Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack supports E15 or E20 blend
Yesterday, 11 Midwest Ag secretaries asked Obama to raise ethanol blend to 15 or 20 percent. It should come as no big surprise that Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, also made a statement in favor of raising the ethanol blend to either E15 or E20 "over the course of the next couple of years." This support is not surprising because Vilsack, the governor of Iowa, has been looking into raising the corn/gas blend with the USDA and the EPA for a while. Should the U.S. move to a higher blend in the gasoline supply, that can only mean one thing: more corn ethanol will be produced. Sure, ethanol can be made from non-corn sources, but if Vilsack's claim that, "We can move fairly quickly to move [the ethanol blend] rate up from 10 percent to maybe 12 or 13 percent," should come to pass, then corn is the only viable biosource.
What'll be interesting is when Vilsack, the head of the USDA, and Steven Chu, Obama's Secretary of Energy, debate this issue. Remember, Chu has said that "corn is not the right crop for biofuels."
[Source: Domestic Fuel]
Photo by dichohecho. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Ron Wagner 11:48AM (3/10/2009)
Secretary Chu needs to be educated on the facts of the matter. Corn ethanol is fine for now. There is plenty of corn for food, fuel, and feeding livestock. The actual price of the corn in a box of corn flakes, or other food product, is negligible. Distillers grain is a byproduct of the corn ethanol process, and is more desirable for livestock than whole corn. The food processors , wholesalers, and retailers take a far greater profit than the farmer. The consumer can eat more economically by avoiding highly processed foods, and cooking like our grandparents did. That said, cellulosic ethanol is great too, and production should be expedited.
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Yikes 11:53AM (3/10/2009)
If it is so great, why must the American tax payers foot the bill?
Carney 11:57AM (3/10/2009)
yikes, it's important that we be willing to intervene in the market to support ethanol for national security, economic, and environmental reasons.
Randy S 12:31PM (3/10/2009)
Steven Chu does not need to be educated on anything! He's a PhD and former chair of physics department at UC Berkley prior to being appointed Secretary of Energy by Obama. He holds a Nobel Prize for his work with Einstein Bose condensates.
The man is brilliant in physics, chemistry and mathematics.
If the ROEI of corn ethanol is NFG then he would know and if it is viable he would support it, but I heard him speak on this a while back and I’m certain he’s a non-supporter because the ROEI is so close to 1.
Now that the US has a president who makes decisions and policy based on facts, science, logic and reason...
Barack: will glance the letter over and say "Hum?" passing it over to Steven Chu "Could you please look this over and recommend an appropriate action"
Steve Chu: Yes sir Mr. President.... short pause...... crumple, crumple, crumple, GARBAGE BASKET SWISH..... 2 POINTS!
Barack: Nice shot Energy Secretary Chu! You're getting good!
Carney 12:48PM (3/10/2009)
Randy S., many academics and tax-eating energy researchers hate ethanol, especially corn ethanol, precisely because IT DOESN'T NEED ANY MORE RESEARCH. It's ready NOW.
And Midwestern corn farmers are just not as cool and hip and therefore don't get the fawning media coverage that Silicon Valley geeks pushing new battery techs and unneeded "alternative" ethanol techs like cellulosic.
Maybe if alcohol advocates pushed the PC angle and talked about dark skinned Third Worlders such as Brazilians, Haitians, and Cubans who could grow sugarcane ethanol for us if we dropped the tariffs....
Charles 6:15AM (3/11/2009)
This type of thinking is worthless. Ethanol consumes nearly as much energy as it produces, is still highly dependent on fossil fuels (think tractor fuel, processing energy, fertilizers), drives up food prices both here and in impoverished countries with much lower standards of living and much less money to spend, yields less power in combustion per gallon than gasoline, and is overall EVEN MORE CARBON INTENSIVE THAN THE USE OF GASOLINE ITSELF.
Sorry! Try again later
Ron Wagner 9:11AM (3/11/2009)
You are forgetting that ethanol is made in the USA, and forces the price of oil down. Soon it wil be cellulosic as well as corn and sorghum based.
Carney 12:30PM (3/11/2009)
Charles, every clause in the key sentence of your post is factually quantitatively false and proven so, or misleading.
"Ethanol consumes nearly as much energy as it produces"
Wrong. The only major voice claiming this is a quack insect entomologist with no credibility among chemical engineers and fuel scientists. His anti ethanol paper in 2001 has been spammed all over by oil funded think tanks, but was eviscerated the next year by an actual chemical engineer showing fatal flaws like assuming all corn is irrigated when only 16% is and almost no corn for ethanol is. The facts and numbers are that ethanol's energy balance is significantly positive. Even more important is the quantity of fuel obtained compared to fuel expended to get it, about which see below.
"is still highly dependent on fossil fuels (think tractor fuel, processing energy, fertilizers)"
Sugarcane ethanol's processing energy is provided by burning sugarcane. As for transportation fuel, that's only a temporary situation; tractors, trucks, barges can be run on alcohol fuel. Even now, however, for each gallon of petroleum used to produce corn ethanol, we get back at least ten gallons of ethanol.
That's not my figure; that's from the Berkeley Energy & Resources Group study of ALL PRIOR LITERATURE on the subject, published in January 2006 in Science magazine, the top peer reviewed journal in the world together with Nature.
"drives up food prices both here and in impoverished countries with much lower standards of living and much less money to spend"
Completely wrong. By lowering the price of petroleum, ethanol reduces fuel and fertilizer prices and plays a major role in holding down food prices. Furthermore by providing the poor with a cash crop it gives them hard currency to feed themselves and improve their standard of living beyond subsistence farming.
"yields less power in combustion per gallon than gasoline"
Misleading. Ethanol has less BTUs per unit of volume than gasoline, but it also has a higher octane rating. Flex fuel vehicles can reduce the inconvenience of more frequent fill ups by providing larger fuel tanks.
But on a per DOLLAR basis, let alone a mile per pollution death or miles per terrorism death funded by the purchase basis, you go a lot further down the road on ethanol.
"and is overall EVEN MORE CARBON INTENSIVE THAN THE USE OF GASOLINE ITSELF"
Not all carbon is the same. Ethanol comes from plants, which are in the current biosphere and part of the carbon cycle. Its carbon was thus recently in the atmosphere and would have soon returned. Burning it add no carbon that would not otherwise have been there. Thus carbon neutral.
Petroleum fuel is carbon sucked up from deep underground where it has been sequestered since prehistoric times when the climate was much different. That carbon is then burned and thrown into the atmosphere, where it has not been part of the biosphere and carbon cycle. Thus adding new, extra additional carbon to the atmosphere that would not have gotten there otherwise.
So switching from gasoline to ethanol drastically slows down humans adding carbon to the atmosphere.
For more see here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels
paulwesterberg 11:49AM (3/10/2009)
He's from Iowa, big surprise.
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Yikes 11:51AM (3/10/2009)
Basically this is more pork! Too bad the corn isn't being used to raise pork, or used as food.
Instead, Americans are paying extra for a fuel farse.
Carney 12:00PM (3/10/2009)
What we should do instead is mandate that all new cars be fully flex fueled, able to run as easily on any alcohol fuel (including ethanol, methanol, and others) as on gasoline. It's only a $100 per car expense for automakers, but creates a big enough market for alcohol pumps to be normal at local gas stations. We should also be willing to tariff foreign oil if OPEC tries to drown this baby by flooding the world with cheap oil. Our environment, economy, and national security are too important.
Flex fuel cars are designed from the get go, with all components, fuel systems, engines, etc., able to handle 100% ethanol or even methanol. That would end any controversy about whether the vehicles are suitable or would suffer harm.
As for mileage, yes, there would be somewhat lower MPGs, which can in part be compensated for by automakers making the fuel tanks bigger. Also with ethanol being cheaper (if necessary via tariffs) and methanol always being cheaper (because it can be made from ANY biomass), the real question becomes miles PER DOLLAR, and with a wise policy, alcohol wins that.
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ebow 12:36PM (3/10/2009)
Fine, let this upcoming fleet of flex fuel cars use E15 or E20 (from feedstocks with EROI >> 1, please), but keep the corrosive booze fuel away from my gasoline fuel system.
Carney 12:52PM (3/10/2009)
Way to consider people other than yourself, ebow.
Meanwhile keep on using only planet-fouling, economy-wrecking, terrorist funding gasoline fuel, without even a trace of alcohol, rolling on down the highway. And when you get cancer, the market crashes, and Iran gets nukes, yell at the politicians for not doing something about it.
-M.Dub 2:39PM (3/10/2009)
I am with ebow, why should some crack head somewhere decide what I can put in my old gas engine??? I have a fairly efficient little car, but every day I have to fill up with that 10% sht mix that corrodes all the working bits of my engine meaning every day I drive, I am closer to breaking down and having to buy a new car...how green is that dumbarses???
-M.Dub 2:48PM (3/10/2009)
Correction to my last post...
my little car used to be efficient, the more ethanol I am required to use, the worse my economy. =/ Eventually it will be to expensive for me to drive because I will be getting 20 mpg and the cost of fuel (mixed or not) keeps going up.
at least during the summer I can break out the electric bike XD
Carney 3:16PM (3/10/2009)
-M. dub, who cares how "efficient" your car is? What difference does it make that your car rolls further down the road on a given quantity of filthy, wealth-destroying, terrorist-financing fuel? Conservation won't bankrupt our enemies; they can just cut production to match, jack up prices, and preserve their income levels intact. Have you noticed that OPEC production cuts earlier this year have resulted in the per barrel price of oil rising again? Soon that will be reflected at your local gas station and we'll see similar media and political confusion blaming "Big Oil" and hauling Exxon executives before Congress to browbeat, instead of the Saudi ambassador.
What matters isn't using a little less gasoline; it's SWITCHING to a different fuel. Quite frankly, the sooner your little clunker is on the scrap heap and you switch to a flex fuel vehicle running on alcohol, the better off we will all be.
And so will you, since you won't be helplessly chained to and unnecessarily locked in to a fuel whose prices is set by a hostile cartel that can make them skyrocket at will.
-M.Dub 4:06PM (3/10/2009)
Carney,
shut your hole, i hate you.
Chris 12:11PM (3/10/2009)
I wonder how much worse MPG I'll get with E15 or E20. When my area went to E10 I lost about 5MPG on average (about 15%). When I do the math, E10 has me burning MORE regular gasoline than before on top of the ethanol. It's no cheaper than straight gasoline when I can find 100% gasoline and my vehicle is SULEV rated with 100% gas so emissions aren't really a key issue.
I'm all for reducing the demand for foreign oil but E10 isn't going to get any of us there if there's more than a 10% loss in fuel economy. I'm worried that E15 and E20 might be even worse.
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Carney 12:44PM (3/10/2009)
"emissions aren't really a key issue." Oh yes they are. Gasoline puts out new CO2 into the atmosphere, emits sulfur and NOx, and is both a carcinogen and a mutagen. It also emits smoke, soot, and particulate matter, which makes smog, a cause of 40,000 deaths per year.
The more we use alcohol fuel the less true all those things will be.
But a better approach is to make new cars flex fuel able to run high alcohol blends rather than force feeding low alcohol blends on gasoline only cars.
Steve-O 1:08PM (3/10/2009)
I'm all for a flex fuel mandate for new cars and trucks. I am also for allowing a higher blend in every car, thus giiving me a choice (I'd use the 20% ethanol) and ebow can use his 100% petrol. Whatever but as Carney says the flex fuel mandate will give everyone a choice regardless of what car they want to buy.
I own 2 Hyundais, a 2006 and a 2009, and run them on E20 not a problem whatsoever. I ran a 1995 Grand Am for 4 years on a blend between 20-40% ethanol all the time. Never an issue with the engine, fuel pump, or lines. I am fortunate enough to live in the upper midwest where they have e20 pumps so I don't have to mix myself any more.
So, move up the blending wall so that ebow can still burn his petroleum and believe the oil company BS, and so that I can burn less of it, and get every car to run on E85 (even E100 like Brazil). Remove the tariff on the brazillian stuff, and let ethanol become a more utilized fuel, because it is better.
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