Ron F.
Wrong, Corn-derived Ethanol costs nearly as much petro-based fuel as what its trying to replace to get it on the market. Its a known fact that alcohols have far higher corrosion properties, especially in older vehicles that weren't originally designed to have such a solvent in its system.

Further development in corn-based ethanol is stupid, costs money, hurts overall fuel economy by more than you'd think and is a waste of both farming land and infrastructure.

IF Ethanol-based fuels are to work, they need to be made with biomass-waste, fast growing switchgrasses and have the delivery/processing infrastructure improved BEFORE rolling them out. growing said fuels with petro-diesel tractors, and delivering it to the market the same way defeats any "green" (god i hate that term) purpose to it. Fuel economy changes aside, why are we not using our already producing plant-waste/garbage to derive traditionally burning fuels.

Methane, hydrogen, LPG, CNG already are better alternatives also plagued with a lack of infrastructure...

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OK Ron, if you are right that's fine, most would agree with your statement. And biomass ethanol is ramping up right now. This post says nothing about where the ethanol is to come from, it's really just about testing for 15% blend. And we all know there is no negative effects on existing cars newer than say 1990 of up to 30%, the tests have been done.

So let's increase the use of it not through a mandate, but just to allow 15% for those who choose it.

I will swear up and down that my vehicles have been using 20% ethanol for years and work fine, no fuel line, pump, or engine probs. In fact...my injectors and cylinders are cleaner and less worn than anyone who runs 10% My engine will run more miles than an engine that uses straight gas because it runs cooler and cleaner.

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Qualified my reply with "IF" to represent my own concerns about ethanol. Agree that *corn* ethanol is little more than a sop to the midwest voting bloc. At issue is how our government has "engineered fuels pricing in the marketplace" such that consumers have been either pushed toward or supported in making transportation choices that are unsustainable, even in the near term.

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"Corn-derived Ethanol costs nearly as much petro-based fuel as what its trying to replace to get it on the market."

Wrong. At the very least, five gallons of ethanol, and far more likely ten or more gallons, are obtained from each gallon of petroleum used to make it, and that's without switching to ethanol rather than petroleum for the vehicles involved. That's not my opinion, that's the conclusion of a comprehensive look, published in the most prestigious peer-reviewed journal in the world ("Science", Jan 2006 issue) at all the science on the subject.

"Its a known fact that alcohols have far higher corrosion properties"

"Far" higher is FUD scare talk. Cheap changes in materials used easily and permanently solves the issue. Flex-fuel vehicles have incorporated such, and so this concern is irrelevant for them.

"especially in older vehicles that weren't originally designed to have such a solvent in its system."

Any car made in the last several years is far better able to handle ethanol because of across the board improvements in materials quality. They just lack the sensors and chips necessary to be FFVs.

"Further development in corn-based ethanol is stupid,"

Not in the US; corn is the logical crop to make ethanol with here.

"costs money,"

Compared to continuing to be unnecessarily being locked into a fuel that OPEC can spike the price of, it saves far more money.

"hurts overall fuel economy by more than you'd think"

Fuel economy is irrelevant if the fuel is clean burning, renewable, and doesn't fund terror. Break free of the mental box that says austerity and reducing fuel use is what matters. What is far more important is SWITCHING fuels.

"and is a waste of both farming land and infrastructure."

Nonsense. There's enormous unused farmland, "slack" in the system. And it's hard to think of a more worthwhile use than

"IF Ethanol-based fuels are to work, they need to be made with biomass-waste, fast growing switchgrasses"

Pointless. Methanol can ALREADY be made with such non starchy/sugary biomass. Fully flex-fueled vehicles can be made now that can run equally easily on gasoline, ethanol, or methanol at nominal extra expense.

Switchgrass, cellulosic, etc., are either gravy trains for politically connected firms and researchers, and have the effect of delaying our long-overdue mass switchover to alcohol fuel due to fact-free superstitious fear of the mythical "food vs. fuel" bogeyman hyped up by the oil cartel. Whether you are fooled by this depends on you.

"and have the delivery/processing infrastructure improved BEFORE rolling them out."

No. No fake excuse for delay. Make ALL new cars fully flex-fueled starting the very next model year. Many will have to fill up on gasoline as they wait for alcohol fuel availability to expand, so the sooner we start the better.

"growing said fuels with petro-diesel tractors, and delivering it to the market the same way defeats any "green" (god i hate that term) purpose to it."

Wrong. You're still way ahead of the game, drastically reducing petroleum use. However switching to alcohol-based fuel for both light duty (ethanol and methanol) and heavy duty (DME diesel) will be even better.

"Fuel economy changes aside, why are we not using our already producing plant-waste/garbage to derive traditionally burning fuels."

Part of the reason is the failure to mandate that all new cars be fully flex fueled, including with methanol compatibility (not just ethanol) and the failure to brush aside distractions like CNG, LNC, H2, and others to focos properly on DME as the diesel fuel of the future that all government heavy vehicles (passenger rail, transit and school buses, etc.) must use and government contractors too (construction equipment, etc).

"Methane, hydrogen, LPG, CNG already are better alternatives also plagued with a lack of infrastructure..."

Hydrogen is a hoax.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

LPG and CNG are expensive, inconvenient, and inferior to DME. Methane should be made into methanol.

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Russ, the overall figure I've seen for conversion is $150 million, about what we spent on foreign oil in 5 hours in 2008. But assuming you're right and there's a conflict between that and the $100~$130 per car figure, note that individual car companies routinely spend $1 billion in developing a single ordinary car.

Your assertion that corn ethanol raises the cost of cars is wrong, at least for consumers. Most of the time that cost is not even passed down to us and we pay 0 extra for a flex-fuel car.

Your assertion that corn ethanol raises the cost of food is completely wrong for several different reasons, any one of which by itself crushes this myth. In the last few years, by lowering the price of fuel from what it would otherwise be, ethanol helped lower (not raise) the cost of food from what it otherwise would have been. The starch from ethanol corn is made into fuel, but the protein, vitamins, and minerals are made into a byproduct called distillers grain that is fed as animal feed to meat livestock, so corn ethanol ends up on our plate anyway. Ethanol corn's dramatically increased production over the last several years has not caused that of "food corn" to go down; there is more of the latter grown than ever. Nor is that true of other staple crops such as soybeans; production levels of those are up too. Finally, the majority of US farmland (let alone arable land that is not farmland) is not cultivated, leaving enormous room for expansion without taking away land needed for food.

Corn ethanol is far BETTER for the environment. The CO2 it emits is from plants, part of the existing carbon cycle and biosphere that would have returned to the atmosphere soon anyway, essentially carbon neutral. In contrast to petroleum fuel, which has been sequestered deep underground essentially forever in human terms and is thus adding new extra CO2 to the air that would not otherwise have been there. A crucial world-changing difference not to be glossed over.

As for conventional pollution, ethanol emits significantly less NOx, a source of acid rain, ozone smog, and other problems. Furthermore, its vapor is less than a tenth as reactive to NOx as gasoline vapor, and unlike gasoline vapor is easily washed out of the atmosphere by rain.

Ethanol emits NO smoke, soot, or particulate matter, the source of the smog that fouls Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City, Beijing, etc. Ethanol emits NO sulfur, a major cause of acid rain. It is not a carcinogen nor a mutagen.

Rather than remaining concentrated and persistent in the environment when spilled or leaked, ethanol is quickly (days or hours) biodegradables into harmless components, and dissolves away into the vast hydrosphere into low levels even before that.

Absurd claims that it takes more petroleum to make ethanol than the ethanol yielded are largely the product of one crank insect entomologist whose findings have been echoed and spammed about by oil-funded think tanks but have been systematically refuted in the refereed literature, most thoroughly in the January 2006 issue of "Science".

Greens dazzled by the ever-receding will-o-wisp of electric cars or other alternatives and fooled by oil-funded anti-ethanol FUD should reclaim alcohol fuel and flex-fueled cars, which are a green baby, invented by anti-pollution campaigner Roberta Nichols and championed by the California Energy Commission before in forgot and lost interest.

As for ethanol having financial trouble, that's no different than the entire rest of the economy in this oil-induced downturn. Also gasoline is cheaper at the moment. OPEC can raise the price sky high to fleece us (as they did for the last several years) or crash it to drown alternatives (as they did to Carter's synfuel industry). Instead of being subject to their whims we should be willing to drop our stupid tariffs on imported ethanol to lower the price and even more importantly should have the persistent political will to tax or tariff gasoline to keep its price permanently higher than ethanol's.

As for ethanol slowing the transition to cramped, slow, flimsy cars or pricey EVs, GOOD. Austerity is not only unpleasant and bound to fail in the market and in politics, it is in this case unnecessary. If your fuel is clean-burning and CANNOT cause an Exxon Valdez along with being renewable and cheap (able to be made from a broad resource base), conserving it past a point of diminishing returns is pointless.

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Carney,

You say,

"…Your assertion that corn ethanol raises the cost of food is completely wrong for several different reasons, any one of which by itself crushes this myth. In the last few years, by lowering the price of fuel from what it would otherwise be, ethanol helped lower (not raise) the cost of food from what it otherwise would have been…"

The USDA, the Word Bank, and the CBO have all admitted that corn ethanol raises the price of food. They differ only in how much.

And corn ethanol did not lower the price of gas claimed:

http://cei.org/articles/indefensible-biofuels

You say,

"…The starch from ethanol corn is made into fuel, but the protein, vitamins, and minerals are made into a byproduct called distillers grain that is fed as animal feed to meat livestock, so corn ethanol ends up on our plate anyway…."

It takes 56 pounds of corn kernels to produce 2.8 gallons of ethanol, 11.4 pounds of distiller's grain., 3 pounds of Glutan meal, and 1.6 pounds of corn oil. So, 56 - 11.4 -3 -1.6 = 40 pounds of corn lost that cannot feed people (or the cows that people eat). In other words, about 70 percent of a bushel of corn is lost to the food chain when you use it to make ethanol.


You say

"…Ethanol corn's dramatically increased production over the last several years has not caused that of "food corn" to go down; there is more of the latter grown than ever Nor is that true of other staple crops such as soybeans; production levels of those are up too.…."

You are referring to the increasing yield per acre of modern agriculture. That is reflected in the following chart. It turns out that yield increases barely keep up with population growth, which is growing at about the same rate. By putting food into fuel that balance is being upset:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img29.gif


You say,

"…
Finally, the majority of US farmland (let alone arable land that is not farmland) is not cultivated, leaving enormous room for expansion without taking away land needed for food…."

The term farmland is not well defined. Conservation reserve land is marginally productive and provides wildlife refuge as well as carbon sinks:

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/08-0645.1


You say,

"…Corn ethanol is far BETTER for the environment. The CO2 it emits is from plants, part of the existing carbon cycle and biosphere that would have returned to the atmosphere soon anyway, essentially carbon neutral …A crucial world-changing difference not to be glossed over.…."

Nobody claims corn ethanol is even close to carbon neutral. You are talking about global warming. Corn ethanol has been found to be worse than gasoline in that respect:

You say,

"….As for conventional pollution, ethanol emits significantly less NOx, a source of acid rain, ozone smog, and other problems. Furthermore, its vapor is less than a tenth as reactive to NOx as gasoline vapor, and unlike gasoline vapor is easily washed out of the atmosphere by rain. Ethanol emits NO smoke, soot, or particulate matter, the source of the smog that fouls Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City, Beijing, etc. Ethanol emits NO sulfur, a major cause of acid rain. …."

I know of at least two studies that have found ethanol conventional pollution to be as bad or worse than gasoline.


You say,

"…Absurd claims that it takes more petroleum to make ethanol than the ethanol yielded are largely the product of one crank insect entomologist …"

Yes, I read that issue of Science when it came out. That is what science is for. It is now accepted thanks to new science that corn ethanol will indeed produce slightly more energy than it took to make. They finally showed it positive after decades of it being negative, by coming up with a concept called an energy credit for distillers grains. You must also accept new science that trumps or improves on old science.

You say,

"…Greens dazzled by the ever-receding will-o-wisp of electric cars or other alternatives and fooled by oil-funded anti-ethanol FUD…"

My car get 48 mpg and it isn't electric. None of the science in the links I provided for you have any connection to oil companies.

You say,

"…As for ethanol having financial trouble, that's no different than the entire rest of the economy in this oil-induced downturn…."

Actually, ethanol's financial woes started earlier than that when the price of a bushel of corn hit $7. They could no longer make ethanol profitably. The conventional wisdom that biofuels would make money hand over fist when oil prices were at record highs did not pan out because ethanol was competing with food for the same feedstock.

You say,

"…As for ethanol slowing the transition to cramped, slow, flimsy cars or pricey EVs, GOOD. Austerity is not only unpleasant and bound to fail in the market and in politics, it is in this case unnecessary…".

I've been driving a Cherokee for twenty years. My wife's Prius holds five, gets three times the gas mileage and has better acceleration thanks to the torque to weight ratio. If feels like a luxury car compared to my Jeep, which I love dearly. There is nothing flimsy, cramped or austere about it.

You say,

"…If your fuel is clean-burning and CANNOT cause an Exxon Valdez along with being renewable and cheap (able to be made from a broad resource base), conserving it past a point of diminishing returns is pointless…."

And according to Mongabay, oil cannot do this:

"…The area of rainforest in the process of being deforested — razed but not yet cleared — surged in the Brazilian Amazon during 2008

"…24,932 square kilometers of Amazon forest was damaged between August 2007 and July 2008, an increase of 10,017 square kilometers -- 67 percent -- over the prior year. The figure is in addition to the 11,968 square kilometers of forest that were completely cleared, indicating that at least 36,900 square kilometers of forest were damaged or destroyed during the year.

"…The surge in activity is attributed to the sharp rise in commodity prices over the past two years. While grain and meat prices have plunged since March, higher prices have provided an impetus for converting land for agriculture and pasture. Accordingly, the burning season of 2007 (July-September) saw record numbers of fires in some parts of the Amazon as farmers, speculators, and ranchers set vast areas ablaze to prepare for the 2008 growing season

"…U.S. consumption of corn to supply domestic ethanol production created a global corn frenzy which drove up prices and spurred expansion of croplands around the planet. Two examples are Brazil and Laos. Brazil increased production of soy to essentially make up for soy acreage lost to corn in America. In Laos (pictured), returns from corn were so high that Vietnamese traders pressured national park officials to open up protected areas in parts of the country to corn fields. They refused.

"…falling grain prices early in the year coincided with a sharp slowing in deforestation. As food and fuel prices peaked through late 2007 and early 2008, it appeared that Amazon deforestation would climb to levels not seen since 2005 — more than 15,000 square kilometers were expected to be lost. The sudden downturn changed all that. When the final numbers came in for 2008, they showed that deforestation only increased a modest 3.8% to 11,968 square kilometers.

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Russ,

I acknowledged that the "ethanol corn" has its starch is taken out for fuel and that therefore obviously not all of corn ethanol ends up on our plate. Your exhaustively quantifying the loss level is wasting our time and does not refute the point that "ethanol corn" does end up on our plate, nor that production of "food corn" and other staples is up, not down.

Plenty of people say that ethanol corn is much better on a carbon basis than gasoline. Many of those who deny it are embarassingly ignorant of the crucial difference between adding extra new CO2 to the air from fossil fuels and merely returning current CO2 to the air from current biomass. Others exaggerate the proportion of the petroleum needed to produce ethanol - the Berkeley study you claim to have read is not just another random view but the result of a comprehensive review of all prior literature on the subject, and its worst-case scenario, using the fatally flawed assumptions of an anti-ethanol crusader writing far outside his field of expertise, is that 5 gallons of ethanol comes from 1 of petroleum, and using mainstream figures and assumptions rises dramatically to double that and more. Also such figures ignore the potential of using alcohol-powered tractors, trucks, barges, tankers, etc., to further reduce the petroleum necessary.

Amazon deforestation is irrelevant to ethanol. Sugar cane is rarely grown in the Amazon (only 0.2% of production) because the conditions are unfavorable there.

Blaming subsistence farmers and farmers of other crops for Amazon deforestation is perverse. The more money can be made from ethanol away from the rain forest, the less incentive there is to farm other things in the rain forest. Also, cash crops earn hard currency which enable entry into the modern economy and increasingly sophisticated higher yield modern production techniques, which reduces pressure to expand production by expanding land for agriculture at the expense of wilderness.

Yes, modern agriculture is increasing its yields. And poor countries that use inefficient methods could also dramatically improve their output. There are crops that can be used in climates unsuitable for corn or sugarcane that can fight soil erosion and produce profitable quant

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

Finally, you claimed "None of the science in the links I provided for you have any connection to oil companies."

But the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose "study" you uncritically cited as authoritative, is notorious for taking money from Exxon, General Motors, Texaco, Amoco and Shell.

http://tinyurl.com/cuq39v

Why should we believe anything you say now?

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Carney said,

"…Why should we believe anything you say now?…"

You shouldn't. All we have are the strengths of our arguments. Your insinuation that I'm a shill for Big Oil just adds an element of humor to the debate. Anything either of us says without links to sources to back up purported facts should be taken as potential hearsay until proven otherwise.

I was hesitant to use that link to the CPI because I share your disdain of them. I used it anyway because that author happened to have a very good argument and because he shares your disdain of foreign oil.

This site only lets you list three URLs, which really hobbles serious debate because you have a tough time backing up what you say with links to reliable sources (and I would concur, the CPI is not a good source in general). I had to delete about ten links. I was referring to this list:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/biodiesel/page3.html

Carney said,

"… whose "study" you uncritically cited as authoritative…"

We call that a straw man in the debate business:

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/04/photo-credit-patries71-on-flickr.html

It's not a "study." It's just an article containing a good argument, which I borrowed. I gave them credit for the argument but I didn't have to. It stands on its own. You are free to go to the Wall Street Journal to read the article he refers to. You are free to go to the EIA website to cross check the price of oil in the time frames listed. Everything he said is easily verified. It isn't a matter of trust. You have access to Google just like I do.

Carney said,

"…Blaming subsistence farmers and farmers of other crops for Amazon deforestation is perverse…"

That's strawman #2. Those fires were set in anticipation of continued high prices for soybeans to sell in the commodities market, not by farmers planning to subsist on the food that they grow.

Carney said,

"…Amazon deforestation is irrelevant to ethanol. Sugar cane is rarely grown in the Amazon (only 0.2% of production) because the conditions are unfavorable there…"

Strawman #3. Nobody said they were setting fires to grow cane in the Amazon. Those fires were being set to grow soybeans because the price was high because of the price signal sent by biofuels competing for food companies for the same feedstock (food).

Carney said,

"…Plenty of people say that ethanol corn is much better on a carbon basis than gasoline…."

And I suspect there always will be. Most Americans still don't believe in the theory of evolution. They refuse to accept the latest science on land use change and nitrous oxide release. See my first link. Accepting only the Science that supports one's paycheck and rejecting newer science that may jeopardize it is about as predictable of a response as you'll ever find.


Carney said,

"…Many of those who deny it are embarassingly ignorant of the crucial difference between adding extra new CO2 to the air from fossil fuels and merely returning current CO2 to the air from current biomass…."

Embarrassing ignorance indeed. See my first link above.

Carney said,

"… the Berkeley study you claim to have read…"

Strawman # 4. I never claimed anywhere above to have read a Berkeley study and I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you referring to the 2006 article in Science? We were all very eager to read that when it came out. I have a subscription to Science.

Carney said,

"…Also such figures ignore the potential of using alcohol-powered tractors, trucks, barges, tankers, etc., to further reduce the petroleum necessary…"

I suspect you may still be on the topic of energy balance, which is not being debated much anymore. A corn ethanol refinery essentially converts fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and diesel) into ethanol adding a small amount of solar energy captured by the plants into the final product. For every 1.25 gallons of ethanol, one gallon is made from fossil fuels (mostly natural gas) and one quart from plants.

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I agree, and that's exactly what ethanol producers are asking for.

The current waiver isn't requesting a mandate, it's a request to add E15 to the current offerings of E0, E10, E85.

A few states do, in fact, mandate use of E10, but this wouldn't bump that mandate up. It would remain at E10. For most, if you don't like ethanol, don't use it. It's not that complicated. People know the difference between regular unleaded, E10, premium and E85 right now. I don't think adding E15 to the mix is beyond anyone's mental capacity.

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Excellent post!

I would like to add that ethanol blending and distribution keeps the oil companies in charge of our energy supply.

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