Moonshine Mirage - Growing our way to energy independence?

Reason ^ | May 12, 2006 | Ronald Bailey

[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.

[Phocion]

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.

Considering that he is an editor of Reason Magazine, which opposes all foreign aid, I find your idea of his "real agenda" to be extremely unlikely.

[Phocion]

The solution is to make it where politicians can make enough money on it and it will be done very quickly. But until then you can forget as big oil has them all in their pocket.

That's not entirely true. Just about every politician between Pennsylvania and Colorado is beholden to Big Agribusiness. That's why there are huge subsidies and tax breaks for ethanol production, as well of tens of billions worth of other agriculture subsidies. In a lot of areas in the country, they have control over politicians that Big Oil could only dream of.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

The phrase "American energy independence" is meaningless, and the notion that America has an "energy problem" is a fallacy.

Well thanks for backing up this conjecture with some facts.

Here's one from me: Assuming Alberta's child is intelligent is a fallacy.

See, equally stupid sentence easily written, but meaningless unless backed up by fact.

[wayoverontheright]

Once again, we're presented with a false dichotomy from the ethanol naysayers. "Since we can't do it ALL, why do ANYTHING?"

Exactly. Some of the same arable land/ yield calculations used to refute ethanol possibilities today were used by Paul Samuelson in 1967 to predict that by 1984 we wouldn't have enough land to feed ourselves. THE POPULATION BOMB, I believe it was.

We could emulate Brazil if we could elect enough pols with spine enough to stand up to environmentalists, AND if we could put enough flex-fuel vehicles out there to give consumers a way to demand ethanol. Out of 200 million cars on the road, 5 million are now flex-fuel capable....just a few more years......

[neverdem]

Sort of let on what his real agenda is here.

The author is a free market libertarian.

[neverdem]

The "Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb" site has been retired from pbs.org. Quite appropriate!

[Mr. Silverback]

I'm not as good on the tech aspects as you are; I am thinking more about the arable land vs. demand equations, because I do a lot of work in the ag sector. That said, I think you're right on.

Here are three facts that make the case for me:

1. We can't grow enough ethanol to make a difference unless we want to turn our oil imports into food imports.

2. We have produced about 1 trillion barrels of oil up to this point, and there several trillion (at least 8) left in the ground.

3. If we really do need to replace oil with biofuels, we can make biodiesel out of anything from soybeans to municipal waste to dead cats. The AP even had a story a couple of weeks ago about a guy who has made diesel from hog manure, and he thinks he can make it economical enough to use on a wide scale. If so, he could make enough diesel to replace the gas that should be coming out of ANWR.

Of course, my favorite idea is lots of nuclear plants serving electric cars, but that would be a nightmare with current electric car technology.

[Gorzaloon]

Of course, my favorite idea is lots of nuclear plants serving electric cars, but that would be a nightmare with current electric car technology.

I love to tell the story about filming the Tour De Sol, an electric/solar car race.

It was in Plymouth, MA.

So..at the end of the races, everyone ran their cars to these octopuses of electrical outlets that were strung out.

Everyone was Feeling Good about Saving the Whales,etc., whereupon I made myself unpopular by pointing across the water at a big white building.

"In that building is Boston Edison's 670 megawatt Boiling Water Reactor, which is even now grunting under the load of refilling these free energy cars, SCALDING THE LOBSTERS."

*snort*

But really, new PM Motors are _really_ effifient. If they ever get around the battery eneergy density poblems, it will make a huge difference. However, somewhere upstream, several energy-losing stages away, there is something HOT making the electricity, and it's either coming from coal, gas, or uranium..Unless it is imported Hydro, around here.

[From many - one.]

"...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"


Ditto.