Michael Wang is trying to promote ethanol. In my opinion, he is selectively considering only part of the energy required to process the ethanol and using that as a comparison to gasoline. On Fossil Energy inputs only, ethanol still takes more energy to process than gasoline, but has a positive balance. But it uses more energy than just that produced from Fossil Fuel. It also uses electricity generated from Nuclear and Hydro as well as others.
Anyway, what’s the bottom line? Does it make sense to use corn for biofuel based on energy input vs. energy output, or not?
His studies show, that when ALL energy inputs are counted, it takes more energy to process the ethanol from the grain, than is contained in the fuel itself.
This does not count the energy of the solar input to the farmer's field. It is only the process to plant, harvest, transport and process into ethanol. It also is giving credit in that all the energy used is not counted because the process also produces DDG and some of the energy inputs are allocated to that product.
And also, understanding that corn used for fuel is not the same as that used for food, do the benefits of using land to raise fuel corn outweigh the benefits of using food corn for food?
That is not clear to me. Domestic production of fuel has value. What value do you assign that?
Or is it just an economic decision to made by farmers? If so, is it a decision based on market prices or do subsidies queer the market?
Keep in mind this process is supported by subsidies. If the subsidies were applied equally to all domestic produced fuel, and our resources such as ANWR, Shale Oil, all Offshore, etc were opened to development, I believe we would get more domestically produced fuel and fewer imports. In time, this would lead to greater energy Independence. In my opinion, North America would be become energy independent. I am not sure if it would be enough for the US would. If the subsidy was large enough, existing technology using Fischer-Tropsch process coal-to-liquids could provide enough fuel, but I doubt it would be worth it versus buying from Mexico and Canada.
“That is not clear to me. Domestic production of fuel has value. What value do you assign that?”
Well, my question does sort of dictate a subjective answer. I guess I’m simply trying to ascertain whether it makes more sense to use the land to grow food or fuel. Hard to do when subsidies are involved. But when I look at the rising prices of corn products for human consumption it seems like we are getting little if any benefit as consumers.
I also see a vicious cycle for farmers. Corn for food prices go up so farmers plant more corn for food. That forces prices for corn for fuel to go up so the next year farmers plant more of that. In each case, the prices will go down because of a glut of corn for food or corn for fuel depending on which part of the cycle your in.
IN the end it seems we accomplish little in terms of energy dependence but pay more for anything made from corn.