general atmosphere that isn't always conducive to passing legislation that people actually care about.
But I'm happy to report that today wasn't one of those days.
Today, the Senate passed my proposal, which will be included in the transportation bill, that would make it easier for people to fill their cars with a cheaper alternative to gasoline.
Now, I know most of you are as tired as I am of pulling into a gas station and seeing that the prices are even higher than they were the last time you filled up. It's $2.19, then it's $2.24, then it's $2.35, and up and up. When will it stop? As long as we're dependent on oil from the Middle East, we don't know.
That's why we need to stop just talking about energy independence and actually do something about it.
If someone told you that you could fill your cars and trucks with fuel that's 50 cents cheaper than current gas prices, you'd jump at the chance. But what a lot of people don't know is that this option is already out there. It's called E-85, and it's a fuel made of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It's cleaner than gasoline, it's cheaper, and most importantly, it reduces our dependence on oil from the Middle East. In fact, the Indianapolis 500 thought it was such a good alternative that pretty soon, their entire fleet will run on E-85.
Right now, there are millions of cars and trucks that can run on E-85. You might even have one yourself. They're known as "flexible fuel vehicles," and the auto industry is turning out hundreds of thousands of them every year.
Of course, the reason you're not seeing more cars run on E-85 is that we've got a severe shortage of E-85 fuel stations. While there are more than 180,000 gas stations all over America, only about 400 offer E-85.
This is where my proposal comes in. It's going to cost stations to install E-85 pumps, so we thought we'd give them a tax credit that would encourage them to do so. As more and more stations realize how popular this cheap alternative to gas is becoming, more will utilize this tax credit and install their own pumps.
But they're hybrid, remember?
It is far more socially beneficial than ethanol, otherwise I would not propose it. Electric power produced by nukes and coal is cheaper than oil power and far cheaper than ethanol. Nuclear waste can be safely disposed but I think it should be reprocessed making nukes even more efficient.
Mine the ocean floor for a substance known as Methane Hydrate.
The oil companies have known about methane hydrate since 1970, and no one seems to have a good method to produce it yet. Apparently, it is still too expensive to go after. But the potential reward is incredible. (I base these comments on the discussion about methane hydrate by Kenneth Deffeyes, in his book Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak.)
It is far more efficient to replace that imported barrel with hybrids and nuke and coal fired electricity.
I don't know what the IEEE looked at, but here's my BOTE calculation. I don't know the exact difference between our family's peak day and nighttime electrical power usage, but just glancing around, I see more than 1000 watts in lighting alone. Add in microwave, refrigerator, computers and monitors and it's probably much more, but let's say 1500 watts conservatively. Over an eight hour night, that makes 12,000 watt-hours. That's 40,800 BTUs. There's about 100,000 BTUs/gal of gas, so that nighttime electrical power difference is equal to about 2/5 of a gallon of gas.
I live about 10 miles from work so the commute is 20 miles. Let's say a hybrid electric auto gets 50 miles/gal. My 20 mile commute then takes 2/5 gallon of gas. On a typical day I'd consume no gas at all. Overall I expect I'd get 3-400 miles per gallon. There are a lot of people like me. With no grid upgrades at all, we'd achieve a huge reduction in gas consumption.
You're sort of right, and you say it in your own post. We USED to have a Sugar Belt. But, like you say, the outsourcing of production overseas has all but eliminated sugar growing here in the states. It's more of a Gator and Mosquito Belt now.
The study I quoted (which is the most balanced and rational and least propagandized I've come across), calculates the energy product ratio for co-products such as gluten meal based on the energy input that would otherwise be required to produce those products in a process that does not also produce ethanol. This makes a lot more sense than other methods that simply rely on weight, food caloric content (which is not directly comparable to fuel caloric content), or market value (commodity prices change).
As such, the co-products account for consuming about 20% of the input energy. This is a conservative evaluation, but it still yields a net energy balance for Ethanol of about 1.24 or 1.25. That is a positive net energy balance, but it is not nerly as positive as the net energy balance for other farmed fuels.
I have seen the pamphlet from the American Coalition for Ethanol. I have also read the study from the Argonne National Lab which the ACE likes to quote. And the Argonne study is suspect in that it does not mention either it's methodology for establing the energy balance quotient of ethanol production coproducts or it's specific energy production path either for corn derived ethanol or cellulose derived ethanol (the production methods and coproducts are different depending on the feedstock).
Also, I don't have anything to get over. But I suspect you might. You really need to get away from your overly zealous promotion of a single alternative fuel. It is causing you to see (and attack) detractors when you have none. And that is not helping either you to promote your position or the cause of alternative fuels in general.
Did you actually read my post instead of just assuming what I was saying? If you had, you would see that the study I quoted, from the National Governors Ethanol Coalition, gives a net energy balance of 1.24. That means a 24% increase in energy. This is less than the 1.35 figure from the Argonne study, but, unlike the Argonne study, the NGEV meticulously document both their methodology and their reasoning, both of which are sound. The 1.24 figure is less, but it is more trustworthy and it is still a positive energy balance.
More to the point, I am not trying to attack ethanol as an alternative fuel source. I have pointed out that it has a positive energy balance (though not as high as the less than conservative numbers of certain ethanol promoters). In fact, I heartily endorse ethanol as a home grown energy source for gasoline based engines. Anything that can help us ending our need to pucker up to the arab backside is an extremely good idea.
However, I also understand that we need to be truthfull and honest when we promote ethanol or any alternative fuel. The plain fact is that the lowered energy and mileage from ethanol blends means a greater cost to the consumer per mile even with a 50¢ reduction in the at-the-pump price.
No alternative fuel is perfect. People need to know the benefits as well as the drawbacks of any fuel before they can make an informed choice. If you try to sell ethanol as a panacea without letting people know of its disadvantages and requirements, they will find out its drawbacks on their own. And you will have permanently damaged their trust and confidence in ethanol and other alternative fuels.
Ethanol honestly is a good fuel idea. But we still need to be honest in promoting it. Pushing it as a perfect fuel (there's no such thing) and attacking those who point out that it isn't (like every other fuel) is counter-productive.
Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce,Burn this as a motor vehicle fuel:
Ethanol For Fuel Fundamentally Uneconomic, Study Says
Pimentel, who chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, subsequently conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car fuel process.His findings will be published in September in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology.
Among his findings are:
- An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 1,000 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel's analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.
- The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline.
- Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU.
"Put another way," Pimentel says, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."
- Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline.
"That helps explain why fossil fuels -- not ethanol -- are used to produce ethanol," Pimentel says. "The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn't afford it, either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially lower the price."
- Most economic analyses of corn-to-ethanol production overlook the costs of environmental damages, which Pimentel says should add another 23 cents per gallon.
"Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Corn should not be considered a renewable resource for ethanol energy production, especially when human food is being converted into ethanol."
- The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes. Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs, because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States.
Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: "In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace."
Nickels and dimes aside, some drivers still would rather see their cars fueled by farms in the Midwest than by oil wells in the Middle East, Pimentel acknowledges, so he calculated the amount of corn needed to power an automobile:
- The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.
- If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.
Summary & ConclusionsThe purpose of this paper was to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the industrial corn-ethanol cycle accelerates the irrevocable depletion of natural resources: fossil fuels, minerals, top soil, surface and subsurface water, and air, while creating wide-spread environmental damage throughout the continental United States.
My arguments relied entirely on the First and Second Law of thermodynamics, and on the Law of Mass Conservation. I have tried to avoid political questions, but at some point one should ask how it was possible for a poor agri-industrial technology to grow so explosively in the last four years?
The only plausible answer lies in politics. The recent growth of ethanol production could occur only because of the massive transfer of money from the collective pocket of the U.S. taxpayers to the transnational agricultural cartel, represented most notably by Archer Daniel Midlands Co., Cargill Inc., Monsanto Co., and A. E. Stanley Manufacturing Co. This flow of billions of dollars from the pockets of the many to the pockets of the few was accomplished by federal subsidies of corn producers, and the federal and state tax subsidies of ethanol producers.
It was spearheaded by many powerful, and I would like to think, thoroughly misinformed politicians. More ominously, as a country, we have diverted our collective attention from the most important issue of this century: energy conservation and increased reliance on the only renewable source of energy, the sun, and its weak derivative, the wind, see Appendix C. Instead, we have somewhat accelerated the rate of depletion of the precious natural gas and crude oil deposits, in exchange for the significantly more wide-spread pollution of water, soil and air over roughly 1/2 of the area of the United States, the incremental carbon dioxide emissions, the substandard ethanol fuel, and the continuous drain of taxpayers? money.
To make things worse, the scientific community in the U.S. seems to be preoccupied with promulgating empty illusions of a future global energy bliss brought about by the new and sexy, but inherently unsustainable technologies. The ethanol biofuel for hydrogen (Deluga et al., 2004), the fossil fuel-based ?hydrogen economy? (Davis et al., 2002; Bossel et al., 2003; Dresselhaus et al., 2003; Keith and Farrell, 2003; Tromp et al., 2003; DOE, 2003), the subsurface carbon dioxide sequestration (Celia, 2002), etc., come to mind. I suggest that we - the scientists - should instead be advocating the simpler and less expensive, but painful, real solutions of the overwhelming energy problems facing the world. These solutions must involve far more energy conservation in every aspect of the U.S. economy, and the significantly increased reliance on the sun.
The philosophical, ethical, and political arguments ought to be developed further, but I will leave this task to the others, see e.g., the transcript of an excellent speech by Nicholas E. Hollis, Ethics and Agribusiness ? In Search of the New Food Security, given in Newcastle-on-Tyne, United Kingdom, March 15, 2004. Here I will only reiterate the following:
1. The industrial corn-ethanol cycle brings no energy savings and no lessening of the U.S. energy dependency on foreign crude oil, natural gas, and liquified petroleum gas. The opposite happens,
(a) we import somewhat more methane, LPG, and crude oil;
(b) we burn these fossil fuels to produce corn and ethanol; and
(c) we burn the corn ethanol in car engines.All three steps of this cycle increase the extent of environmental damage beyond that caused by burning the same fossil fuels directly in the cars.
MORE - see paper
Thanks for attempting to "fight the good fight!" All of the new data shows the net actual gain of ethanol.???
(Also ignore my post #92 in this thread; I wouldn't want to introduce any actual science into the mix.)
Absolutely untrue. Go back and read my post, and the study I quote. You will find that I do take into account coproducts of corn ethanol production. And I rely on a sound energy comparison methodology that compares apples to apples.
I simply stated in my post that sugarcane based ethanol fuel in Brazil is more economical to produce than corn based ethanol fuel in the United States. That's because sugarcane produces a much higher quantity of ethanol per acre at a lower production energy. Also, it's much easier and more efficient to make ethanol from the higher glucose concentration sugars in sugarcane than higher fructose concentration sugars in corn. It's just a basic fact of organic chemistry. Finally, the energy in ethanol (and any farmed fuel) originates from the sun. Brazil gets a lot more sun than the United States, and therefore more farmable energy.
This isn't an arguement against ethanol, it's an arguement against the flawed use of Brazil as an example to promote ethanol fuel use in the United States.
But some people here are trying to promote it as such.
No fuel source is. For gasoline engines, ethanol is about the best option running. But a diesel engine fueled from thermally cracked waste or BioDiesel has a much higher net energy balance and engine simplicity. Also, BioDiesel has a much greater potential energy feedstock than just about any other farmed fuel. The energy potential from algal BioDiesel is phenomenal; much greater than even cellulose sourced ethanol. That's not to say BioDiesel is itself perfect, just that it has a higher energy delivery potential.
In other words, ethanol can help free us from kissing arab tuckus. But you can tell more arabs to go to hell with a gallon of BioDiesel than a gallon of ethanol.
I don't understand why people are so quick to attack ethanol as an alternative fuel.
They're not. Really. They just very quick to point out when someone is pushing an alternative fuel source without also mentioning its disadvantages.
We won't ever be able to estalish alternative fuels if we don't also warn people of their drawbacks. If people have to learn the drawbacks themselves the hard way, they'll be permanently soured on alternative fuels and we'll have to pucker up to Mecca for decades to come.
See #83 above...
Times may have changed, but not all that much. More to the point, the studies quoted by the ACE optimistically weight their energy estimates on recent relatively high crop yields. And while genetic tinkering and hybridization do help improve yields, they still don't affect crop yields nearly as much as the weather. And the weather can only be taken into account by looking at old and long term data equally with recent data.
Also, I prefer the ethanol study I use because it is the only one which explains its methodology and the reasoning behind it's net energy calculations.
Finally, it still yields a positive net energy balance. And a conservatively calculated one. I personally prefer conservative methodologies to optimistic ones because once you turn the study into an actual real world implementation, it's always better to be pleasantly surprised by real world results than unexpectedly disappointed by false hopes.
So ... we should continue to eschew alternatives because they're not perfect but we should continue to buy Arab crude because it is? C'mon. The time for alternative fuels has been ripe since the first oil embargo. The oil companies were just smart enough to loosen the reins when it looked like the horse was going to buck. Nowadays, with gas up 40 percent in a year, the time is ripe again. And this time, hopefully, there will be no going back. E85 and its cousins are here to stay ... if we're lucky.
Pimentel: Uses an invalid mass derived means of calculating ethanol coproduct energy offsets. Also makes an incorrect assumption based on fossil fuel derived sources for ethanol. Fails to consider cellulose sourced ethanol production from corn waste. Many other reasoning flaws.
The energy offset for coproducts needs to be calculated on their replacement energy cost, and not their replacement mass percentage. And the reason why industrial ethanol is made from fossil fuels instead of corn or other farm products has more to do with the various liquor regulations on ethanol (Hey, did you know you can drink the stuff?! But some in the big bad gubb'mint don't want you to.) production than the net energy balance of ethanol production.
Patzek: Denies any energy offset from coproducts of ethanol. Would rather throw the resulting gluten meal and whatnot away than make use of them. Thought he includes corn farming environmental impacts into his calculations, and he mentions using ethanol byproducts as replacement humus to offset erosion from corn production, he fails to the include the humus return in his calculations of environmental impacts. Also neglects use of corn waste cellulose.
There are really only two valid points in these studies. First, it is true that the energy per acre potential of corn ethanol is insufficient to meet the fuel needs of the United States. Secondly, corn production does have a high environmental cost. But both of these are easily countered. Firstly, ethanol should not be considered a replacement energy source but rather a supplemental energy source in a combined multi source renewable energy economy. Secondly, the environmental impact of corn production can be offset through palliative farming practices such as simple crop rotation, straw waste return, and water reclamation. Growing corn for ethanol one year strips nitrogen from the soil, but growing soybeans (or other oil seeds) in the same field the next year for BioDiesel replenished the nitrogen in the soil.
Finaly, as pointed out above, these studies (and, unfortunately, most ethanol promoters) limit themselves specifically to ethanol production from corn crops. There are other, better renewable sources of ethanol. They just don't have large corn growing lobbies promoting them. One of the biggest problems with analysing ethanol as an alternative fuel is that all the attention gets riveted exclusively on corn sourced ethanol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.