Posted on 07/17/2005 4:09:40 PM PDT by Graybeard58
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Farmers, businesses and state officials are investing millions of dollars in ethanol and biofuel plants as renewable energy sources, but a new study says the alternative fuels burn more energy than they produce.
Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.
But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.
It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.
"Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment," according to the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.
The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel.
The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs, Pimentel said.
Ethanol is an additive blended with gasoline to reduce auto emissions and increase gas' octane levels. Its use has grown rapidly since 2004, when the federal government banned the use of the additive MTBE to enhance the cleaner burning of fuel. About 3.6 billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group.
The ethanol industry claims that using 8 billion gallons of ethanol a year will allow refiners to use 2 billion fewer barrels of oil. The oil industry disputes that, saying the ethanol mandate would have negligible impact on oil imports.
Ethanol producers dispute Pimentel and Patzek's findings, saying the data is outdated and doesn't take into account profits that offset costs.
Michael Brower, director of community and government relations at SUNY's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, points to reports by the Energy and Agriculture departments that have shown the ethanol produced delivers at least 60 percent more energy the amount used in production. The college has worked extensively on producing ethanol from hardwood trees.
Biodiesel can be used in any diesel engine with few or no modifications. It is often blended with petroleum diesel to reduce the propensity to gel in cold weather.
Ditto on your idea for Yellowstone. This would be an almost inexhaustible heat source for energy/hydrogen production, and it would also serve the dual purpose of relieving pressure and removing energy from the coming volcanic eruption we know is due to occur there again.
Geothermal would also serve to make Hawaii and Iceland the world's leading exporters of hydrogen.
"Yeah, we can't have THAT. Not when we can line the pockets of some filthy Arab or bloated oil company baron instead"
Don't you get it Iron Jack? The study shows we have to use the same amount of arab oil even with ethanol production. Moreover, what they probably don't count is what productive crops those farmers could have made instead.
Hey Jack, what exactly do you think farm tractors run on, sunshine?
The Russians drill for oil to depths as much as six miles, well beyond "fossil fuel" depths. They are more accepting of Gold, and they profit accordingly.
Iceland exports electricity to the British Isles via undersea cable.
They did pull up some oil though...from an interview with Gold:
We were not able to produce commercial quantities of oil, because of the bacteriological content which clogged up the wells, but the bacteria which were living there were on the oil that was coming up. The bacteria that were captured at the various levels were just exactly those that would only reproduce at the elevated temperatures that, of course, occur at the various levels. There was no question that these were microbes from down there that were living, in fact, on the oil and gas as their principal food source and that this was their supply of energy.
Let me tell you why I was convinced. We first pulled up 80 barrels of oil, so this was not just trace amounts. Yet, I had been told by I don’t know how many traditionalists that this was an absolutely mad place to look for oil.
The studies done by Pimental and Patzek are highly suspect. They come at the BioFuel issue from the opposite ends of the spectrum (Pimental from the Big Oil and Patzek from Hyper-Enviro), but their research reports show a deep bias leading their findings. There are many other studies out there on the economic viability of different Biofuels. Regardless of the source of the research, whether it's funded by the Big Corn lobby or the Department of Energy, they consistently show a positive net energy balance ratio of about 1.25 (a 25% gain) for corn derived ethanol and 3 for rapeseed derived BioDiesel. Why are the results of Patzek and Pimental always so different?
My lawn mower, set for so much BTU's contained in so much fluid, does not wok well either.
What people don't seem to pick up is the engineered systems we have are expecting a certain level of BTUs contained in the liquid fuel in the system we supply.
Alcohol has far less BTUs (bang-for-the-buck) than gasoline, and a totally diff. (lower) temp that it vaporises at. A completely re-engineered internal conbustion engine would work ,well, sort of, OK to use alcohol instead of gasoline. But to put alcohol in an engine engineered for gasoline is no diff. than putting diesel oil in the same engine and expecting happy times.
Please
Is there no very basic science being taught in America any more?
Ethanol production from hardwoods? The tree huggers gotta love that.
Others have made this point, but it bears repeating. I wonder whether they did the same analysis for solar power, wind power, and hydrogen power. If they applied the same analysis, I suspect that they'd find that all three of these "sources" produced less energy than biofuels do.
The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel.
I also have to wonder whether they added some factor for the solar energy that allows all plants to grow. In reality, everything but nuclear power is a form of solar energy. The energy that we get from burning wood began as light energy that was converted to sugars in the leaves of a tree. Coal and oil are the same kind of energy except that the conversion process is longer. A researcher who really wanted to smear biofuels might add some factor to take account of the sun's energy used by the growing corn.
The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs, Pimentel said.
This statement also casts doubt on the whole article. There's no term in a thermodynamics equation that includes a financial term. The financial cost of any part of the process has absolutely no bearing on whether the energy that comes from biofuels is greater than the energy required to produce biofuels.
Ethanol is an additive blended with gasoline to reduce auto emissions and increase gas' octane levels. Its use has grown rapidly since 2004, when the federal government banned the use of the additive MTBE to enhance the cleaner burning of fuel. About 3.6 billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group.
The ethanol industry claims that using 8 billion gallons of ethanol a year will allow refiners to use 2 billion fewer barrels of oil. The oil industry disputes that, saying the ethanol mandate would have negligible impact on oil imports.
These paragraphs could be an example of conflicting statements where both are partially true and partially false. If the ethanol really increases octane, it could reduce consumption of crude oil by allowing more use of less valuable cuts of the crude oil. Refineries have to take steps to ensure that they can blend gasoline of the proper octane with the available feeds. If they just can't make the right stuff with what they have, they end up selling more by-products in other areas. Any addititive that allowed them to increase octane could help. On the other hand, the ethanol likely isn't as good as having the right blend of components in the crude oil.
Ethanol producers dispute Pimentel and Patzek's findings, saying the data is outdated and doesn't take into account profits that offset costs.
Now we have a skewed statement on the other side of the argument. The costs and profits are irrelevant to whether biofuels give more energy than is needed to produce them.
Another factor in the whole thing is whether the study looked at industrial-scale production or whether they looked only at bench-scale or pilot plant operations. Sometimes the energy required to produce a chemical in the lab is large in relation to the amount of chemical produced. However, when a production-scale plant is built and various heat inputs are balanced, the net energy may reverse.
Finally, if we can use nuclear power to produce biofuels for transportation, we may gain even if the biofuels require more energy to produce than they give. Hydrogen power will always require more energy to produce than it is capable of giving. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad transportation fuel. Biofuels may be the same way and should be considerably safer than hydrogen.
Bill
Good question.
You realize your lawnmower has jets in the carb that can be used to adjust the richness. You could run it on straight ethanol if you wanted to. You'd have more power from the same engine though the tank would run dry quicker.
Modern engines have O2 sensors in the exhaust. They adjust automagically.
You should have learned these things in high school auto shop.
We would reduce oil consumption far better by constructing a few dozen more nuke plants
Hey, ethanol serves LOTS of useful purposes---there's beer, wine, bourbon, Scotch, Guinness, and plenty of others.
No, YOU misunderstood IronJack's meaning. Whether or not ethanol takes more energy to produce than it gives off as a fuel (kind of disproven by Bommer's posting), IF we use American coal as the source of fossil energy for the distillation process (the biggest "energy hit" during production), this displaces a large amount of foreign crude oil--far more than just the ethanol produced.
More to the point, regarding "clean" solar: how much pollution is involved in the MANUFACTORING of the hundreds of square miles of solar cells that it would take to make a dent in our energy consumption?
Please relay to everyone how the U.S. halting buying oil from the Arabs is going to change anything? All that would happen is we would buy from the Norwegians or Russians and the the Arabs would sell to them. Tell everyone how that will shut down the Arabs. The only pockets that will get hurt will be ours as we would pay even higher prices for imported oil.
Seriesly, all those fine uses for ethanol come from sources other than corn (with the possible exception of Budweiser; I've never been able to figure out where the alcohol in that liquid comes from).
Good Grief, Lady. Magical thinking.
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