Who wins federal dollars race? Ethanol does, by a long shot
Undeterred by the fact that ethanol is the worst type or alternative energy, the federal government is in love with corn ethanol, perhaps a bit too much. Over the years, the American farm lobby has worked and worked to get subsidies for corn growers and, more recently, ethanol producers. The result, as calculated the Environmental Working Group in a new report, is that ethanol (including made-from-corn biofuel) now receives more than three times as many federal dollars ($3 billion in 2007) than solar, wind, geothermal and other biomass combined. With ethanol, especially corn ethanol, losing its luster (see here and here), the imbalance of the pie chart above will hopefully get the Obama administration and the new Congress to reevaluate how renewable energy resources are spent in the coming years. Cellulosic ethanol, solar and wind power all deserve a bigger slice, don't you think?
[Source: Environmental Working Group via Green Car Advisor]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Red 10:59AM (1/09/2009)
I'm not understanding why there's such an influence in corn or sugar-based ethanol over waste-based ethanol. Personally, I'm an advocate of geothermal, solar, wind and tidal (no...I'm not quite a hippy) over ethanol at all, but putting our land fills to use certainly falls in the plus column.
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Carney 12:11PM (1/09/2009)
I'm unaware of any "waste based ethanol" now or on the horizon.
You may be thinking of methanol, which can be made from any biomass without exception, including sewage, trash, etc.
Since methanol is the "lowest" (molecularly simplest) alcohol, any engine that can run on it can also run on ethanol and all other alcohols as well.
Chris M 2:22PM (1/15/2009)
Ethanol and butanol can be made from any organic waste that contains enough carbohydrate, such as cellulose. In some cases, the processing is too elaborate and the yield too low to be worthwhile, but it is still possible.
ronEbear 11:09AM (1/09/2009)
Here`s why I think ethanol wins all this undeserved attention:
It`s a desperate attempt to keep American farming jobs. America IS corn. A fat slice of that pie should be allotted towards r&d in efficiency (not just for cars).
I am a hippy though. ;) a Canadian tree-hugging hippy.
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paulwesterberg 11:30AM (1/09/2009)
The other part of farm subsidies is corporate welfare for cargill adm, and other big growsers. Also growing corn is resource intensive, you need a lot of fertilizer(made from natural gas) and pesticides(monsanto roundup).
Other crops like soybeans and switch grass are naturally nitrogen fixating so you don't need so much fertilizer. Brazil seems to be making progress with sugar cane ethanol because of its higher energy content.
I don't think that many terrestrial plants make sense as a fuel source unless you use genetically engineered algae that is designed to produce easily utilized carbohydrates rather than cellulose support structures.
GoodCheer 11:16AM (1/09/2009)
Of course those numbers are eclipsed by the billions upon billions of subsidies that nuclear power receives.... and that's not counting the intrinsic subsidy of the federal government taking 'responsibility' for the storage of spent fuel, and of the insurance costs in case of accidents.
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paulwesterberg 11:44AM (1/09/2009)
If there is so much free federal money in nuclear then why dont we have more plants? The last plant to be finished was built in 1996.
I would rather have waste that is containable rather than coal plants which spew heavy metals and radioactive material into the air and water. And we have acres and acres of toxic coal ash.
Nuclear waste from newer reactor designs constitutes only a few square meters of waste per year. Material that gives off significant amounts of radiation still has a lot of energy contained in it. We should reprocess and reuse that material.
from wikipedia:
Nuclear power gives France the cleanest air of any industrialized country, and the cheapest electricity in all of Europe.
CNCMike 11:37AM (1/09/2009)
That is still a small fraction of the subsidies and tax breaks that the oil companies get.
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Brent 12:10PM (1/09/2009)
I thought we already established the inificientcies of ethonal, I understand the "Keep the money american" slogan, but there isn't that much a surplus of corn as is already, and the availablity for growing more is not exactly the extent we would need to tranfer large amounts of technology into it. Why put another thick greasy oil into the air when we're giving out world tax credits to wind and solar which we ourselves could claim. Ethanol is not at all the future of fuel. Just another ignorant uninformed congressional decission. Solar and win is a real way to invest in the future, with solar once is manufactured it all profit from there, little to no maintenance and yearly tax credits which pay off slowly the initial manufacturing costs. I think the congress should be tested with chess against the worlds best 5 year old. If they can't think a step ahead how well can they build the future of a nation. Morons.
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Carney 12:16PM (1/09/2009)
Despite your stated concern about "thick greasy oil", only 3% of our electricity comes from petroleum, so solar, wind, and other alternative electricity generation methods are not a way to wean ourselves from oil.
By contrast, over 90% of our cars are gasoline-only. It's transportation that is the real target for getting ourselves off oil.
And alcohol fuels are the most promising way of accomplishing that.
jpm100 12:30PM (1/09/2009)
Maybe ethanol gets more money because it actually used in any significant quantity. Relative to its usage, the rest are still in the labratory. So when you count subsidies to actually produce it, because ethanol is more realized it naturally is going to get more money. How is that unfair?
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jpm100 12:36PM (1/09/2009)
We aren't close to maxing out our farmland. Corn prices were driven by a commodities speculation binge combined with unexpected decade high levels of exporting. Now that the exporting is down, so are corn prices. Ethanol use as fuel is up.
Farmers aren't able to increase production for short term demand spikes. They also aren't that willing to make an investment into a short term demand for a crop. The export spike was such a instance. So prices shot up. On the other hand, corn demand for ethanol is much more quantifiable and persistent and much less likely to affect prices.
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Rick Tolman 12:42PM (1/09/2009)
The EWG report is misleading and not entirey accurate. The federal money going toward ethanol is almost entirely targeted at cellulose and biomass and biorefineries. There is virtually no federal research money going to corn ethanol.
The real issue is more total federal dollars going toward all forms of renewable energy. Don't blame the farm lobby for being success, work with them. Farmers support wind power and solar and all forms. Lets make the pie bigger instead of fighting over what is there.
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rob 1:40PM (1/09/2009)
Carney,
You said "I'm unaware of any "waste based ethanol" now or on the horizon."
Check out coskata:
www.coskata.com
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20199/?a=f
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Carney 1:59PM (1/09/2009)
Thanks, rob. Informative link.
I wonder what the point of all this effort is, however.
Again, today, with no further research necessary, any biomass can be made into methanol fuel.
And far from being exotic and strange as a vehicle fuel, flex fuel cars were originally invented to be able to run, not ethanol, but methanol.
Of course, again, any car that can run methanol gains the inherent ability to run any alcohol.
So statements like this: "Ordinarily, chemical catalysts are then used to convert the syngas into a mixture of alcohols that includes ethanol. But making such a mixture is intrinsically inefficient: the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that go into the other alcohols could, in principle, have gone into ethanol instead. " - puzzle me.
What's the harm in creating other alcohols? With a methanol compatible FFV, you can just burn them all without worrying about it.
I realize that ethanol has a higher energy content than methanol, but I worry about widespread ignorance about methanol. It's a key part of the overall picture in any realistic transition away from a petroleum economy to an alcohol one.
rob 8:28PM (1/09/2009)
One advantage of ethanol would be the ability to manufacture E10 with no change in the current infrastructure (automobiles, pumps, etc.). This results in a pretty swift reduction of 10% in gasoline use (I know...I know...inefficiencies but it's likely pretty close) by mandating E10 across the board.
GMBiofuelsGuy 1:45PM (1/09/2009)
I work in Biofuels Communications at General Motors and I am wondering how closely the Environmental Working Group, which clearly is anti-ethanol subsidies, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which got a lot of traction over food vs. fuel last year but now is attacking ethanol subsidies are working together.
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Carney 2:05PM (1/09/2009)
I know it's a Ford invention, but why has the industry, including Ford, been so silent about methanol? It's ethanol only all the time. What about a clean burning fuel that can be made from a huge array of sources like sewage, trash, and otherwise problematic "black liquor" from paper mills?
Alan Adler 2:59PM (1/09/2009)
Don't know much first hand but a colleague said "Methanol was a proposal by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in the late 80s. It is used by the oil companies as a horror story on mandating fuels before vehicles were ready." Ethanol gained more traction and that's how we got where we are.
Carney 3:54PM (1/09/2009)
Yeah, California's experience with methanol fueled vehicles is exactly what prompted the invention of flex fuel technology.
The lack of methanol pumps made methanol advocates realize methanol-only cars were a dead end. They faced a difficult engineering challenge in figuring out how to get a car able to burn both methanol and gasoline, and not in a fixed ratio but in any ratio which could vary at any time as people filled up on methanol or gasoline depending on what was available. Eventually it was solved by Roberta Nichols.