Ethanol could leave the world hungry

Cnn.com ^ | 8-16-06 | Lester Brown

[Hydroshock]

The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food. While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy - promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality is that overuse of our agricultural resources could have consequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of our SUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry.

We are facing an epic competition between the 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and the two billion poorest people in the world who simply want to survive. In effect, supermarkets and service stations are now competing for the same resources.

FORTUNE 500 Current Issue Subscribe to Fortune

More about bio-fuels Why Wal-Mart wants to sell ethanol

E85 is available at only a tiny fraction of gas stations. But the giant retailer is poised to change that. (more) Manure mountains to fuel ethanol plant One company's drive to locate domestic sources of energy is taking a turn into the barnyard. (more) Soybeans that give you gas Argentina is a prime market for making and selling renewable biodiesel fuel thanks to cheap land and labor, as well as bumper crops of soybeans. (more)

This year cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption. The problem is simple: It takes a whole lot of agricultural produce to create a modest amount of automotive fuel.

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year. If today's entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand.

[P-40]

I am telling you they got one.

There are a number of them on the market. When we do our new addition we are going to put one in that looks like an old fashioned wood stove but is not.

[hlmencken3]

Probably off by a factor ending in zero, hehe.

[betsyross1776]

Good I got one too. It saved me a bundle of cash in the ol heat bill last winter.Our local farmer grows the corn himself and it is cheap. If you buy the corn from your local farmer , you save a bundle.See local farmers do plant corn.lol

[ichabod1]

What strikes me now reading my post again is that the Nazis didn't have to turn a profit on their coal gasification.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

And to make matters worse, we keep adding unnecessary burdens to our own energy bottom line. Take the 2010 clean air specs for diesel trucks for example. To meet this next round of emission reductions, truck makers plan to have a tank for urea to be injected into exhaust gases to control NOx. Urea is made from natural gas. Without urea injection, the truck won't run. Four years from now, trucks will pull into truckstops and fill up with diesel and natural gas produced urea.
Think freight bills are high now ?

[chuckles]

....""Ethanol production from corn is a fossil-energy-losing proposition," >>>>

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html

Google is your friend. This crap has been put to bed for years. It depends on your bias what you choose to believe. Ethanol plants are being built and will produce net energy because they do produce net energy. Brazil has been doing it since the '80's. There have been many advances in production since then. As I have written here many times, corn is not the best feedstock for ethanol, but it still works. There isn't anything to keep you from using rice, potato's, peaches and pears, etc. The real clincher will come when we can produce COMERCIAL quantities of ethanol from cellulose. Until then, IMHO, we will do best with coal liquids( just like Hitler ran the war on). Ethanol can be made from coal also. The toothpaste is out of the tube now. We will go to more ethanol production from now on. It can't yet do away with oil, but oil isn't supplying all our needs now. If it wasn't energy positive, they couldn't build all the new plants because banks wouldn't lend the money.

Now you can either change your mind or look uninformed about the subject. Always look who paid for the studies that pooh pooh ethanol as a fuel. I myself have produced ethanol for 25 cents a gallon a few years ago. At today's prices, it would be around $1 a gallon. I'm sure commercial producers can beat that. The reason this has been fought by the gubmint( you know why "big oil fought it), was because the gubmint thought you might make your own and take a swig without paying the nearly $25 a 100 proof gallon tax. That's almost $50 tax( state and federal) for every 200 proof gallon of fuel the government thought they may lose.

When we are producing 50% of our energy needs from crops, are you going to insist that it's some conspiracy to extract government money for farmers? The technology is there and has been there for years to make ethanol from crops profitably. The patent for cellulose conversion to sugars is # 5,000,000,000 and has been there for years. The problem is producing the enzyme in commercial quantities cheaply enough. They have been extracting the starch from corn( and other crops) for ethanol production and still using the leftovers for other products for decades.Once the "new" wears off ethanol, it will be cheaper than gasoline. Today the futures are within 50 cents a gallon and closing.

Coal to liquids and coal to gas are still my favorites because we have so much of it and we could tell the ragheads and Chavez's of the world to go jump, but it will take decades to get the infrastructure to replace oil based fuels. Until then, ethanol is cheap, quick, and clean. Don't be a pooh pooher, you will be wrong.

[pabianice]

A History Channel show recently noted that the world's ability to produce enough food exceeds current population by 20%. Cut that ability significantly and billions will die. But the chance of such large-scale ethanol production is ridiculous.

[P-40]

injected into exhaust gases to control NOx

The new diesel engine designs that come out in 2007 are supposed to deal with the NOx problems without the problems you mention...although the idea of taking a whiz in your tank is not without some upside...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The 2010 blows right by 2007. The 2007 is EGR or Exhaust Gas Recirculation. The next level is SCR or Selective Catalytic Reduction. 2010 is an 80 percent reduction of 2007 NOx rules. Mack and Volvo have confirmed the urea route is their solution to 2010.

[railroader]

"Most of the newest plants coming up burn coal. The huge amount of co2 produced in ethanol production, not to mention by burning coal or natural gas (or even waste), means environmentalists will never accept ethanol as fuel."

Actually, most, and perhaps all ethanol plants recover CO2 and covert it to a refrigerated liquid, which can be used for cold storage warehouses, dry ice and beverage carbonation.

[Oberon]

If ethanol were a net energy producer (and it's not)...

Of COURSE it's not. It's a fuel. It's a means of storing energy in a form that's convenient to handle and easy to use in engines built with current technology.

Solar, wind, hydro, and nuke are all energy sources. Ethanol, on the other hand, is a fuel, a stepping stone in the pathway between an energy source and cars. It doesn't matter if it's inefficient...it's in a form a car can use. Efficiency will improve as production comes online.

"But," you say, "If it costs more energy in fossil fuel than you can get out of ethanol, why not just use the fossil fuel and be that much ahead?" The answer is that we won't always be supporting the ethanol (or for that matter methanol) process with fossil fuels.

If this is to ever work, we must start somewhere. The first diesel engine was built before there was such a thing as diesel fuel. The short-term impracticality of the device was more than offset by long-term utility.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Correct. Try burning coal in your car.

[thackney]

The first diesel engine was built before there was such a thing as diesel fuel.

What?!? An engine was built before there was any fuel to run or test it? Care to support that claim?

[dalereed]

Eliminate all subsidies and we won't have to put up with crappy ethanol in fuel!

[P-40]

Mack and Volvo have confirmed the urea route is their solution to 2010.

That sounds like a piss poor approach to take. :)

Are you familiar with the redesign I am talking about. My understanding is that it dealt enough with the NOx problem to satisfy most of the federal regulations, but not those of some states.

[P-40]

An engine was built before there was any fuel to run or test it?

Good one. :)

That should be a capital D in the first use of the word.

[TKDietz]

"Ethanol production from corn is a fossil-energy-losing proposition," Patzek told the Canadian National Farmer's Union:


It probably would be in Canada because their climate makes it such that they do not produce nearly as many bushels of corn per acre as we do. The recent comprehensive studies all tend to say that ethanol contains roughly 25% more energy than we have to expend to produce it in this country. There is a positive energy balance, not by much, but there is a positive energy balance. That's what scientists who have really actually studied this issue in recent years believe. That's what our government believes. "Experts" claiming different are looking at old data. Things have changed over the years. We produce a lot more corn per acre on average than we did decades ago and are able to produce more ethanol per bushel than we used to be able to produce. The whole process has become more efficient, and the energy balance is likely to improve a little more as time goes on even with corn as the feedstock. The numbers are likely to improve a lot more in ethanol's favor when cellulosic ethanol really gets going. Ethanol will never fulfill more than a small portion of our transportation fuel needs, but every little bit helps.

[TKDietz]

"The huge amount of co2 produced in ethanol production..."

And the big ethanol plants collect it and sell it in liquid form.

[Oberon]

I didn't say there wasn't any fuel...I said there wasn't diesel fuel. The original prototype was designed to burn coal dust.

From the web:

"Baron von Krupp and Machinenfabrik Augsburg Nurnberg Company in Germany backed Rudolf Diesel financially as well as providing engineers to work with him on the development of an engine that would burn coal dust, because there were mountains of useless coal dust piled up in the Ruhr valley. The first experimental engine was built in 1893 and used high pressure air to blast the coal dust into the combustion chamber. This engine exploded and further developments of using coal dust as a fuel failed, however a compression ignition engine that used oil as fuel was successful and a number of manufacturers were licensed to build similar engines."

You can also read the following here:

"Diesel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine stood as an example of Diesel's vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the "original" biodiesel. He thought that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine."

[IamConservative]

The first diesel engine was built before there was such a thing as diesel fuel.

What?!? An engine was built before there was any fuel to run or test it? Care to support that claim?

A "diesel" engine, technically a compression ignition engine, can run on straight vegetable oil, kerosene, coal oil, etc.