What gets me Occupied is that you are always claiming that ethanol is a net energy loser and citing this Pimentel guy's study as the basis for your claim. Pimentel is a nut. That guy also says that gasoline is a net energy loser, that it takes 10% more energy make gasoline than you get from the final product. In his calculations he uses all sorts of data that is outdated and just wrong, he makes false assumptions, and he goes way too far when he does things like factoring in the energy it took to manufacture the tractor that is used in the fields and the calories farm workers expend working the fields. Those tractors would be made anyway whether there was an ethanol industry or not and those workers would have to eat anyway whether they were working on a farm raising ethanol feedstocks or at an ethanol plant or not. The guy is full of crap and you ought to know that by now.
Ethanol's net energy gain is very slight. The recent comprehensive studies put the gain at about 25% over how much energy it takes to produce ethanol. Not only do we have to expend almost as much energy to make the ethanol as we get from the final product, but there is just no way we could produce enough ethanol to supply more than a small portion of our transportation fuel needs, even if we are able to expand production with cellulosic ethanol technology. Ethanol is obviously not the answer to our energy problems, but it can supplement our needs for a while. There is nothing wrong with supplementing our fuel supply.
With gas prices as high as they are, I think ethanol could actually stand up on it's own without subsidies, and I'd like to see us at least try to ween the industry off of these. It's actually a fairly low cost fuel to produce, relative to gasoline prices today. That's why we're seeing so much investment in the industry. These new ethanol plants popping up will pay for themselves in a year or two. Profits are huge now in the ethanol business. It's creating jobs, and it's keeping some of our money here, rather than in the hands of crazy Arabs or evil little dictators.
I'm all for coal gasification too. I'd like to see us use whatever we can use economically to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I'm all for drilling more here, producing fuel from tar sands and oil shale, whatever works. It worries me no end to be so dependent on foreigners for our energy supply, foreigners who in many cases would stab us and do stab us in the back every chance they get. This is a matter of national security. In my opinion, we need to diversify into other fuels to replace as much imported fuel as we can. As time goes on it may very well turn out that something like coal gasification really pans out and becomes far cheaper than ethanol to produce without being particularly damaging to the environment. The fuel ethanol industry would then either die out or if it's still reasonably economical we might still see ethanol being produced as a way to get rid of excess crop production rather than just dumping the excess product in other countries below costs. That happens a lot more now than you might think. We are not hurting for food in this country and if we don't go too nutty with mandated ethanol we ethanol production will never hurt our food supply. Fuel ethanol for a while at least will be a money maker that covers at least a small portion of our transportation fuel needs. All we need to do is keep on our politicians and try not to let them get too nutty with mandates, because when they mandate a lot of ethanol in our gasoline and the government created demand exceeds supply that will drive fuel prices up.
It's not just Pimental. I've been keeping up on this since the '70s and until recently all of the studies have shown net energy loss of at best break even. Now all of a sudden there are claims that there is a net energy gain. It's kind of like the global warming stuff. First the tree huggers were claiming global cooling now it's global warming, and no real evidence for either. The underlying thermodynamics of the ethanol production process hasn't changed and will remain unchanged for the life of the universe. So what's changed is the
assumptions. If I'm allowed to change my assumptions at will I can make a model predict anything I want from net energy loss to net energy gain, so I'm suspicious when all of a sudden there are tax dollars to be garnered at the net energy gain position and nothing to be gained at the net energy loss assumption. Call it natural cynicism at work when the academic and business community sees a way to get a share of the pelf that the government plunders from the taxpayers.
In addition I know Pimental - took a course from him long ago(or rather knew him since I haven't seen him in decades), and at the time he struck me as pretty sharp.
Those tractors would be made anyway whether there was an ethanol industry or not and those workers would have to eat anyway whether they were working on a farm raising ethanol feedstocks or at an ethanol plant or not.
Yes, but if you're looking at energy production then the balance has to take into account every input. Just like business determining profit or loss - you have to take into account all expenses. You can't just determine it by price of goods sold minus cost of goods. You have to take into account taxes leases, etc. to determing the true output.
On coal gassification and liquid synfuel I read an article that stated there was a steady supply, but now when I google it, I can't find the article. I know the process has been around since the turn of the previous century - the Nazis used it during WWII when their petroleum supplies were cut off and they lost Ploesti. I also know that the southern company (bunch of dickheads management wise, but not bad at routine engineering) has been sucking at the government trough on making cheap and more efficient liquid synfuel since the early '80s. They havd a demo plant that was cranking out quite a few barrels, but when gas prices got cheaper, then they stopped pursuing it. I understand that they've got a quarter billion dollar grant of our tax money to restart this process.
Frankly I see a lot more benefit in this than in ethanol since we have such huge coal reserves, and there isn't any way to fudge the energy output predictions by changing the assumptions to fit what you want the results to be like you can with ethanol.
The car and driver expose on ethanol/e85 that was posted here a few weeks ago was one of the most objective looks at the stuff. If you haven't read it you should.