Posted on 05/13/2006 1:44:42 AM PDT by neverdem
The U.S. should emulate Brazil's "energy independence miracle" declared headlines, editorialists, environmentalists and policymakers all throughout the first half of 2006. The Brazilian "miracle" was achieved in part by substituting ethanol (produced by fermenting sugar cane) for gasoline (made from imported oil).
Let's look at the elements of the Brazilian miracle and see if it is possible for the United States to replicate it. First, Brazil's economy is one-tenth the size of ours, and Brazil's motor fleet is about 100 vehicles per 1,000 people. Brazil's cars and trucks consume about 15 billion gallons of motor fuels annually. Also, Brazil produces 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, enough to fulfill about 90 percent of the country's daily requirements. Finally, Brazil produces 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol from sugar cane and blends it with gasoline in a 20 percent ethanol/80 percent gasoline mixture to burn in flex fuel automobiles.
In contrast, there are 765 vehicles per 1000 people in the U.S. consuming about 150 billion gallons of gasoline per year. The United States already produces about 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol (about the same as Brazil) which meets only about 3 percent of U.S. transport fuel needs. The U.S. pumps about 5 million barrels of oil per day domestically and imports another 15 million barrels daily.
Replacing one-third of our gasoline consumption with ethanol, as Brazil has done, would reduce oil imports—but "energy independence" would remain a mirage. One bushel of corn yields about three gallons of ethanol. In 2004 U.S. farmers harvested 11.8 billion bushels of corn. In other words it would take the country's entire corn crop to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol, an amount equal to about one-fifth of the gasoline Americans currently burn each year. This would also leave no corn for food and some residues for feed. Burning food for fuel raises some interesting moral questions in world in which 800 million people are still malnourished.
Assuming that it would be undesirable to turn our entire corn crop into fuel and feed residues, growing another 12 billion bushels of corn for ethanol production would require plowing up an additional area double the size of the entire state of Illinois. So ethanol produced from corn is not the answer to drastically lowering U.S. oil imports. However, biotechnologists are hard at work on creating processes that will break down cellulose, the complex carbohydrates that make up a good part of the stems and leaves of plants, into sugars that can be fermented into ethanol. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush suggested that switch grass might be a good source of cellulosic biomass to produce ethanol.
Last year, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Agriculture estimated that it would take one billion tons of dry biomass to produce enough ethanol to replace one-third of current U.S. demand for transport fuels. Assuming a high yield of 10 tons per acre of switch grass would mean harvesting 100 million acres of land for fuel each year—an area about the size of California. In 2005, the USDA reckoned that there were 39 million acres idle in the conservation reserve program and 67 million acres of cropland being used as pasture, so dedicating that much land to grow fuel crops is not impossible. But planting idle cropland and pasture with fuel crops could have some deleterious effects on the natural environment and wildlife and possibly spark a fight between the naturalist and energy wings of the environmentalist movement.
Strangely, the Fed's billion-ton biomass vision doesn't factor in the amount of energy needed to make ethanol. Just how much energy it takes to churn out ethanol is hotly contested, but for simplicity's sake let's assume that the process produces twice as much energy as it uses. That means that with even the most optimistic calculation, in which one billion tons of biomass are converted into ethanol, the amount produced could ultimately replace one-sixth of annual U.S. oil imports. That's not nothing, but it's not "energy independence"—and it's not much of a "miracle," either. Finally, it has to be asked, if producing ethanol is such a profitable idea, why does it need federal subsidies?
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
The truth is we must use our own oil to keep the country strong while we invent the next generation of fuel.
One of the interesting and, I think, positive things in Brazil is the refining of the corn is done right on the farms by the farmers and the residue from the process is used to fuel the refinery. The farmers then sell their oil on the open market.
My guess is the reason Bailey isn't offering a solution to our out of control end of the world energy crisis, is because he's not saying we have one to begin with. He's talking about the out-of-control lack of brain power with the moonshine idiots.
As for the out-of-control idiots who say we're doomed with some kind of devastating end-of-the-world energy crisis, that's probably coming up in a different op-ed piece.
Pure BS, gas mileage rates would take years to adjust, and cars are not going to get better in a big way until some technology breakthrough, and that isn't likely either since physics dictates fuel economy.
Big rig mileage isn't going to get better until trucks are able to triple trailer or carry more in a single trailer. Those things are dependent on roads ability to carry the loads.
Ban cars and trucks and go to bikes mopeds and scooters, and kill the economy, or drill for what the media calls fossil fuels, another grand lie in the scheme of things.
The oil from dinasours/fossils myth is as mythical as the earth being flat, which among ancient explorers, was also a myth.
Oil is the fuel of choice and will remain so for years until another item is discovered if ever, that will replace oil given another fifty years or so to develop as oil has.
Drill for what ails us is the solution, and support the drilling by building refinaries to handle the increaded production. Build latest generation nuclear reactors for power generation, and work out the nuclear waste problems.
Meanwhile supporting with enabling legislation every worthwhile energy efficient discovery, and energy saving technology. We start from right where we are now.
We could run the entire country on the millions of tons of pig and cow manure that can be converted to fuel instead of being a pollution problem, as it is today. And the tasty animals do it for free! The author of this piece should watch the Discovery channel more.
"Burning food for fuel raises some interesting moral questions in world in which 800 million people are still malnourished."
Sort of let on what his real agenda is here. He thinks our abundance in the face of the rest of the world's poverty is evil. The rest of the world is in poverty because of their own stupid choices. Instead of asking for money they should ask for help in reforming their bad gov't.
Methanol etc. have such an antiknock rating and burn cool enough so you can run really high compression ratios and a lot of supercharger boost and/or nitrous injection.
Nuclear, coal gasification, oil shale and tar sands are the solution for now. What politician is suggesting it? NONE. Why? because they don't want to take on the environmentalists. so we get suggestions about bagging our grass and conserving our way to prosperity. duh!
And that is THE best way to motivate American inventors to get it done!
I don't believe there will be any one magic replacement for crude. It'll be a combination of fuel sources. I reckon it'll be a combination of electric hybrids, coal gas, hydrogen injection in current gasoline engines, biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, fuel cells and probably some technology that hasn't been announced yet.
"This article seems to imply that American can't do it."
Agreed, excuses, excuses, excuses!
Instead, build more nuke plants, get people who heat with fuel oil to switch to (nuke-generated) electric, invest in coal-to-gasoline conversion (economical when oil is above $30/bbl), etc
Rather than increasing government regulation, just let the market handle it. $3+ gasoline is a big disincentive for using a gas-guzzler for long-distance commutes
On the flip side, my wife drives a van. It's big, it makes it possible to transport several kids, their friends, and a lot of gear, and is otherwise very useful. It's a gas guzzler, but she only drives it about 60 miles per week so it doesn't matter
No, we cannot emulate the Brazilian model, because the Brazilian success story is one of increasing domestic supply of PETROLEUM, not ethanol.
We COULD emulate the Brazilian model if there was a ROCK which could be overturned in this country, to get at new sources of oil. The environmental lobby has PARALYZED our political machinery, such that there is NO ENERGY which couldn't be opposed.
The author of this article makes a good case that corn-based ethanol, ethanol from switchgrass, ethanol from orange peels, ethanol from wood chips, ethanol from sugar cane (Florida, Puerto Rico), ethanol from industrial waste, and ethanol from municipal waste, methanol and butanol, BY THEMSELVES are not the answer, and seems to say WHY BOTHER; but fails to acknowledge that combined these renewables COULD provide PART OF THE ANSWER, and thus all are worth persuing.
"Nuclear, coal gasification, oil shale and tar sands are the solution for now."
These are the correct answers, however conservation also has a strong economic driver and should expect more advances there as well. Nuclear and coal should be used for power generation, Nat gas and oils for transportation.
Notice that hydrogen does not make the list, it is an inefficient means to providing torgue to the road. (but as long as it doesnt get subsidies like ethanol, it will not get serious consideration)
Wood chips should be burned directly as we have done so for years.
The phrase "American energy independence" is meaningless, and the notion that America has an "energy problem" is a fallacy.
Nobody has said that the US can entirely replace gasoline with ethanol. But every gallon of ethanol -- produced DOMESTICALLY and benefiting AMERICA'S economy instead of some sand dune Shangri-La -- lessens the need for FOREIGN fuelstuffs.
What can possibly be the objection against promoting a domestic fuel material over continuing a ravaging dependence on foreign oil????
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