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Blindness on Biofuels
Washington Post ^ | 1/24/07 | Robert J. Samuelson

Posted on 01/26/2007 5:55:38 AM PST by randita

Blindness on Biofuels

By Robert J. Samuelson

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

President Bush joined the biofuels enthusiasm in his State of the Union address, and no one can doubt the powerful allure. Farmers, scientists and venture capitalists will liberate us from insecure foreign oil by converting corn, prairie grass and much more into gasoline substitutes. Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases. Already, production of ethanol from corn has surged from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 5 billion in 2006. Bush set an interim target of 35 billion gallons in 2017 on the way to the administration's ultimate goal of 60 billion in 2030. Sounds great, but be wary. It may be a mirage.

The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil: higher fuel taxes to prod Americans to buy more gasoline-efficient vehicles and tougher federal fuel economy standards to force auto companies to produce them. True, Bush supports tougher -- but unspecified -- fuel economy standards. But the implied increase above today's 27.5 miles per gallon for cars is modest, because the administration expects gasoline savings from biofuels to be triple those from higher fuel economy standards.

The politics are simple enough. Americans dislike high fuel prices; auto companies dislike tougher fuel economy standards. By contrast, everyone seems to win with biofuels: farmers, consumers, capitalists. American technology triumphs. Biofuels create rural jobs and drain money from foreign oil producers. What's not to like? Unfortunately, this enticing vision is dramatically overdrawn.

Let's do some basic math. In 2006, Americans used about 7.5 billion barrels of oil. By 2030, that could increase about 30 percent to 9.8 billion barrels, projects the Energy Information Administration.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: biofuel; energy; ethanol
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To: Neoliberalnot

No, we don't control the weather, but a lot of the country controls the water input.

Even with an enormous crop there may be a shortfall, but that will just spur even greater production in coming years.

I'm no big proponent of ethonal, but low crop production probably isn't a big factor as to why it may not work out in the long run.


21 posted on 01/26/2007 7:26:57 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (If America falls, darkness will cover the face of the earth for a thousand years.)
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To: Blueflag

Fuels comprised of shorter hydrocarbon chains carry more of their energy as Hydrogen. The ratio of H/C goes up as the length goes down.

As others have pointed out, biofuels are derived from the current rather than prehistoric carbon cycles. Unfortunately the world appetite for energy has the capacity to completely overwhelm the natural carbon cycle. We would have to denude the planet several times over on a regular basis in order to replace fossil fuels.

Another point missed is that transferring combustion of Carbon to combustion of Hydrogen is a completely wrong approach if you buy into the opinion that significant anthropogenic global warming is occurring. Water vaporor is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

With that said, I like biofuels, I'd like to see or create an enabling technology that will allow individuals to exploit various niche sources as they may be available.


22 posted on 01/26/2007 7:28:24 AM PST by Jack of all Trades (Liberalism: replacing backbones with wishbones.)
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To: UpAllNight

I see ethanol production actually putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Fosil fuel carbons will be used to form the new fuel. New and old carbon released instead of just the old.


23 posted on 01/26/2007 7:28:40 AM PST by Cold Heart
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To: Cold Heart

--I see ethanol production actually putting more carbon into the atmosphere. Fosil fuel carbons will be used to form the new fuel. New and old carbon released instead of just the old.--

We are putting more into the atmosphere but we are also removing more. The net carbon added to the atmosphere is reduced.

It sort of like this. A guy presently buys a case of beer a week and stores it in his garage. At the end of the year he will have 365 cases in the garage and a mad wife. Now, to make her happy, he buys a case and a six pack each week but drinks a case. Now they are both happier.


24 posted on 01/26/2007 7:34:39 AM PST by UpAllNight
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To: randita

mark for later


25 posted on 01/26/2007 7:40:46 AM PST by delacoert
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To: pabianice
US restaurants produce 28,800,000,000 gallons of used cooking oil per year.

That's not quite 100 gallons for every man, woman and child in the country. Are you sure about this?

26 posted on 01/26/2007 7:50:08 AM PST by BikerTrash
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To: thulldud
The following link is about a U. of Missouri story on a turkey plant that uses it's waste to run the plant.

http://www.msu.edu/~orlicchr/CahngeWorldTech3.htm

Stories like this and the fact that cars like my 2007 Honda Accord gets better mileage than my 2001 Accord are lost in all the formulas. I believe that innovators are coming into the market place at speeds never before witnessed. There are as many new fantastic players in the energy business as was in the Internet business - some will die but the industry will grow. Innovation is the new global life force.

27 posted on 01/26/2007 8:00:52 AM PST by q_an_a
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To: UpAllNight

Diesel burned to plant and harvest and transport the corn.

Coal burned to make electricity for converting corn to ethanol.

Ethanol, with current year carbon from atmospere, burned as fuel returns carbon to atmosphere. (Beer drinker drinks all the beer at the end of the year)

I see an increase in carbon released.


28 posted on 01/26/2007 8:23:26 AM PST by Cold Heart
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To: Grut

Nice sentiment, but let's come at this scientifically.

CO2 that's put in the air by burning hydrocarbon fuels of ANY source has always found the same 'sinks' to go back into -- (1) ocean water, (2) atmosphere (3) chlorophyta (plants that photosynthesize CO2 + H2O --> CxHxOx + O2).

IF the same mass of carbon (from any source) is oxidized to produce energy, then the ONLY delta is the mass of the chlorophyta as a carbon sink.

The benefit you speak of is that by increasing the mass of plants (that you happen to convert to fuel later) that can trap CO2, i.e., we increase one particular carbon sink, we can reduce the increase or reduce the vapor pressure and PPM of atmospheric CO2 ... thereby reducing CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

I can buy the argument that increasing plant biomass can reduce atmospheric CO2, but the idea that changing the carbon source as the cause for reducing greenhouse gas is mathematically and scientifically unfounded. For YEARS we have been 'pouring' so-called fossil-fuel carbon into the atmosphere, and yet the ppm of atmospheric CO2 has not increased on a corresponding, 1:1 basis. This is because the CO2 doesn't just go into the air and stay there. As the vapor pressure (and ppm) of CO2 goes up, it moves into existing carbon sinks at a higher rate. IT just so happens that when we added more CO2 to the air, the plant kingdom responded to the available nutrient increase and naturally grew more plants. And as we upped CO2 concentrations in the air we pushed more CO2 into the oceans (to not so good effect on some organisms).

What's my point? The GAINS (in reducing atmospheric CO2) come from increasing the size of the carbon sink, not the fact that the source of the carbon is shifted. The carbon is ALREADY recycled; growing more plants increases the size of one particular sink. (the atmosphere is the one sink people worry about the most).

Whew ...

Now I am ready to be corrected again ;-)


29 posted on 01/26/2007 8:26:52 AM PST by Blueflag (Res ipsa loquitor)
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To: Cold Heart

--I see an increase in carbon released.--

But the NET released (burned less recycled) is less.

Say now we are releasing X units. With biofuels we will be releaseing Y units where Y is greater than X. But we will be capturing Z units.

The net will be Y - Z which will be less than Z.


30 posted on 01/26/2007 8:31:25 AM PST by UpAllNight
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To: Jack of all Trades

Couple quickies --

(1) the (substantial) energy stored in the hydrogen bonds of short-chain hydrocarbon fuels is not available to use as fuel energy; and

(2) instead of denuding the earth to produce biofuels, (which they would) AND consuming ABSURD amounts of 'fresh' water, we should look at aquatic chlorophyta (green plants that grow in the oceans-- plankton, kelp, Ulva lactuca, usw) as a means to capture carbon.

Just to really scare the greenies ... We could use NUCLEAR POWER plants to 'sterilize' municipal sewage; use the sewage as the nitrogen and phosphorous source the phytoplankton would love; use the waste heat from the reactors to drive the fermentation (or other process), and use the biomass of the phytoplankton to produce methane and fertilizer. Oh, the phytoplankton are also naturally pretty good heavy metal sinks as well, ( not as good as water hyacinths ) so we could clean up the sewage as we turn it (and sunlight and CO2) into fuel.

OK, kevlar now on ...


31 posted on 01/26/2007 8:37:00 AM PST by Blueflag (Res ipsa loquitor)
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To: par4
but the US doesn't support sugar cane farming.

Because our climate doesn't support sugar cane farming except in Florida, Rio Grande Valley and Hawaii. Heavy rainfall (~50 inches a year) and little/no frost are not prevalent conditions in most of the US.

Sugar Cane League

32 posted on 01/26/2007 9:07:04 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: UpAllNight

The only way the net released will be less is if you do not convert all the coal/carbon to fuel, if you stockpile it.

The carbon containing residue is to be used for animal feed, not stockpiled. I basically see all the carbon scavanged from the atmosphere returned in a relatively short carbon cycle. The carbon corn cycle is neutral in the long run.

Reading through the conflicting reports, the whole corn ethanol fuel cycle is a net loss of fossil fuel generated energy. We will be using fossil fuel to put additional carbon into the atmosphere. Using nuclear power for ethanol production is the only way I see to avoid adding carbon.

If you are going to use nuclear, use it for all electric cars with super batteries/capacitors.


33 posted on 01/26/2007 9:12:30 AM PST by Cold Heart
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To: Blueflag

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding - are you saying that the formation of H2O in the combustion of hydrocarbons is not exothermic?


34 posted on 01/26/2007 9:16:41 AM PST by Jack of all Trades (Liberalism: replacing backbones with wishbones.)
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To: par4
"...but the US doesn't support sugar cane farming."

That's not true. Sugar cane and sugar beets are big business here and our sugar industry is well protected by our government. The problem is that we just don't have a whole lot of farmland where sugar cane (or sugar beet) growing would be profitable. If we were on the equator like Brazil and had millions and millions of acres where sugar cane thrives year 'round things would be different. Try to grow sugar cane in Nebraska or Iowa or Minnesota any of our other big corn producing states. There just aren't a lot of places in this country where sugar cane will grow well enough to be a commercially viable crop. Average yields aren't just fantastic in the few places in this country where sugar cane is grown commercially, and and what little cane and beets we do grow commercially here already bring in a high price for production of table sugar. Beet and cane growers don't get crop subsidies like corn farmers, wheat farmers, cotton growers, and so on, but the government protects them from low priced sugar from abroad so our sugar producers can command a high price for their product. That's why they don't use sugar in Coke anymore. Our sugar production capacity is very limited and prices are kept artificially high by the government.
35 posted on 01/26/2007 9:19:00 AM PST by TKDietz (")
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To: Cold Heart

--Reading through the conflicting reports, the whole corn ethanol fuel cycle is a net loss of fossil fuel generated energy. --

I think I see your problem. You are assumming incorrectly that it takes more than one btu of fossil fuel to create on btu of biofuel.


36 posted on 01/26/2007 9:27:31 AM PST by UpAllNight
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To: BikerTrash

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&cid=1128767991183&c=MGArticle


37 posted on 01/26/2007 10:15:20 AM PST by alrea (Because the press told them to, day in and day out, 24/7, headline after headline, for six years...)
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To: Neoliberalnot
"Was anyone aware that Brazil will soon be independent of foreign oil partly because of sugarcane-produced ethanol."

Are you aware that we actually produce more ethanol than Brazil? I've been to Brazil a couple of times and have ridden in vehicles powered on pure ethanol. What they are doing is really cool. But, the average Brazilian uses far less fuel than the average American. Very few of them have cars. Most couldn't come close to being able to afford a car. In the Amazon region a lot of them are still paddling around in dugout canoes believe it or not. They don't even have roads there going from one town to the next.

The largest state in Brazil is Amazonia. The capitol of Amazonia is Manaus, a city of something like 1.5 million people, and when you fly into that city you will see that the the roads all stop not too far out from the city limits. Everything that comes in or out of that city comes by boat or plane. I used "taxis" a lot in villages outside the capitol and these taxis in most cases where motorcycles or scooters. Why have cars when the road stops at the edge of the village? There might be 25,000 people in a small town out there and only half a dozen cars and a few pickup trucks for hauling things around. I sat in one of these villages one time and drank with the district judge, the city attorney, and the town doctor and none of them had cars. The doctor gave me a ride back to my boat on his motorcycle. He said he had a car for a while but it was a pointless expense given that the roads didn't really go anywhere. If they went anywhere outside of town it was by plane or one of the many diesel powered enclosed floating buses you see everywhere down there.

It is true that Brazil is a country of something like 180 million people that no longer has to import foreign oil. It's that way though not just because they produce almost as much ethanol as we do, but because they have done a good job at tapping into their own oil supplies and because only a very small percentage of them actually own cars or light trucks for personal transportation.
38 posted on 01/26/2007 10:16:14 AM PST by TKDietz (")
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To: Jack of all Trades
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding - are you saying that the formation of H2O in the combustion of hydrocarbons is not exothermic?

Yes it is. And to produce the Hydrogen requires an equally powerful endothermic reaction. Plus the energy required to compress, store and transport it before you use it in your car. Hydrogen does not exist in any significant quantities except where combined with other atoms such as oxygen and carbon. It must first be separated from them and that takes energy.

39 posted on 01/26/2007 10:17:11 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: Mr. Lucky
Distillation removes none of the nutrients from corn other than sugar

Did you really mean to say this?

40 posted on 01/26/2007 10:18:15 AM PST by from occupied ga (Your most dangerous enemy is your own government)
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