There are good ways to produce energy and there are bad ways. Right now we produce electricity and ethanol quite poorly in regards to sustainability & life cycle co2 emissions. We need to accept this and move to improve the production processes to make both of them better. I see good potential in both energies.
I don't think taxpayers should be paying for the pipeline, but since the government now owns the auto makers I think we should at least make all new cars flex-fuel to give consumers the choice to use ethanol or not.
http://www.permaculture.com/node/490

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Even if that were true, ethanol would still be better from a CO2 perspective than gasoline, because not all CO2 is the same, coming as it does from different sources.

CO2 from petroleum has been sequestered deep underground for basically forever in human terms, away from the atmosphere, biosphere, and carbon cycle. Drilling down to it, pumping it up to the surface, refining it, and burning in into the atmosphere adds new, extra CO2 to the air that would not have been there if we had done nothing.

By contrast, CO2 from ethanol comes from the current biosphere and carbon cycle. This CO2 was returning to the atmosphere one way or another in the short term anyway. So (aside from the 15% gasoline it has to be mixed with to ensure cold-weather startup and the small quantity of petroleum - less than a tenth of a gallon per gallon of alcohol - needed to make it), it's carbon neutral.

That's a crucial, huge, game-changing difference that cannot be brushed aside.

And in the end it DOESN'T take produce more CO2 than it saves anyway.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels

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Posterboy,

At least ONE person on this blog seems to understand that the ONLY Jobs that gov't "creates" are gov't jobs designed to increase some bureaucrat's pay grade.

The more these bureaucrat's waste, the larger their budget becomes and the more they get paid... comrade John Maynard Keynes designed THAT system and the Democrat-Socialists and NeoCon-Fascists have been seduced by the unlimited power it gives them to borrow and spend to buy votes from the ignorant!

“Stimulus jobs” are temporary and will end once the Statist redistribution "success punishment" ends with the political breeze-shift or that "works" project is complete.

Then we are still stuck with the debt. (lock-n-load)

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." -Thomas Jefferson

Thank the founders that we are a Representative Republic and NOT a Democracy!

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The question is, what is achieved with the money the government spends? If it is just for "make work" projects then it is a complete waste, but if it produces something of lasting value, it may well be worthwhile. Government funded projects to build dams and roads and bridges have produced lasting value, and have produced a financial return many times greater than their cost.

I am not entirely certain whether this pipline will have lasting value or provide a good financial return on investment, as there is a question of why the ethanol companies don't finance it themselves for their own gain.

Let me suggest a compromise - have the government help to obtain the "right-of-way" for this pipeline, but have private investors and ethanol producers/buyers fund the actual construction. After all, that's the way the railroads got built.

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OPEC and our terrorist enemies thank you.

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There are better alternatives Carney that have nothing to do with ethanol and still keep American interests growing. Note I said AMERICAN interests...not a few farm state people or big agri-business....all wanting some pork at the expense of the rest of us. Everyone who disagrees with you is not "helping terrorists".

You continuously push ethanol every time you write a comment. You're actually intelligent and I've seen you put together some good arguments in favor of ethanol. But stop attacking anyone who disagrees with you. Think for a minute. What is wrong with butanol? Get away from corn as a feed stock. Yes, I've seen your arguments that corn ethanol is not hurting feedstock, etc, etc etc. We can all find millions of articles refuting each other on this all day long and they are all written by biased people who come to exactly the conclusions they wanted to in the first place.

What is wrong withelectric?

You're the one helping terrorist by pushing impractical solutions that weaken our economy and keep us from getting to competitive solutions that we can do here in the US and SUSTAIN without artificial subsidies or an entirely new infrastructure which we can't afford now anyway. Do you want to throw bail out money at the ethanol industry too?

I've seen you pushing is to remove the tarrifs on Brazilian ethanol. Stick to that.

If the ethanol industry can stand on it's own two feet without the rest of us subsidizing it then good for them. Otherwise they need to fade away like any bad idea.

You're starting to sound like that idiot Mary who is running CARB.

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DaveD, the sole content of your post was a whine about even a PENNY (your caps) of your taxes being spent outside your own state to help break our nation free of oil, so your commitment to a solution for AMERICAN interests (your caps again) rather than a self-defeatingly narrow parochialism that serves no one's interests but our enemies was not, shall we say, evident.

Unlike many on both sides of the spectrum who seem to have been successfully whipped up and carefully conditioned to do so, I bear no animus against either agribusiness or corn farmers. If they become wealthy because our nation's fuel spending is diverted in whole or in part from oil and OPEC to them, my reaction is a mild nod of approval or at worst indifference, certainly not seething outrage. We spend a lot of money on fuel, necessarily, and it's going to make someone somewhere rich. As long as it isn't our enemies, like it is now, fine.

Of course, my advocacy for methanol and for cheap imported ethanol, as you point out, is unlikely to please the corn lobby. My goal is not to enrich them but to break free of oil.

You asked about butanol. It's an alcohol fuel and thus would run fine in any fully flex-fueled vehicle. Nothing's "wrong" with it that I know of.

Some are excited about it because a handful of enthusiasts seem to have shown that it seems to run OK in unmodified cars designed to use gasoline only. That's still not the extensive real world use that ethanol and methanol have racked up in FFV's. But even assuming it IS true (which is a big if), depending on this strategy as the way to get off oil, I think is a STILL a monumental error.

First, butanol actually is what some critics say ethanol is: a fuel with no major manufacturer making it in remotely the quantity necessary.

Second, given its nonexistent status in the market, to make it the replacement for gasoline in mere years rather than decades would take extensive market interventions by the government such as taxation, regulation and even (oh no!) subsidies perhaps derived from out-of-state taxpayers (why have a federal government if federal tax dollars can't cross state lines?).

Third, even a monumental and wrenching national effort to make butanol the new gasoline would only take effect inside our borders. The rest of the world would continue to pollute and enrich OPEC and fund our enemies.

Fourth, such a move to butanol would give us the choice of only ONE alcohol fuel.

By contrast, the strategy I advocate of a mandate that all new cars sold in America be fully flex fueled avoids these problems.

First, it builds on, rather than abandons and wastes, the ethanol and methanol agricultural and industrial base.

Second, since no serious foreign manufacturer is going to write off the US market, our flex fuel mandate will go global. No automaker is going to bother with duplicative production lines for both flex-fuel and gasoline-only engines, EFIs, fuel tanks, fuel lines, seals, etc., when the grand total difference in cost between all of them is $100 - they'd lose more money than they'd save. So then all new cars sold all over the world become fully flex-fueled and gasoline is forced to compete with alcohol everywhere.

Third, since fully flex-fueled cars can run on methanol, an inherently very cheap fuel (it has sold unsubsidized for years at far below gasoline's price even on an gasoline-gallon-equivalent basis), it becomes a lot easier to beat gasoline in the market. With all other alcohols also in the picture, it is lot harder for the oil cartel to target and defeat them all.

In an alcohol economy, I see propanol, butanol, and other exotic alcohols as best playing the role of high-end, premium fuels for those willing to pay extra for high MPGs, while methanol and ethanol play the roles of everyday, mass-market workhorses - methanol being the cheaper and ethanol being the mid-market. Butanol would also be the gasoline substitute used for clunkers and antiques from back in the bad old days. Its high cost would help encourage the transition to FFVs for everyday use with old cars being the sole domain of hobbyists.

Electrics are not big, cheap, or long-ranged enough yet, nor do they have a sufficient recharging infrastructure. Even ignoring all that, I doubt that the grid will be able to handle the load until fusion power plants becomes viable and widespread enough to send juice in enough quantity and at a low enough price. Do you object to stimulus $ going to EVs? Did I mention how expensive EVs are?

Fretting about tiny ethanol subsidies when each year we enrich our enemies by hundred of billions in oil purchases is the drastically wrong priority that would be comically clueless if the consequences weren't so dire. Getting off oil is a hair-on-fire urgent priority. OPEC certainly has no qualms about free market purity when it manipulates the price at our direct and enormously painful expense.

Finally, thanks for calling me intelligent.

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Carney,
Like you, I have no problem with farmers (my family has a lot of farmers, including corn farmers) or even Agri-Business getting rich....as long as they can do it on their own. I don't want to subsidize them. I'm not asking anyone to subsidize me in my business, I get out there and work my rear-end off. If I make it great, if I don't then it's my problem and I should have picked a different path. Why should they be any different and why should I subsidize them?

My whole problem with ethanol is just that: the subsidies.

As for your discussions of the whole 'nol family....great, I have absolutely no problem with methanol or ethanol or butanol, etc. But it's ironic that a large part of the ehtanol lobby went after methanol and pushed to have it declared a "hazardous material". Hmmm, another sign that they don't deserve my support, or yours. Why can't they just compete like the rest of us?

And I have put a lot of money where my mouth is. At least it was a lot of money to me. I've lost a few hundred thousand dollars trying to build a hybrid electric vehicle and get a company off the ground. And yes, our range extender was Flex-fuel. Too bad that when the price of gasoline went down that all of our investors walked away from the table. They were not smart enough to see that it was just a bad economy (and probably a little help from OPEC and election year politics) driving the price down TEMPORARILY. It will be back up, and all these idiots will be crying that they have to essentially start over to "get back in the game" and it will be too late.

I get such a kick out of reading all the articles on here about all the different car companies, the different battery makers, the motor and drive manufacturers, etc. I got to know most of them over the last couple of years and there are some really good people out there trying really hard to make things go. There are also some real dreamers...and some scammers. It's a really tight-nit little community if you get into it. You can get to know these folks and see some really cool stuff. I was really surprised at how aggressive the Chinese were on every front, including methanol. I also got to spend a lot of time working deals with some of their major manufacturers and one of their Li-ion battery manufacturers. In the end, I just didn't want to build cars over there but wanted to try and bring jobs here instead. Probably a stupid business decision, but hey, I'm an idealist at heart...so I'll probably never be filthy rich. Life I guess.
But when you say I'm supporting terrorist because I get frustrated and don't support the ethanol makers and their lobbyist...well, I don't think that's accurate or fair.

I may not agree with you on how to do it, but I'm trying to do something here in America and I spent a lot of my own money and nearly two years of my life trying to do something about it as best I could. So please give me a little slack on that front.

The really frustrating part to me is that my circle of friends/business partners all know software and technology. If I want to go start the next facebook or youtube, I can get them to jump in. But when I try to get them to do more efficient cars...they all say "Dave, that's just too hard...even the big guys are failing at that". I still think there is a sea-change coming that will allow a couple of the smaller players to make it. That may mean they are somewhat successful and then bought out by the big players, but so what? It's still successful and you can still make a difference.

I have so many opinions on the companies that are making all these announcements. But I won't comment on any of those because I don't think it's fair for me to say things (good or bad) about them. So when I comment on here, it's usually on articles where I don't have any ties or know any of the folks involved. Kind of stupid because that means I don't comment on the things where I'm most qualified to have an opinion

I don't want to get into an online argument with you or anyone else. Well, maybe with one particular nut-job but I usually squelch the urge to comment when he's ranting. LOL

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We will be.

When gas goes over $4, even corn ethanol starts to look good. If we won't burn it. Someone else will.

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Because oil exists in only a sharply limited number of areas, it's possible for any entity that controls enough of them to exert significant or even decisive control over the market and its price. And indeed that's what's happened with OPEC.

But ethanol can be made in profitable quantities from at least 17 plants grown the world over.

And methanol can be made (today, no further research necessary) from any biomass without exception, including but not limited to:

*crop residues (thus multiplying already substantial per acre alcohol fuel yields from ethanol farms);

*fast-growing and troublesome weeds that need to be cleared anyway such as water hyacinth (which clogs waterways) and kudzu;

*the "black liquor" produced by paper mills (otherwise a major environmental headache) which alone can replace the oil output of Iran;

*trash;

and even sewage.

Given this inexhaustibly renewable and staggeringly vast and broad resource base, no one can seize enough of it to restrict production and drive up the price; he'd be immediately undercut and ruined by his competition.

Thus, there will never be an OPEC style cartel for ethanol, methanol, or any alcohol fuel.

By the way fully flex fueled cars can run with equal ease on methanol as on ethanol or any other alcohol, not to mention gasoline. It costs automakers only $100 per car to add this feature, which we should mandate to ensure a market for alt-fuel and to enable a transition away from oil.

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Irrelevant distorting nonsense. FACT: only 16% of all corn in the US is irrigated, and nearly no corn grown for ethanol is.

S. Kim and B. Dale, "Environmental Aspects of Ethanol Derived from No-Till Corn Grain: Nonrenewable Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions", Biomass and Bioenergy 28 (2005): 475-479.

also

S. Kim and B. Dale, "Allocation Procedure in Ethanol Production from Corn Grain," LCA Case Studies, International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis 7, no. 4 (2003).

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