Posted on 03/19/2008 10:16:36 PM PDT by neverdem
One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” Let’s look at some of the “wonders” of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.
Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.
Ethanol is 20-30% less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That’s enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel—oil and natural gas—to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers—all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10-12%.
Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn’t make it in a free market. That’s why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there’s a double tax—one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005.
There’s something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.
Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world’s largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.
It’s easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm-state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn’t support subsidized ethanol production. That’s the stick. Campaign contributions are the carrot.
The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there’s a large benefit for them. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his office to have a heart-to-heart—you or an ethanol executive?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol
“Cellulosic ethanol is chemically identical to ethanol from other sources, such as corn starch or sugar”
The cattle, poultry, & hogs that become the meat on your table, assuming you are not a vegan.
Thanks for that. I learn something new every day at FR!
I believe you can also make jelly & wine from the flowers of the Kudzu. Yum!
WE ARE SAVED! WE ARE SAVED!
In the State of Florida all high school seniors are required to take a semester of American Government and a semester of Economics. I know, I teach both courses at the AP, Honors and standard level for high school students. Problem is that I teach seniors and it's difficult to overcome 11 years of propaganda fed to them by whining liberals. It helps loads that I show them all sides of the subjects we cover in order to create a valid issue; versus the liberals who have only shown them one side (the liberal side) which obviously creates an agenda. Once the kids see the blatant manipulation to which they've been subjected, my task gets a little bit easier.
Article is bullcrap, and I’m a flaming redneck rightwing
gunnut, just google hubel458 to see my rightwing
credentials.First there is no subsidy pmts to farmers
as price is above support level.There is no shortage
of foodcorn, or graincorn or corn products, it just
the price has been driven up by speculators. Who have
gotten their money out of real estate, etc and are playing
the commodities market. Many times more money
is being played in farm product markets than years ago,
driving up prices. We were being sued by other nations
for dumping corn and cotton, hurting their farmers.
Most of last years corn acreage increase came from
cotton acres, and there still is a surplus of cotton,
and enough corn. Even though gov mandated etnanol
the 6 biggest companies won’t use it, but uses stuff
that is cancer causing and pollutes yhe water where forced
to by states. Any vehicle can burn 10% ethanol blend
and all our older engines run better on it, as it is an
oxygen carrier and aids in cleanerburning adding a
little millage and less emissions. My diary farmer friends
get no more for milk than years ago.But yet middlemen
expenses/greed has raised prices. It ain’t the corn.
Whaet at 4 dollars a bushel has 6 cents worth in bread
at 8 dollars 12 cents, and middleman adds 10 times that
6cent increase and has you beating on farms and corn,
It ain’t the corn. Granted middlemen have increased
expenses due to high oil, but a lot of high oil is also
due to speculators, IT AIN’T THE CORN....Ed Hubel
You ain't kidding. There is enough Kudzu in Alabama right now to fuel the US for a decade.
You can power a car with a 3 minute, two dollar, charge of compressed air and travel around 125 miles.
Are you driving such a car?
Can you provide a link for more information?
Even the price of popcorn has gone up because of the move to ethanol.
Actually from reading posts it is due to freepers buying and eating to watch dems self destruct.
Sure, this is a link to some videos that explain the technology and you can actually see the car on the road:http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=compressed+air+car&search_type=
Thanks for the link, the information for that car is found at: http://zeropollutionmotors.us/
If you want to travel 35 mph or faster it also requires fuel like gasoline.
The funny part about their zero pollution claim is that plugging the compressor in to pressurize the air tank makes the car primarily a coal powered car.
Well only thing you got right is we need more refineries.
I agree. Ethanol gives us more refineries. But we don’t
need mor forieng oil going through refineries.
Second there still is plenty of cotton surplus, as
we drop cotton acres, there are 200,000 cotton growers in Africa to take up slack who we hurt by dumping cheap
cotton. Mexico is getting 0ver 100,000 tons of corn
this month and there corn farmers are going to be able
to get back in because we are dumping 5 times as much.
Our farmers for years spent $2.50 a bushel to raise corn and got $2.00. Now due to cost driven up by energy
cost increase it cost $3.50, and they’d like to get
a little more.The only way to cut energy costs is to increase energy supplies which ethanol helps with.
And 10% ethanol doesn’t hurt any car. A anti-ethanol
type figuring the costs that fogets the extra 10 bucks or
more of other products from each busle is kinda
crooked.Plants using waste are operating at a third
the cost of using NG. The crap that it cost more than you get is the myth.There may not be profits like oil
investors make, but the was thing started as corn outlet.
Farmer coops originally started ethanol plants,
to get a place to sell what was making a loss for them,
then the big shots got into it, the big oil companies
won’t use it, and speculators have went wild driving
up the price. The speculators are in it because of increased amounts of money floating around and the money
people have pulled away from real estate, they still
got to do some to turn a profit, so they go to commodities.
Congresses mandate means shit as the big companies aren’t
doing it. They are using cancer causing, acording to lab tests, chemicals. The 5 billion gallons corn ethanol used
in a total of 400 billion gals of fuel, isn’t a huge
enticement for big shots to put money on commodities,
the big money supply is the reason. Last year we had 92
million acres of corn, The farm bill is mostly food stamps and CRP, and other conservation. CRP paid
to not farm 31 million acres. That land could be in
corn, whatever. I hate greenies, and ethanol is
not deep green idea. They are apoplectic that the farm
community is a little above water for a change and the CRP as land comes off of it is going back to crops.
They don’t want farms, they want CRP,etc, where land is weeds and bugs. They don’t want any energy increases
they want our economy busted, not cruizing along with plenty of energy. The main reason co\ngress wants
oxygen carriers in gas is to reb\duce pollution, but as soon as it looked like it might expand and add to the
supply we get huge codemnations of corn and farmers,
from all sides, using al lthe damn stupid excusea you can imaging. Today corn futures droopped on the threat of
the financial markets cutting back on leveraging.
If congress changed investment rules so that speculators
would have to put up more than a small fraction on
a futures buy, corn, other farm stuff would drop
like a small rock. Ed
Too Funny!!! Guilty as charged.
If all the corn produced in America last year were dedicated to ethanol production (14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would drop by 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline consumption in this country, we would need to appropriate all U.S. cropland, turn it completely over to corn-ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land for cultivation on top of that.From ZFacts.com:
The U.S. Energy Information Administration believes that the practical limit for domestic ethanol production is about 700,000 barrels per day, a figure they don't think is realistic until 2030. That translates to about 6 percent of the U.S. transportation fuels market in 2030. CATO Institute: Ethanol Makes Gasoline Costlier, Dirtier by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren
Corn ethanol subsidies totaled $7.0 billion in 2006 for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That's $1.45 per gallon of ethanol (and $2.21 per gal of gas replaced). Even with high gas prices in 2006, producing a gallon of ethanol cost 38¢ more than making gasoline with the same energy, so ethanol did need part of that subsidy. But what about the other $1.12. Not needed! So all of that became, $5.4 billion windfall of profits paid to real farmers, corporate farmers, and ethanol makers like multinational ADM. Why is it the farm states put up with this?!And this from Slate:
Where did those subsidies come from:
1. 51¢ per gallon federal blenders credit for $2.5 billion = your tax dollars.
2. $0.9 billion in corn subsidies for ethanol corn = your tax dollars.
3. $3.6 billion extra paid at the pump.
That's quite a bit when you figure it only made us 1.1% more energy independent and only reduced US greenhouse gases by 1/19 of 1%.
The ethanol lobby claims there's a 30 percent net gain in BTUs from ethanol made from corn. Other boosters, including Woolsey, claim there are huge energy gains (as much as 700 percent) to be had by making ethanol from grass.It's time for the lies and propaganda to stop and ethanol to be defunded.
But the ethanol critics have shown that the industry calculations are bogus. David Pimentel, a professor of ecology at Cornell University who has been studying grain alcohol for 20 years, and Tad Patzek, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-wrote a recent report that estimates that making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel itself actually contains.
The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas—from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining—requires around 22,000 BTUs.
In addition to their findings on corn, they determined that making ethanol from switch grass requires 50 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol yields, wood biomass 57 percent more, and sunflowers 118 percent more. The best yield comes from soybeans, but they, too, are a net loser, requiring 27 percent more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced. In other words, more ethanol production will increase America's total energy consumption, not decrease it. (Pimentel has not taken money from the oil or refining industries. Patzek runs the UC Oil Consortium, which does research on oil and is funded by oil companies. His ethanol research is not funded by the oil or refining industries*.)
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