Posted on 04/11/2008 9:51:22 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
Energy: The world's poor are learning what happens when government subsidizes the burning of food. It's time to end this madness and let the market decide if any biofuels make sense.
For most Americans, the rising prices at the supermarket are definitely an annoyance, but hardly a threat to life and health. It's a different story in countries like Haiti, where food inflation has led to real hunger and, last week, to riots.
News reports say the poorest Haitians are trying to get by on cookies made with dirt, vegetable oil and salt. Food riots also have roiled Egypt and led to a general strike in Burkina Faso in West Africa. The high cost of corn, wheat, soybeans and other basics of the world's diet could soon start bringing down governments.
It already has set back the fight to reduce global poverty. World Bank Chairman Robert Zoellick estimates that "the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years."
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Yeah, that is interesting. But from the home page it looks like they are pushing cellulosic ethanol which, according to David Pimentel, is worse than corn ethanol.
But I think doing energy balance studies is not the way to go. It should be based on cost, not energy in versus energy out. If the cost of the energy input is zero, then it doesn't matter what the balance is. Likewise, if the cost of the process is high, say because of huge labor cost or high tech maintenance for example, then it doesn't matter if you have a good energy ratio.
I'm not so sure of that. Although no one makes ethanol from rice food is fungible. If corn is too expensive people buy wheat, if that drives up the price of wheat people buy rice. Burning corn is going to increase all food prices.
Ethanol is produced world-wide. The US accounts for one third of the world production. China produced about a third that we did in 2004. The Chinese quadrupled that number by 2007. I doubt if they increased quadrupled grain production but they sure are controlling grain exports:
"Early this year, to control demand, it [China] began curbing grain exports through quotas and taxes. It promised continuing supplies to Hong Kong. But now grain importers there have had to pledge that they will not re-export. Diplomats say that China's caution has even affected the flow of food to North Korea, an old ally heavily reliant on shipments from abroad. Aid workers say North Korea is facing its worst food-supply crisis since a famine in the late 1990s." -- Economist
Ethanol fuel is a world-wide phenomenon. The EU wants to increase ethanol use to 5.75% by 2010.
It should be based on costs, and ethanol is
a dollar cheaper even including the tax credit
BIG OIL gets. It cost farmers here about 300 bucks to
do an acre of corn.Get 140 bushels an acre of which
1/4 will be for ethanol, and 3/4 for the rest.
The ethanol part is 35 bushlels makes 90 gal ethanol
worth 250 bucks and other products worth the same.
The other 3/4 or 105 bushels is about 6000 lbs
of cattle feed that makes 1200 lbs of meat and
other animal by-products.Meat worth $3000, by-
products a hundred. So what do we have for $300
put into an acre by a farmer, over $3500 of which
if corn is 4 bucks the farmer grossed $560.Finally
getting more......than he put in. Value increased
10 above farm level icosts seems very good,
to me. This figuring is a breakdown
based on estimates of 1/4 of corn crop used
in ethanol plants. You see the ethanol dollars is
a small part of cost and profits on the whole corn
crop, but the big factor is what food middlemen do and speculators are doing to the the prices based on all
the rumors and controversy...Ed
According to your numbers, ethanol is $2.77 a gallon wholesale. But since ethanol has only 70% the fuel value of gasoline it really costs $3.96 a gallon.
The current wholesale gasoline price is only about $2.40 a gallon.
That makes gasoline $1.56 cheaper than ethanol.
If speculators can sell corn at $5.00 a bushel and if they sell all the corn they contract to buy, then $5.00 a bushel is the correct market price for corn. Would things be any different if there were no speculators and farmers sold the corn directly to the refineries? Would farmers sell the corn for less simply because farmers are nicer than speculators?
If they did there would soon be a shortage of corn on the market.
The energy requirement in the study does not count the sun input into the corn/ethanol. If it did, it would be an order or two of magnitude higher. We went through that exercise once on FreeRepublic.
It is a strawman issue.
It is if you start counting sunlight that falls on the earth regardless of what you do with it. But when you start counting the coal consumed and power from our electric grid along with the petroleum consumed, it is a real comparison. There is no doubt we have limits to our energy sources. Selecting one that consumes more than it puts out doesn't appear to me to be the wisest choice in a time of expensive fuel.
Do you understand that crude oil is a blend of many different hydrocarbon molecules and they don't all make into gasoline and diesel?
Were do you get wholesale price of gas that cheap.
My station guy only makes 15-20 cents gal.
Your mayh is stupid and has no reality to
the actual use of the ethanol/gas mixture.
And in the 10 % blend I burn, the cleaner burning
mix gives me an extra mile per gal in my V8s.
So the 70% of 1/10 of the mix is giving me gal with
135,000 BTUs instead of 140,000 BTUs for regular.
The loss everyone bitches about isn’t there.
It is another strawman issue put out by liars. The
cleaner burn gives little better mileage and less
emissions for cleaner air. Ed
I know they can’t make it all into gas.But you guys
have got to understand farmers are tired of living
on the dole, and the corn, soybeans, etc can’t go
back to all being just people food. Their co-ops
will make ethanol, they will sell corn,carrots, apples, beets to hunters to feed the deer, soy chemicals
will be used in plastics, corn in plastic bags, and as long as they keep increasing output so that the bins
have corn, you have no legimate grip against them or ethanol The only legitimate grip is against speculators,
who only have to risk a small amount of their money
when they buy an option on farm products, which gives
them no restraint and they are going crazy driving up
the prices, because they have real low risk involved.
Congress can change investment rules which
would solve most of the inflated values. Ed Hubel
Some words from an expert who by the way
can type and punctuate.
Ethanol production does not reduce the amount of food available for human consumption. Ethanol is produced from field corn which is primarily fed to livestock and is undigestible by humans in its raw form. The ethanol production process produces not only fuel but valuable livestock feed products.
Every 56-pound bushel of corn used in the dry mill ethanol process yields 18 pounds of distillers grains, a good source of energy and protein for livestock and poultry. Similarly, a bushel of corn in the wet mill ethanol process creates 13.5 pounds of corn gluten feed and 2.6 pounds of high-protein corn gluten meal, as well as corn oil used in food processing.
Importantly, ethanol production utilizes only the starch portion of the corn kernel, which is abundant and of low value. While the starch is converted to ethanol, the protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber are sold as high-value livestock feed (distillers grains). Protein, which is left intact by the ethanol process, is a highly valued product in world food and feed markets. Aside from preserving the protein, a considerable portion of the corn’s original digestible energy is also preserved in the distillers grains.
Distillers grains have an average protein content (28 to 30%) that is typically at least three times higher than that of corn, making it a valuable ingredient in livestock and poultry diets. In 2006/07, more than 12 million metric tons of distillers grains were produced by ethanol biorefineries and fed to livestock and poultry. It is estimated that distillers grains displaced more than 500 million bushels of corn from feed rations last year, allowing that corn to be used in other markets.
It also is important to remember the amount of field corn actually used for human food is just a small fraction of the total corn supply. For example, cereal accounted for just over one percent of total corn use in 2005.
The overwhelming majority of U.S. corn, including exported corn, feeds livestock—not humans. There is a popular misconception that corn is exported from the U.S. to feed those in malnourished countries, and thus ethanol use will diminish exports to these countries. The truth is the majority of corn exports are used to feed livestock in developed countries. Importantly, the U.S. ethanol industry is helping to satisfy foreign demand for high-protein, high-energy feedstuffs by exporting more than 1 million metric tons of distillers grains to countries around the world in 2005.
Ed Hubel
Lots of people never understand the huge benefit of free markets to achieve much better results than central planners could ever hope to do. It seems that we are always one step away from true disaster brought to us by arrogant, egocentric individuals who “know better.” Let free people participate in an unfettered marketplace and we have cornucopia, don’t and we inherit a downward spiral of shortages, nonsensical allocations, thieves and hoarders, and forceful corruption of society.
In Colorado and Oklahoma. But that was in January. I've found a better site with more current numbers. Nationwide the price in March was $2.71/gallon.
Here's a comparison of fuel mileage. Gasoline vs E85 ethanol. With 15% ethanol, there was only 82% of the mileage of gasoline. A test tells the story of ethanol vs. gasoline
Here's another from Consumer Reports:
"The fuel economy of the Tahoe dropped 27 percent when running on E85 compared with gasoline, from an already low 14 mpg overall to 10 mpg (rounded to the nearest mpg). This is the lowest fuel mileage we’ve gotten from any vehicle in recent years. With the retail pump price of E85 averaging $2.91 per gallon in August, according to the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks petroleum and other fuel prices, a 27 percent fuel-economy penalty means drivers would have paid an average of $3.99 for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. When we calculated the Tahoe’s driving range, we found that it decreased to about 300 miles on a full tank of E85 compared with about 440 on gasoline. So you have to fill up more often with E85.
"You could expect a similar decrease in gas mileage in any current FFV. That’s because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline: 75,670 British thermal units per gallon instead of 115,400, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So you have to burn more fuel to generate the same amount of energy. In addition, FFV engines are designed to run more efficiently on gasoline. E85 fuel economy could approach that of gasoline if manufacturers optimized engines for that fuel."
So, according to these tests, fuel economy drops faster than you would expect using ethanol blended fuel.
Do you know of any studies (other than your own) showing improved mileage using ethanol blends?
It reduces food available because:
1. It occupies farmland that was could otherwise be used for growing human food.
2. It employs human expertise (farmers) who would otherwise be employed growing human food.
3. It uses mechanized equipment that would otherwise be used to grow human food.
And what do livestock feed?
Not according to this article. Livestock producers are having to look for alternative sources to replace that starch.
But since ethanol started about 15 years ago
the farmers have increased production to cover
it as well as increases in exports.Like from
8 billion bushels to almost 14 billion. So the 1/4
of the 14B used for ethanol leaves 10.5 Billion
bushels for food/feeding.An increase of over 25%
of corn used mainly for food/feeding 15 years ago.
And if other countries who needed food bad, and
exported food when they shouldn’t have(and some have
stopped exporting) hadn’t of sent the wrong signals
to the world markets our farmers would have more acres
corn to help. But when Mex sued us in the WTO because
we dumped cheap corn for years, hurting their farmers,
and populous places like China export food, and short
their people year after year, market gets wrong
directions and a lot of our land sets idle, farmers are
shoved in a bind and farm coops/business found ethanol
was a way to get markets they needed. But our farmers
still increased output for food as well as making a
little extra market with ethanol.In light of increases
I don’t feel ethanol has shorted us.Ed Hubel
Do you know what E85 is??????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
Your making erroneous statements.
You know so damn much..... but it is all wrong.
Our V8s get an extra mile per gal with 10-15%
blend, because the whole mix burns cleaner.
If 10% of a blend is 75,000 btus and other
90% is 115,000 btus then the blended mix has
111,000 btus, so there isn’t a great loss of
btus in the mix and if as in our experiece you
get 6% better mileage due to the mix burning cleaner
putting out more energy, you’ve gained.
Back to question what is E85????
Folks get stampeded by so much they think they
know that is all wrong. What is E85...
Anybody here know. Or are you’aal just letting
speculators and BIG OIl snow you. And
That is what E85 is.......A snow job by BIG OIl
to hurt ethanol and by GM to be PC with stupid,
dunderhead, greenies...Ed Hubel.
But how much of that increase has come at the expense of other grains. The world's population has increased by about 25%, yet in the last 15 years world wheat production has remained relatively flat, from 590 million metric tons to 610 million tons, only a 3.3% increase.
So world wheat production is a responsibility of
US farmers(Overall food volume has went up
to feed the world).That is stupid under the the way
conditions have been. Three conditions actually,
that sent the market wrong signals to not increase
wheat as much as it should. First countries with huge
starving populations exported food, second our gov giving
price supports just covering production costs,
and third you who don’t want any price supports and
yet want food for nothing. Farmers can’t up production
if the system tells them it isn’t wanted, or system
tells them it must be done for nothing. They can only
do so much for nothing. By the way what is
E85????????????????????????????
"We called Dale Schroeder, administrator of fleet vehicles for the Iowa Department of Administrative Services. That state has over 1,000 E85 cars in its vehicle fleet (mandated by the governor and the state legislature). Iowa started using E85 vehicles in 1991. So, we asked Schroeder, what is the impact on gas mileage of E85 in real-world conditions?
"In the first few years, I kept very close track of this," says Schroeder. "We had a 17% reduction in fuel economy with E85."
"Still, that answer is not so neat and tidy. Most people -- including state workers -- can't always put E85 in a car. There are still only a few hundred pumps nationwide that dispense E85. So, at least until recently, few flex-fuel cars have burned E85 exclusively. They will burn a tank of E85, then a tank of the more readily available E10, then another E85. As a result, the 17% reduction that Schroeder reports is based on his fleet burning about 55% E85, and 45% E10. "I was told that the [mileage] reduction could be 25%, so I didn't think 17% was too bad," he says.
E85 and gas mileage: Where lies the truth?
I can imagine a comparison of ethanol blend vs gasoline where ethanol comes out on top. All you need to do is test it with a vehicle that doesn't run well on low-octane fuel. Since ethanol has a very high octane rating, the test will show ethanol getting better mileage. But you don't need to add 15% ethanol to increase octane to the point where high compression engines will run well on it. Lower percentage mixes will work.
The jury is still out on whether, on balance, ethanol reduces emissions. Carbon monoxide emissions fell but some other toxic compounds, like formaldehyde and ozone are created. Under some conditions hydrocarbon pollutants increase.
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