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When posting a blog, just post the entire thing (long as it’s not on the excerpt-only list, and few blogs are).
Most blogs have a lot of malicious adware stuff.
Thanks!
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Boondoggle Ethanol Program Got You Down? Help End it.
Ethanol is Not About Energy Independence
Have you figured out that the federal ethanol program is not about becoming energy independent, but about putting Midwest corn farmers on the government dole? If not, keep reading. If so, are you ready to help end it? That’s in here, too.
Image by Rastoney via FlickrIf you think ethanol lowers fuel prices, then I guess you don’t know that each gallon of ethanol is subsidized 47.5 cents per gallon by our tax dollars. In fact, Brazil exports ethanol, but we put a 54 cents per gallon import tax on Brazilian ethanol and then limit its import to seven percent of US production. If it were about saving money, we’d simply import the much less expensive ethanol from Brazil.
If it were about energy independence, we wouldn’t us corn, either. It takes about 65% more energy to produce ethanol from corn than the ethanol yields. Who says so? University of California-Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek in Science Daily back in 2005.
At this point, you may be confused simply because the truth and what you’ve been led to believe are very different. So, let me say it directly: We use more energy to produce ethanol from corn than the entire amount of energy yielded from the corn-made ethanol. More simple? It takes more energy than we get back, so the ethanol makes us MORE dependent on foreign oil and costs us more money.
“Ah,” you say, “but it was supposed to be about energy independence, wasn’t it? How could this be?”
The Wrong Crop for the Wrong Reasons
Well, only if you believe the rhetoric. You see, one reason Brazil’s ethanol is so cheap is that it’s derived from sugar cane, not corn. But we use corn, so it looks more and more like this is a give-away program to Big Ag than anything else.
Being someone who pays attention, you ask, “But don’t we also grow sugarcane in the United States?”
We do. We also grow sugar beets. Both of them produce about five times as much ethanol per acre as corn, which makes the ethanol from those crops much less expensive to produce. We also have switchgrass throughout the United States.
Switchgrass is very interesting. For one thing it takes half the costs to produce switchgrass per acre as it does corn. For another, switchgrass can grow in marginal growing areas, meaning the costs are still less because it requires less productive lands. Remember how it takes 65% more energy to produce corn ethanol than the ethanol yields? Ethanol from switchgrass yields 500% more energy than it takes to produce it. And you don’t even have to replant switchgrass! So, why are we focused on corn?
Does Archer-Daniels-Midland have huge investments in switchgrass like it does in corn production? Nah, I didn’t think so.
Look up switchgrass and ethanol online and you’ll see there are quite a few articles on it. Several good ones in Scientific American alone. From 2006 to 2008 there were several studies announced and quite a few stories written on the emergence of switchgrass as an alternative to corn as a source of ethanol. Since 2009, articles on switchgrass disappeared. I wonder why.
How do we fix this mess?
Well, we obviously can’t rely on Washington. That’s a near-certainty.
Image by Frank Kehren via FlickrNow, here is how we combat this massive, wasteful federal give-away program. Not all filling stations have ethanol in their gasoline. At a 90% gas/10% ethanol blend, which most filling stations use, for every 10 gallons you pump you have pumped nine gallons of gas and one gallon of ethanol. That gallon of ethanol costs you and other taxpayers 47.5 cents. Pump ethanol-free gas and when you fill up, you save taxpayers about a buck.
Want to put an end to this subsidy and get ten to fifteen percent better gas mileage? Pump gasoline without ethanol. If enough of us do this, then we can bring this to an end. When ethanol-free gas stations are over-run with business and ethanol mix stations have declining sales, it will right itself through simple supply and demand.
I know that you may not know where your nearest ethanol-free gas station is located, but I’m looking out for you: Go here: http://pure-gas.org/ for a current list which is listed by state and then by city. It’s easy to look up. Now you’re all set
While many might find a conspiracy in this, I am guessing that perhaps there is no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow either.
God already gave us a pleantiful energy source - nuclear. We are just too dumb to figure out how to use it.
Larry, FR has long been a fair use site. I'm a very long-time FReeper. My ID shows '98 but that's only because of an ID glitch. I've actually been on here since '94 or '95.
I am asking that you not post my blogs in their entirety unless you have prior permission from me. possumjohn is a friend and thought what I wrote was worthy of posting here. I appreciate him posting an excerpt.
Anyway, no hard feelings and what's done is done, but I don't want people to begin to believe that I don't care about my intellectual property.
Thanks,
Ken Carroll aka Ken in Eastman