Republicans Drunk on Ethanol

National Review Online ^ | October 12, 2007 | The Editors

[neverdem]

October 12, 2007, 8:45 a.m.

Republicans Drunk on Ethanol

By The Editors

It’s a depressing ritual. Every four years, as Iowans prepare to cast the first votes in the presidential-primary season, candidates descend on the corn-covered state and discover the miraculous properties of ethanol. The latest convert is Fred Thompson, who voted against ethanol subsidies when he was a U.S. senator but now says that ethanol is “a matter . . . of national security.” What he means is that he supports increasing federal assistance for ethanol production, on the grounds that this will reduce American dependence on oil from the Middle East. But, like most arguments for ethanol subsidies, this one is spurious.

First, even the biggest of proposed ethanol supports — an increase in mandated ethanol consumption from 7.5 billion gallons a year to 15 billion gallons a year, as called for in the energy bill Congress is currently debating — would barely dent America’s oil consumption, which is approximately 150 billion gallons annually. We could plant corn from New York to California and still not produce an equivalent amount of ethanol.

Second, only around 5 million automobiles in America are “flexible-fuel vehicles” — cars that are equipped to run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (known as E85). That’s out of 135 million registered passenger cars in the United States. Moreover, as the Dallas Morning News reported last year, the owners of almost all of these flex-fuel vehicles tend to fill them up with regular gas, owing to a scarcity of gas stations that sell E85. Simply mandating greater ethanol consumption won’t change that. A more drastic intervention — for example, requiring gas stations to sell E85 — would also be necessary. Some liberal groups have called for just that. Does Thompson agree with them? Conservative voters should hope not.

Thompson has cited high oil prices to defend his about-face on ethanol: “When I was in the Senate, I think oil was at $23 a barrel,” he told the Associated Press. But this is another red herring. Petroleum is a major input in the manufacture of ethanol — it is required not just to make ethanol, but to transport it to points of sale. In fact, there’s good evidence that making ethanol requires more petroleum than making gasoline does. So if high oil prices should make us want to use less oil, that’s an argument for diminishing our ethanol consumption right now, not boosting it.

None of this is to deny that there’s a legitimate market for ethanol. All gasoline is required to contain additives known as “oxygenates,” and ethanol is one of them. Gasoline blenders have turned increasingly to it since MBTE — another additive — was found to contaminate groundwater.

But the momentum behind federal support for ethanol militates toward production of far more than the market can absorb. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which enacted the initial ethanol mandate of 7.5 billion gallons a year, encouraged the ethanol industry to increase production dramatically. Now, reports of an ethanol glut suggest that the industry has overproduced — something that tends to happen when companies make production decisions based on government mandates rather than market signals.

The ethanol glut is inefficient, but it’s bad in other ways too. The diversion of corn from use as food to ethanol production has led to higher food prices — a side-effect that has finally gotten Congress’s attention. As farmers grow more corn in hopes of selling it to ethanol makers, they also threaten to disrupt the water supply in some regions. That’s because farmers are both planting new corn on formerly uncultivated soil, and converting acres already under cultivation toward corn and away from other, less water-intensive food crops. To put the current expansion of corn production into perspective, consider that we have more corn growing on American soil right now than at any time since World War II, when the farms of Europe had been devastated by war and America was feeding two continents.

There is no excuse for Congress to bail out the ethanol industry again by doubling a mandate that should not exist in the first place. If any major 2008 presidential candidate aside from John McCain opposes this heavy-handed dirigisme, he or she has yet to say so. McCain, for his part, deserves credit for taking a clear-eyed view of ethanol subsidies — even as he jokes that he drinks “a glass of ethanol every morning.” That position on ethanol is quite possibly the most sober in Washington.

[neverdem]

In fact many guys run water injectors on their race engines, farmers used water injectors on alcohol tractors to increase power as well, because the water vapor added extra 02 for extra power under load.

Do you have a link on that?

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[RFEngineer]

“But ethanol is a serious opportunity to defund Islamofascists, relatively painlessly and seamlessly.
“

Ethanol funds the middle east, and the midwest. You’re heart is in the right place, but your head is elsewhere.

Ethanol is a loser on every front. It would be nice if it weren’t, but it is.

[BOBTHENAILER]

There is more natural gas, fuel oil, crude oil, etc., used in making ethanol than you may imagine. A simple Google reflects some of that.

http://dnr.louisiana.gov/sec/EXECDIV/TECHASMT/alternative_fuels/ethanol/fuel_alcohol_1987/015.htm
In addition, when Brazil mandated the ethanol shift, it took 20 some years of higher taxes, subsidies, etc., to get where they are now.

The statement that higher food prices are a result of ethanol production is NOT HOGWASH.

It would be wonderful if the ethanol pipedream could come true overnight, but it won’t, at least not without paying a VERY HEAVY price. While we work away at it, we have more than ample production available, ANWR, continental US and offshore Gulf, to tide us over, if the Greenies will only let us get at it. I’m in the Oil & Gas business and in no way am I opposed to ethanol production, inasmuch as the more that is made, the easier it is to sell natural gas for high prices.

My guess is, while we work at making ethanol commercial, technology will yield a method of utilizing methane hydrates
commercially, and we have reserves of those off both coasts, that dwarf anything else we’re talking about here.

[lesser_satan]

Wow, FINALLY something I disagree with Fred on. Oh well, no candidate’s perfect, but Fred is close.

[supercat]

If ethanol was so bad, why do you think all high performance race car enthusiasts use it? ( nascar/ formula/drag racng)

The primary limiting factor on automotive engine power is air intake. An engine burning ethanol requires less air per unit output than one burning gasoline. That it requires more liquid fuel is not so much of a problem.

Further, water can mix with ethanol or methanol and render it non-flammable. This is a desirable feature in a racing fuel (since it means fires may be extinguished easily) but is much less desirable in a general-purpose automotive fuel where condensation may be a factor.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Google is so much fun:

Epilogue: Get this Wasteful Show Off the Road
The other negative aspect of this inefficient fuel is that numerous studies have found that ethanol creates less energy than is required to make it. Other studies have found that ethanol creates “slightly” more energy than is used in its production. Yet not one of these studies takes into account that when E85 is used, the vehicle’s fuel efficiency drops by at least 25% — and possibly by as much as 40%. Using any of the accredited studies as a baseline in an energy-efficiency equation, ethanol when used as a fuel is a net energy waste.

Google “Ethanol production food prices” and you get hundreds of articles that contain information, many of them much more technical than above, that show the downside of ethanol.

[Wonder Warthog]

"...just that simple distillation from corn mash isn't good enough to use for motor vehicle fuel, and the cost of making the ethanol anhydrous needs to be considered."

Note the boiling point. The second-stage distillation is probably run with waste heat from the first stage. The added "cost" to the making of ethanol is trivial. I'm sure in a modern ethanol plant that the ChemE's have used every energy-cutting cost feasible.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070126185045.htm

"Carnegie Mellon researchers have used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by more than 60 percent."

"The key to the Carnegie Mellon strategy involves redesigning the distillation process by using a multi-column system together with a network for energy recovery that ultimately reduces the consumption of steam, a major energy component in the production of corn-based ethanol."

I'm not all that enamored of ethanol, but I get sick and tired of all the bogus arguments that keep getting dragged out, over and over and over again.

[supercat]

5. Ethanol is theoretically unlimited;

Absolute rubbish. Wood is no less "theoretically unlimited" than ethanol, but England started using coal because it wasn't possible to grow enough trees to meet people's energy needs.

[Balding_Eagle]

Brazil never has had more than, what? 25% of it’s automobile fuel from ethanol.

[antisocial]

“Tell that to Brazil.

The country that achieved energy independence by creating an ethanol economy.”

Brazil has very few roads and very few cars, in comparison to us.

[Balding_Eagle]

70 replies and no “we shouldn’t burn our food” nonsense?

HUH?

Someones slipping.

[neverdem]

I'm not all that enamored of ethanol, but I get sick and tired of all the bogus arguments that keep getting dragged out, over and over and over again.

Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels

Negative environmental consequences of fossil fuels and concerns about petroleum supplies have spurred the search for renewable transportation biofuels. To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food supplies. We use these criteria to evaluate, through life-cycle accounting, ethanol from corn grain and biodiesel from soybeans. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more. Compared with ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%, and 13% of the agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants, respectively, per net energy gain. Relative to the fossil fuels they displace, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel. Biodiesel also releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol. These advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from lower agricultural inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks to fuel. Neither biofuel can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies. Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Until recent increases in petroleum prices, high production costs made biofuels unprofitable without subsidies. Biodiesel provides sufficient environmental advantages to merit subsidy. Transportation biofuels such as synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass, could provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based biofuels.

[ellery]

Here’s the Cornell U. study, showing Ethanol fuel requires MORE energy to produce than the ethanol energy yields BACK!

That's true of all energy sources, isn't it? It's the second law of thermodynamics -- if there were an energy source that yielded more than or the same as it took to produce it, that would be a perpetual motion machine.

[metalcor]

I have done the math and your claims are clearly wildly exaggerated. Of course the direct costs of oil are by far the least expensive source, yet we are continually looking for replacements for a reason, aren’t we?

$500 per gallon?!

There is a soy bean bio-diesel plant a mile from my house producing at the cost of 1.10 per gallon as we speak, and I burn a 20% mixture in my truck. The facts behind the Algae system this company is researching and building is far more efficient and looks to have real possibilities.

Could it be a pipe dream? Sure,but if it comes close to what are certainly rosy expectations, it holds great promise of making a real impact on the supply. Among other things, they can be built on arid land, doesn’t use foodstock, the process consumes huge amounts of co2 from the atmosphere which will please the eviroweenie contingent (in fact, I wonder if large scale operations will be limited by the availability of sufficient co2 to run optimally), and the fuel produced has already been certified to reduce emissions by something along the order of 80%. They have demonstrated that it is theoretically possible to produce enough oil on a space equivalent to 1/10 the area of New Mexico to supply the entire oil demands of the US. At the very least, its interesting. I wouldn’t bet my retirement money on it-—yet.

http://www.valcent.net/i/misc/Vertigro/index.html

[neverdem]

Mission accomplished

Just Stand There While I Die

Poll: 51 percent support stricter gun laws

From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[No.6]

Please cease from quoting sources which rely on a Cornell (city of evil) anti-everything (including 4/5ths of the human population) professor’s ‘work’ which contradicts all other known evidence on the energy ratio of ethanol.

Thanks.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Lurker]

But ethanol is a serious opportunity to defund Islamofascists, relatively painlessly and seamlessly.

Bullsh**.

The only serious short term opportunity to defund the Saudis is to drill for oil in America.

Ethanol is welfare for farmers, ConAgra, and ADM. Nothing more.

L

[traviskicks]

I think of all the Republican candidates only Ron Paul is willing to stand up and stop the ethanol criminals. In Tuesday's debate:

PAUL: Well, first, we have to have a sound economy, and we don't. We're overtaxed. We're over-regulated. And we work with a currency that is nonfunctional. And our prosperity is slipping.



PAUL: So, if we want a prosperous economy here, we have to change these policies and we can't be bailing out farmers and subsidizing ethanol-- this is just the wrong way to go. The taxpayers pay for the subsidiaries, and then they pay for higher prices when they buy the gasoline or buy the food; it never works.