Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
With gas prices skyrocketing the last 4 years, ethanol is all the rage now and the government is subsidizing it immensely. In reality, this is pure corporate welfare that transfers billions of dollars from taxpayers to huge agribusiness interests like ADM. It also inflates our food prices and actually does more environmental damage than the use of gasoline. The Washington Post has an important article about the effect that this is having on our food prices.
Here's what happens: diverting corn for the production of alcohol raises the price of corn used for feed and for a wide variety of other uses, like corn syrup used in so many processed foods and beverages. That in turn raises the prices of a huge range of products in the grocery store. Here's the result:
President Bush's call for the nation to cure its addiction to oil stoked a growing demand for ethanol, which is mostly made from corn. Greater demand for corn has inflated prices from a historically stable $2 per bushel to about $4.That means cattle ranchers have to pay more for animal feed that contains corn. Those costs are reflected in cattle prices, which have gone from about $82.50 per 100 pounds a year ago to $91.15 today.
The corn price increases flow like gravy down the food chain, to grocery stores and menus. The cost of rounded cubed steak at local Harris Teeters is up from $4.59 last year to $5.29 this year, according to TheGroceryGame.com, which tracks prices. The Palm restaurant chain recently raised prices as much as $2 for a New York strip. And so on.
"Anybody that knows anything about the marketing of corn knows that when you raise the price of corn you are going to create problems in all of the markets that use corn," said Ronald W. Cotterill, director of the Food Marketing Policy Center at the University of Connecticut.
But that's not the end. The high corn prices also prompts farmers to switch from other crops to corn, creating lower supplies of other types of produce as well:
The heightened demand for corn has decreased the supply of other grains, including soybeans, because farmers are shifting fields to make room for corn. Soybeans are a key ingredient in trans-fat-free cooking oils now in high demand as cities and counties ban fatty oils in restaurants and bakeries. New York was the first city to do so, and other municipalities have followed, including Montgomery County. Now Sysco, a Houston food company that is a major supplier of trans-fat-free oils, says it is seeing pricing pressure on the product.
Robert Bryce had an article in Slate two years ago calling the ethanol subsidy "the stupidest Federal subsidy." He notes:
The greens, hawks, and farmers helped convince the Senate to add an ethanol provision to the energy bill--now awaiting action by a House-Senate conference committee--that would require refiners to more than double their use of ethanol to 8 billion gallons per year by 2012. The provision is the latest installment of the ethanol subsidy, a handout that has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars during the last three decades, with little to show for it. It also shovels yet more federal cash on the single most subsidized crop in America, corn. Between 1995 and 2003, federal corn subsidies totaled $37.3 billion. That's more than twice the amount spent on wheat subsidies, three times the amount spent on soybeans, and 70 times the amount spent on tobacco.
And guess what? It doesn't save any energy at all. In fact, it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it saves once added to gasoline:
But the ethanol critics have shown that the industry calculations are bogus. David Pimentel, a professor of ecology at Cornell University who has been studying grain alcohol for 20 years, and Tad Patzek, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-wrote a recent report that estimates that making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel itself actually contains.The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production--from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant--and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas--from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining--requires around 22,000 BTUs.
In addition to their findings on corn, they determined that making ethanol from switch grass requires 50 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol yields, wood biomass 57 percent more, and sunflowers 118 percent more. The best yield comes from soybeans, but they, too, are a net loser, requiring 27 percent more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced. In other words, more ethanol production will increase America's total energy consumption, not decrease it.
We are spending billions of our tax dollars to increase the prices of our food and consume more energy, not less. This is madness.
Comments
I saw a report on this subject a while back that also focused on the effect that this is having on impoverished Mexicans. Because corn is such a staple in Mexico, driving up the price of corn is making it too expensive for many Mexicans.
I don't know how much of this rings true, as the impression I got from this article is that the subsidies are going to American farmers. But I imagine that if the price of corn is driven up domestically, that could encourage many farmers to import their corn from Mexico, which would increase demand and still drive up the price.
I could be wrong about all of this though, I don't know.
Posted by: Chris Berez | June 20, 2007 9:42 AM
FWIW, all the greens I know personally have thought corn -> ethanol was a scam for years. A few favor sugarcane -> ethanol (for which there is a long-standing Brazilian example with a net positive energy yield), but are doubtful that it is workable in the US outside of Hawaii and Florida.
So while I often read that greens support the corn -> ethanol boondoggle, I'm skeptical about what proportion of greens actually support it.
Posted by: llewelly | June 20, 2007 9:51 AM
The argument I've heard in favor of ethanol subsidies is that it reduces demand for fossil fuels, which should drive down oil prices in America in a way that mitigates the increases in corn. Also, ethanol reduces our demand for Middle Eastern oil, which we seriously need to do. In other words, the government was desperately looking for an alternative fuel, and ethanol is the most economically viable at the moment. I'm not quite sure how much truth is behind these arguments.
Posted by: Brandon | June 20, 2007 10:19 AM
"I saw a report on this subject a while back that also focused on the effect that this is having on impoverished Mexicans. Because corn is such a staple in Mexico, driving up the price of corn is making it too expensive for many Mexicans."
It's probably worth mentioning that part of the reason those Mexicans were impoverished in the first place was that American corn subsidies combined with NAFTA reportedly made it next to impossible to make a living farming in Mexico.
Posted by: Adam | June 20, 2007 10:20 AM
Just to play devil's advocate here...two possible benefits to this ethanol subsidy:
1. While it results in a net energy cost, it shifts that cost to different sources. Is it possible that this shift could reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources - thus decreasing our need to stick our fingers in the Middle East buzzsaw? I admit this one is weak - it might provide some temporary relief though, while we work on better answers.
2. Ethanol is a young technology. With this government-mandated demand, the suppliers now have the money and the incentive to find more efficient ways to produce and distribute it. Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but a combination of improvements could make ethanol more worthwhile down the road.
Just a couple of talking points to keep the conversation lively. I'll point out that I have no plans myself to switch to an E85 car anytime soon.
Posted by: BobApril | June 20, 2007 10:32 AM
Everybody now in the US is focusing on ethanol production, with the argument to be less dependent on oil for fuel. But what about saving on oil fuel. I live in the Netherlands, where petrol costs 1.40 euros per litre, which equivalents about 7.10 dollars per gallon. If prices for petrol were that high in the US, that would be the end of the huge pick up trucks and SUVs. Besides it would bring more tax money to the governement, which could be used for energy saving projects.
Regarding the corn-ethanol discussion I am curious what will happen when subsidies disappear. I am surprised that the American citizens do not stand up against these money throwing politics.
Posted by: Dirk | June 20, 2007 10:51 AM
The one study I had seen that showed how Ethanol production can be a net gain is if the processing was done via solar heat. So instead of using gas/oil fired cookers to process the biomass, it could be processed using solar power alone. Of course, this means that all the refineries would have to be located in the desert and would require some interesting facilities, but it could work.
Then again, I am a fan of Bio-diesel made from fast growing algae.
Posted by: Madrocketscientist | June 20, 2007 11:11 AM
BobApril is correct that ethanol for fuel is an idea that has only recently been implemented. Dramatic improvements in efficiency will soon come from cellulosic ethanol technology.
Criticism of subsidies for current ethanol processes are extremely hypocritical. They do not even come close to the subsidies for oil-based fuels, which include not only tax breaks for things oil companies should be doing anyway, but also the massive aid to repressive regimes in oil-rich countries and military infrastructure (and American lives) devoted to protecting supply lines.
Government subsidies for ethanol and other biofuels are necessary because of the interest that oil and car companies have in maintaining the status quo. If, at anytime since the first oil embargo in the 1970's, the US had made serious investments in this technology, all of which has been available for at least that long, we would not be in the precarious position (geopolitically, economically, and environmentally) we find ourselves in now.
You can whine all you want, but we must continue our pursuit of biofuels, including ethanol. Increased costs for most corn-based products don't really concern me, but that if this has much of an impact on bourbon prices, I may have to reconsider my position.
Posted by: Tex | June 20, 2007 11:26 AM
If you think ethanol is such a loser technology, don't you have to wonder what in the world the Brazilians are doing? Apparently no one told them it doesn't work well.
Posted by: AEB | June 20, 2007 11:36 AM
Whuff. So many fallacies, so little time. I write about alternative energy for a living, so for me this is a little like facing a Gish Gallop. Working backwards, Patzek is simply not credible. If you read his lectures he starts from the premise that the 2nd law of thermodynamics makes it impossible to create a biofuel with a positive energy balance. He apparently never heard of photosynthesis. Pimental has been repeatedly been criticized for using corn yield data and industrial energy efficiency data from the 1970s which don't reflect current agronomic and industrial practices. Papers from the Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories put the energy balance of corn ethanol at between 36 and 69 percent above the breakeven point. In contrast, gasoline has an energy balance of .8, that is, one out of every five gallons is used to produce the other four.
Corn receives the most subsidies because it is by far the largest single crop in the U.S. Cotton and rice growers receive by far the highest subsidies per unit of production. It should also be noted that most of the corn subsidy is countercyclical. It is eliminated when prices go up, as we are seeing now.
The farm share of food is a minor consideration in the consumer cost of food. You'll note that a 10 cent a pound increase in the price of cattle was credited with a two dollar increase in the prices of a restaurant steak. Similarly, there is less than a dime's worth of wheat in that three dollar loaf of bread. The plastic bag it came in cost more. The insanely high price for corn we are all worried about? Nine cents a pound. (note that none of these articles mentioned that the corn market gave back 50 percent of its gains between February and May, so we are back to 6-7 cents a pound) This report (pdf file) put the contribution of higher oil prices to higher consumer food prices at one to two times the contribution of higher corn prices.
Finally, ADM was and is a major player in the ethanol industry. It deserves credit for sticking with the industry when oil prices dropped to $9 a barrel. However, the company hasn't added much new ethanol capacity for the last decade. Most of the new ethanol capacity created over the last five years has come from independent startup companies and entrepreneurs.ADM's share of the market has dropped from 70 to about 30 percent. Some of the new companies, like Poet Biorefining (formerly Broin), are becoming large companies in the process, but hey, isn't that the American way?
Posted by: justawriter | June 20, 2007 11:39 AM
Does anybody have data on how other crops fare in the production of ethanol? How does biodiesel comapre to ethanol in terms of the energy required to produce it?
Tex: I think you missed the point of the critic. Ed doesn't criticize the expenditure itself, but rather the expenditure in relation to the result obtained. In other words, Ed criticises ethanol subsidies because they result in a greater use of energy when they are supposed to result in less energy usage.
Posted by: valhar2000 | June 20, 2007 11:46 AM
Ethanol from corn gives you a slight energy profit, I forget how much. And that is at current technology. One thing to keep in mind is that our corn subsidies are bankrupting farmers around the world, by undercutting them with cheap corn. I heard for years that those subsidies should go away, and the way to do that is the raise the price of corn so that farmers can profit by growing it.
Corn ethanol is not a solution but a crossover technology until we can get cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, Miscanthus, and/or trees.
I could put up a post sometime in the next couple of days. Not enough time now to do it justice.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 20, 2007 11:53 AM
"If you think ethanol is such a loser technology, don't you have to wonder what in the world the Brazilians are doing? Apparently no one told them it doesn't work well."
As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the Brazilians use sugarcane (a much more energy-dense and less resource-intensive crop than corn) to make their ethanol. The US has few areas suitable for growing sugar efficiently, and currently imposes a high tariff on imported ethanol (for example, from those countries better suited for growing sugarcane).
Posted by: MJ Memphis | June 20, 2007 11:58 AM
As the previous poster noted, corn should be more expensive than it is. Due to billions of dollars of agriculture subsidies in the U.S., corn is sold in the U.S. for about half the price it costs to grow it. This results in a massive overproduction of corn, so the corn industry is always looking for new markets, such as replacing sugar with corn syrup in many foods, and ethanol production is just the latest of hundreds of products from corn-based chemical processing (Michael Pollan describes over 40 corn-derived chemicals in chicken mcnuggets alone.)
Posted by: jw | June 20, 2007 12:01 PM
Pimentel - now I remember - he included everything in the calculations that cost energy - including the lunches of the workers (I kid you not) and left out the useful byproducts of ethanol production such as compost - which reduce the need for costly fertilizers. Look up Daniel Kammen at UC Berkeley, or better yet, I interviewed him on my show a year ago.
http://www.inoculatedmind.com/?p=84
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 20, 2007 12:02 PM
My point is that for a relatively new technology, some start-up problems and inefficiencies can be expected, so stop whining and give it a chance. If there is a bad governmental policy in all of this, it is the price supports that keep sugar prices artifically high.
Criticizing a new technology (really a new application of a prehistoric technology) for not being an immediate economic success is kinda like criticizing my 18 month old grandson for not being a productive member of society. He can't feed himself, cloth himself, bath himself or find shelter (although he's getting pretty good at making a fort out of sofa cushions). But with just a little investment and patience, he may turn out OK.
Supporting new technologies that have the potential, but not the immediate ability, to transform the world is exactly what government subsidies should be used for.
Posted by: Tex | June 20, 2007 12:05 PM
justawriter:
So that means that corn ethanol has an energy balance of .36 to .69 versus gasoline's .80? Just trying to clarify. I get a little confused and skeptical when someone changes the way data is presented midstream.
AEB:
As llewlly said, Brazil uses ethanol derived from sugarcane.
Tex:
Nice misdirection. You apparently know that you can't argue that ethanol is a new technology, which is what BobApril said, so you say that ethanol is just being implemented. But that is still inaccurate. How in the hell can fuel from corn get more efficient? We might be able to lower the energy costs of getting it to the market, slightly, but there is no way that corn ethanol can fuel our economy the same way that oil and gas do. The environmental footprint of it even supplying 10% of our needs is too much.
Posted by: Jonathan | June 20, 2007 12:07 PM
llewelly -
So while I often read that greens support the corn -> ethanol boondoggle, I'm skeptical about what proportion of greens actually support it.
You read things like that, because it helps to convince the lazy, that this is something to support. You know, the sort of people who love the recycling, because it means they don't have to reduce their consumption, to be "green."
Madrocketscientist -
Personally, I am a fan of bio-fuel made from used cooking oil. Not really handy for large scale fuel production, but it rocks on a small scale. I am hoping to get my hands on a mini-bus that has the processor inline. The woman that owns it, is tired of fixing it, over and over. I have helped build the processors onto trailers a few times and would love to have one with the whole system self contained. It would make fuel a break even prospect, going as far as containing most of the cost of maintenance. Restaurants pay quite a bit to dispose of their grease traps - paying you for taking the raw material for your fuel. That easily covers the cost of disposing of the gunk left behind.
On top of that, I learned from Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata, that a by product, is glycerin. I subsequently found plans for a subprocessor that will seperate the glycerin out of the castings, though drastically increasing the concentration of toxic material left behind.
The downside, of course, would be that if I ever drove my kid to school (I wouldn't really, I want it for trips into the Columbia River Gorge and to see my brother in Seattle) he would be riding the short bus to school. The other problem being, the current owner painted it retro-merry prankster (al la Ken Keasey), with a splash of Teh Gay.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 12:08 PM
Valhar2000: biodiesel's energy balance is around 3 vs. ethanol's 1.36 to 1.69 (and vs. gasolines 0.8). The problem with biodiesel is that oilseed crops are much less productive than corn so the industry has a feedstock problem. Algae oil may be a solution but the technology is at least 2 to 4 years from commercialization. There is only enough soy oil in the US to make about 2 billion gallons of biodiesel. US ethanol production was 5 billion gallons in 2006.
Some ethanol plants are coming online that use biomass for process heat and steam. Ethanol from those plants will have an energy balance of about 3, similar to biodiesel.
Posted by: justawriter | June 20, 2007 12:17 PM
tex -
You can whine all you want, but we must continue our pursuit of biofuels, including ethanol. Increased costs for most corn-based products don't really concern me, but that if this has much of an impact on bourbon prices, I may have to reconsider my position.
Can the hungry Mexicans, who can't afford torillas that have doubled in price whine too? Keep in mind that this doesn't just affect the U.S., people in Mexico use corn as their major dietary staple and are getting priced out of the market.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 12:21 PM
Jonathon: The key word is above. The energy balance for ethanol in those papers was 1.36 and 1.69 as opposed to gasoline's 0.8. A large part of the change in the energy balance is that corn yields per acre have doubled since 1980, while the fuel efficiency of farm machinery has increased as well. So corn yields per unit of energy input is much higher today. Industrial boilers are also much more efficient than they were 20 or 30 years ago, so distillation is also less energy intensive. Even volatile organic chemicals that were once vented to the atmosphere are now rerouted through the furnaces lowering both pollution and fuel use. Those are a few of the ways producing ethanol from corn can become more efficient.
Posted by: justawriter | June 20, 2007 12:30 PM
I was not arguing that ethanol from cornstarch would become more efficient. I said that as as cellulosic ethanol (possibly including corn stover as a feedstock)comes on line the efficiency will improve. It is the environmental (and political) footprint of oil that is unsustainable.
Posted by: Tex | June 20, 2007 12:34 PM
Justawriter,
Well-presented. The most telling point to me was your mention of Patzek's failure to account for solar energy via photosynthesis in the energy budget of a plant - I'd REALLY like to see a link that demonstrates that, preferably from a pro-Patzek source if available. The mere statement you referenced will do if you have a source for the quote in its original context.
Switching back to the other side, though, let me offer another problem I've heard discussed about ethanol. How much corn would it take to replace our petroleum imports? Or even replace a significant fraction? From the numbers I saw once and remember fuzzily, there's not enough arable land in the U.S. to grow all we would need - even if we didn't need some of that land for food.
Posted by: BobApril | June 20, 2007 12:36 PM
Screw ethenal, I want an "Air Car."
http://www.theaircar.com/
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/06/09/autoblog-qanda-miguel-celades-sales-manager-of-mdi-they-make-th/
Posted by: matthew | June 20, 2007 12:42 PM
There was an article on the ethanol scam in Scientific American a few months ago. It might be on-line.
Not only is corn->ethanol a net energy loser, but it will also damage the environment by encouraging over-fertilizing (which is already destroying the Gulf of Mexico) and over-pumping the underlying acquifer for irrigation.
Posted by: raj | June 20, 2007 12:52 PM
One last point, the increase in corn prices in the US may actually benefit Mexicans, although is a perverse way. The US has been dumping government-subsidized corn at low prices into the Mexican market for some time (think "NAFTA") which has severely damaged the Mexican local agricultural industry. And that is one significant reason for illegal immigration from Mexico into the use.
If there is less dumping of US government subsidized corn, maybe the Mexican agricultural industry can recover to a point that the illegal immigration will subside.
Posted by: raj | June 20, 2007 12:56 PM
Ethanol from cornstarch (in the seeds) is really not economically viable now, as pointed out by Ed in the original post, so scaling up is pointless. And, no, there is not enough land for this anyway.
My comments above were not meant to defend the sustainability of cornstarch-based ethanol, but to point out, as others have, that this is a crossover technology that will be suplanted by ethanol derived from cellulose (the bulk of any plant, including cornstalks, other grassews and trees) in the near future. Past and current support for starch-based ethanol is appropriate and necessary, but if we are still doing this in 5 years, that would be very bad.
Posted by: Tex | June 20, 2007 1:07 PM
BobApril: Here is where I took the crack about Patzek's misuse of the second law. His actual work is more sound, but still flawed.
This is Patzek's actual paper. His most immediate problem is that he reduces actual corn yields by 20 percent by using long term averages for yields, minimizing the 27-year long trend of higher yields. There are other questionable assumptions as well, using a wet mill process as his basis of analysis when most ethanol plants are dry mill and assuming that other analyses don't take the moisture content of corn into account.
Here is a response to Patzek.
Posted by: justawriter | June 20, 2007 1:19 PM
tex -
It is the environmental (and political) footprint of oil that is unsustainable.
And how is the environmental footprint of ethanol production any better? As BobApril points out, there isn't enough land to produce enough ethanol to meet our fuel needs, even if we didn't need to eat.
I think it is a bad idea to invest so much, into something that has only short term benefit. There are many other technologies that promising. Unfortunately, too much focus seems to be on ethanol as a solid solution, rather than the stop gap that it really is. I am not saying that ethanol doesn't have it's place, but if it is going to cause a lot fo single mindedness, it's a bad idea.
Unfortunately, Americans seem to get hyper focused on "the one, big thing," rather than realizing that as we develop and improve on alternative energy, we are going to have to be adaptable and gear up accordingly.
Rather than focusing so much on ethanol, we should be also focusing on hydrogen, both the constant improvement of fule cells and better hydrogen production. We should be focusing on improving, expanding and encouraging the use of, mass transit. We should be focusing on electric vehicles (including mass transit) and the development of alternative sources for electricity. In short, we need to be less short sighted.
I am not saying that we should just give up on ethanol. But we should avoid trying to defend it unduly. Rather, we should be open to and listen to criticism of it, as we should be about all alternative energy and fuel sources. To do otherwise, risks locking us into singular economy, no different than our current petroleum economy.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 1:21 PM
tex -
I was writing the above, while you posted your last comment.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 1:23 PM
DuWayne,
Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It is a carrier of energy, just like electricity is. They both have to be generated somehow from a real energy source (solar, nuclear, fossil fuel, hydrodynamics). Focusing on hydrogen will not solve the ultimate problem of where the energy comes from in the first place.
Posted by: Tex | June 20, 2007 1:39 PM
This whole thread reminds me of an article I read at "disgusted beyond belief" about nuclear power:
http://disgustedbeyondbelief.blogspot.com/2007/06/post-about-power.html
Essentially, nuclear power could supply all our electrical needs for some time. If this is true, then we just need to focus on electric motors and battery technology.
I also remember a quote from an electric car manufacturer that went something like "Electric cars are not for everyone, currently we can only meet the needs of 90% of the population."
Posted by: Robert | June 20, 2007 1:45 PM
One factor that lessens the environmental footprint of ethanol is its use as an oxygenate--it provides more complete combustion, reducing carbon monoxide.
Mike
Posted by: mgr | June 20, 2007 1:46 PM
Can anyone tell me what ever happened to thermal depolymerization? Seems to me that's a MUCH better solution, and furthermore solves greenhouse emissions/biowaste/energy production problems simultaneously.
Posted by: Brian | June 20, 2007 2:16 PM
tex -
Please keep in mind that I get most of my information from science journalism, so it is subject not only to my mis-understandings, but the misunderstandings of those writing the material. That said. . .
My understanding, is that there are a lot of promising possibilities for the production of hydrogen, many of which are closely related to electricity production.
One such notion was to use defunct off shore oil rigs to produce electricity, through wind and turbine generators, taking advantage of ocean currents. The technical details went over my head, but a byproduct, designed into the process was hydrogen.
Another possibility is ramping up nuclear power, though I have serious problems with that, as it seems to me, to be a risky prospect. Plus disposal of waste is problematic at best, an absolute catastrophe at worse.
Ultimately, electricity production will never have a singular solution, but there are a lot of promising technologies out there. The nice thing about it is, that the nature of electricity is such, that it really doesn't matter how many forms of production are out there. They can all contribute and as long as they're on the grid, any production contributes.
I have a friend who uses turbines, run on underground springs, to produce enough power that he can run his house, shop and festival grounds. He invariably produces more power than he uses, because he only uses his shop for a limited amount of time and the festival space i almost never used - while the power to run them is always being produced. He also overproduces so that he will always produce enough. He gets a check from the power company every month, often multiples higher than most people spend on their energy bills.
Obviously, not everyone has the ability to produce that much energy, but it is indicative of how easy it is to add to the grid. If he produced much more, he would need licensing to do so, but if you're producing enough juice, it isn't really a problem. It's entirely possible to get together with a few investors and build a small scale production facilty, using whatever's locally available. Of course that's the hippy in me talking, the part that all about local and sustainable. I would love to see neighborhoods and small communities, producing their own power, either needing little supplementing from the grid or actually adding a little to the grid, quite likely both.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 2:26 PM
That's what I get for asking for links. Thanks, Writer, but I'm more confused now than when I started. The first one, at Salon.com, is now a blank page. The others...After I stopped the nosebleed from repeatedly hitting the desk as I nodded off, it looked to me like Patzek had included solar in his section on entropy, but I'm not competent to judge if he did so correctly - or indeed, if that section is even connected to the part on ethanol. I guess I'll stick to summaries for now.
Posted by: BobApril | June 20, 2007 2:42 PM
I would also add, that I am not advocating placing all focus on hydrogen. Indeed, I am advocating not overemphasizing focus on any form of energy production or carrying. Too, hydrogen is not actually produced, it is extracted. I can imagine technology developing to the point where extraction of hydrogen, takes less energy than the energy value of the hydrogen extracted.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 20, 2007 3:00 PM
Brian, I was wondering about Changing World Technologies and its "Anything into oil" process. The most recent info I could find was from theoildrum.com, here. The article is a comparison of the similarities in the hype between cellulosic ethanol and TDP, so it's particularly relevant to this threat.
The short version is, beware of alternative energy hype that sounds too good to be true. There's a reason oil is king -- it has a proven track record from extraction to production and delivery, and has tremendous output for energy input. Other technologies sound great, but inevitably end up costing more than forecast, with far more difficulty. I think TDP (something I was very hyped about after that Discover article in '03) is a good lesson in that regard.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | June 20, 2007 3:23 PM
Apologies, that line should be "relevant to this thread", not "threat".
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | June 20, 2007 3:32 PM
Posted by: llewelly | June 20, 2007 3:50 PM
Most of the "greens", though I'm sometimes not sure who that even refers to anymore, are pretty unhappy about the whole ethanol thing.
The big problem is that ethanol is simply not a solution to our energy problems; it can only ever be a supplement. Even our maximum conceivable ethanol output is only a fraction of our current energy needs, and our long-term energy needs are certain to be even greater.
Meanwhile while ethanol is by itself a good technology and I think there's a place for it in a long-term energy strategy, it seems to me that we're giving it so much attention not because it's useful or because we need it but just because it's easy to do. We're concentrating on ethanol to make ourselves feel better about the problem rather than actually doing something that would make a serious difference in the problem, and while there surely should be ethanol research and funding, it frustrates me that ethanol is eclipsing in attention (and as near as I can gather massively eclipsing in government funding) many approaches to our energy problems that would actually take significant steps toward solving our energy problems or at least shake up the unsustainable status quo.
I'm much more interested in hydrogen. Hydrogen seems to me to be vastly more realistic as a serious replacement for oil. It's only a method of energy transport rather than a method of energy production, but, well, that's the point. The fact is we need a standardized method of energy transport for things like cars, be that hydrogen or lightweight batteries or something. In the short term hydrogen would probably only be produced by burning fossil fuels (and wasting some energy in the process), but in the long term, as cleaner technologies come online, hydrogen energy consumption would allow us to take advantage of those new cleaner technologies, as way as providing an economic incentive for those technologies to be used that isn't capped by the fickle demands of the grid.
We need some way of consuming power that is not linked to any one way of producing that power.
A few favor sugarcane -> ethanol (for which there is a long-standing Brazilian example with a net positive energy yield), but are doubtful that it is workable in the US outside of Hawaii and Florida.
We could of course deal with both this AND the "corn ethanol puts too big a strain on our corn production infrastructure" problems by just allowing sugar to be imported from Brazil for ethanol production. But then we have a new problem, which is that sugar production in Brazil results in rainforest destruction-- and burning rainforests to create farmland has an incredibly large carbon footprint unto itself. Good options are hard to find in this debate...
Can anyone tell me what ever happened to thermal depolymerization? Seems to me that's a MUCH better solution, and furthermore solves greenhouse emissions/biowaste/energy production problems simultaneously.
TDP does look promising, if anyone ever gets it to work, but as far as I know greenhouse emissions are not one of its advantages. The output of the TDP process is plain ol crude oil, which releases the same stuff when you burn it that any other oil does. There's a lot of iffiness here, I mean, but unless I'm quite mistaken TDP can't claim to the same level of carbon neutrality that biodiesel can. Biodiesel has that whole "closed loop" claim going on, that any CO2 released by burning ethanol is offset by the CO2 sucked out of the atmosphere by the corn you used to make the ethanol. Even if that's true, though, the inputs to TDP are potentially from more variable sources, things like plastics, and so I don't think we can make these kinds of assumptions. Plus if I'm not very mistaken biodiesel inherently produces less harmful emissions than normal oil, whereas the same is not true of TDP.
Posted by: Coin | June 20, 2007 4:13 PM
Mark Chu-Carroll over on Good Math, Bad Math has a discussion about the energy yeilds
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/12/bad_math_and_ethanol.php
Posted by: Stevencnz | June 20, 2007 4:15 PM
This is simple: Don't use already depleted soil to grow corn for fuel. Period.
Such an idiot species we are, we go from a fossil fuel to a "renewable" fuel, except that we should be using those fields to produce food (not just corn) for PEOPLE, not CARS.
What happens when we get a serious, prolonged drought?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I saw a Flex Fuel Suburban on the road the other day. Wanted to ram it.
Posted by: Andrea | June 20, 2007 5:17 PM
justawriter, I remember reading that 0.8 figure for gasoline and thinking, "I know this is wrong... what is going on here?"
Eventually I worked it out. This figure pretends that we use (burn) all the oil in order to make the gasoline. The reality, as you correctly say, is that we burn one gallon of oil to make four gallons of gasoline.
So, putting the case correctly, we should say: Processing corn to make ethanol produces fuel ethanol with an energy content of 1.36 to 1.69 times the processing energy. Processing oil to make gasoline produces fuel with an energy content of 4 times the processing energy.
The 0.8 figure requires mishandling the data in an unacceptable fashion.
Posted by: Joffan | June 20, 2007 5:19 PM
Actually, The Oil Drum has a few good pieces on ethanol on there.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2585
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2199
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2615
(A couple of those are by Robert Rapier, a guy whose opinion I respect quite a bit, he's been out against ethanol for a couple of years already.)
Posted by: Schloopy | June 20, 2007 5:27 PM
Actually, The Oil Drum has a few good pieces on ethanol on there.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2585
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2199
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2615
(A couple of those are by Robert Rapier, a guy whose opinion I respect quite a bit, he's been out against ethanol for a couple of years already.)
Posted by: Schloopy | June 20, 2007 5:28 PM
Jeff Hebert : That is a really interesting link [about TDP], thanks.
Posted by: Coin | June 20, 2007 5:33 PM
justawriter:
Further to my remark above, the Argonne NL presentation on Ethanol life cycle phrases the same result in a way that makes more sense to me:
"0.78 million Btu of fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of ethanol delivered, compared to 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of gasoline delivered"
Perhaps they could even use "required" in place of "consumed".
The only hesistancy I'd have in this analysis is the principle of assigning the CO2 production correctly; I would only want 0.23 of the 1.23 figure assigned against gasoline producers; the rest goes against the gasoline users.
Posted by: Joffan | June 20, 2007 6:01 PM
WARNING, the link in my post above is a 12MB pdf, only four slides but picture-heavy.
Posted by: Joffan | June 20, 2007 6:04 PM
FYI. The cited Argonne presentation material is incorrect. The error has been called to the attention of the author, but he has ignored it.
In addition to the major error, i.e., different initial conditions for gasoline and ethanol energy balances, an energy credit is assumed for non-energy coproduct. While the coproduct may have an economic benefit, it has nothing to do with net energy.
Posted by: russ | June 20, 2007 6:26 PM
I'm glad to see several people agree with me here about the corn subsidies and the flaws in Pimentel's study. Chu-Carrol's takedown of Pimentel is spot-on, and he summarizes the points that Dan Kammen made to me about it. the point is, Pimentel included completely different energy costs in his study than are counted in the production of fuel from oil, so the wrong numbers are being compared and it doesn't mean anything.
Ed, I think you're very right to title this The Ethanol Scam, however, I think the scam involved is the deceptive research being used to argue against ethanol, and the deceptive tactics some people have been using to use that research to toss a wrench in the spokes of biofuels. That's the ethanol scam.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 20, 2007 7:07 PM
Russ: I'm sorry, but I don't actually understand what it is your last post is saying. Do you think you could try again in expressing what your problem with the Argonne presentation is?
Posted by: Coin | June 20, 2007 7:15 PM
But... we're talking about the USA. In the USA, taxes are evil, period.
Hey, not even we Europeans have managed to mount an opposition against the agricultural subsidies of the EU...
Posted by: David Marjanović | June 20, 2007 7:26 PM
The Argonne illustration uses the energy content of raw petroleum as the starting point for the gasoline energy balance.
It uses the finished energy content of gasoline, diesel, NG, LPG, and coal as inputs to the ethanol balance. That is the critical and obvious error.
It also takes an inferred energy benefit for the coproduct DDGS, i.e. the energy that was required to produce it, not energy that had any relationship to the process thermochemistry.
The energy content of raw petroleum and other fossil hydrocarbons would "wash out" of calculations for both systems. The use of different bases for the comparison is absurd.
Posted by: russ | June 20, 2007 8:10 PM
Clarification
3d para should read, "i.e., the total energy that would be required to produce a comparable product, independent of the ethanol system."
Posted by: russ | June 20, 2007 8:25 PM
What the above does illustrate is that energy lifecycle calculations are easily rigged to support whatever technology you supported prior to making the calculation..
The classic example is that someone, by making appropriate assumptions, calculated that a hummer was more efficient than a prius..
Anothe rexample is giving two significant figures for ethanol percentage energy gain. Since corn yield - especially compared to energy inputs - varies strongly with climate in a given year, it is perfectly possible to swing from strongly positive to strongly negative from one year to the next.
But this missed the point. Agriculture is by definition the destruction of natural environments, replacing them with monocultures of one sort or another. If you consider yourself green then you must look long and hard at anything that will expand agriculture - especially into virgin territory.
My personal take on this is that electric cars should be the focus; it is a lot easier and more efficient to make electricity than it is to make liquid fuels of any stripe, and with smart recharging meters you could take advantage of intermittant sources to recharge them. It is hard to get genuinely objective information on electric cars, but as far as I can gather with the latest battery technology, ranges of several hundred miles should be achieveable.
Oh, and for those who think that Ethanol has made a big impact in Brazil.. sorry, it's their offshore, deep-water oil extraction technology, which contributes over 10 times as much to the oil budget of Brazil as ethanol.
But it's true, corn based ethanol is essentially a scam; an alliance of special interest groups forcing a policy that has little to do with reality.
Posted by: Andrew Dodds | June 21, 2007 3:58 AM
Andrew,
I've listened to a couple of NPR's Science Friday on electric cars recently - IIRC, they're up to around 300 mile range on a normal-sized passenger car, but they're still having trouble with over-charging/under-charging killing the battery capacity. That makes frequent replacement necessary, upping the costs. And of course, it's hard to find a place to "fill up" away from home, and impossible to do so quickly - no problem for a commuter if you remember to plug in at night, but bad for long-distance or forgetful people. I think electric is the way to go, too...but it might take a breakthrough to really make it work commercially. Oh, and smacking the oil lobby so the cars can get out of the experimental phase and onto the road. Maybe we should be pushing for an ethanol-sized subsidy for all-electric cars.
This is also why I have mixed feelings about the current gas prices. They're personally painful, of course - but the higher they go, the lower the bar is for another choice to be commercially viable. You want to see (fill-in-the-blank alternative fuel) get a boost? Wait until gas is $5 a gallon. If that doesn't do it, try $10. Assuming we can keep the economy going under those conditions.
Posted by: BobApril | June 21, 2007 5:49 AM
The big advantage to electric cars from a macro perspective is that it's a lot easier to change a central power plant's fuel source which delivers the electricity down the line to the home or individual refueling station than it is to re-engineer all of those millions of vehicles one at a time.
For instance, let's say we switch all the cars to burn hydrogen instead of gas or ethanol. Then you're locked into hydrogen as your fuel source, and if we later need to switch to something else, you have to replace all of those hydrogen burning cars, you have to replace all the refueling stations, etc. A fleet of electric cars that plug in to a socket drawing power from the electric company, however, doesn't care how the electric company generates the electricity. Let's say the plant burns coal, but then switches to nuclear. The power lines delivering the juice from the plant to your car all stay the same. The "refueling stations" all stay the same. The cars all stay the same. It's only the central plant that has to change its fuel source.
Electric vehicles allow the delivery and storage methods to be independent from the fuel generation method. That's the big advantage to going all electric.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert | June 21, 2007 7:37 AM
From my Alma Mater - sugar fuel that is easy to make
http://www.news.wisc.edu/13881
Posted by: Madrocketscientist | June 21, 2007 9:47 AM
BobApril -
You're correct, of course, that electric cars aren't currently the best option for folks that have to go any distance. But I think Andrew was talking about focusing on them, rather than focusing so much on ethanol, which makes a lot of sense.
Too, by focusing both on the electric cars and practical mass transit, we would be far better off. A step that I would love to see, would be high speed trains. I live in Portland and have a brother in Seattle. While going to visit him, I have realized that there is a lot of traffic, between here and Seattle. If there were the option of taking a train that could cut the time down from three hours, to less than hour and a half, including stops on the way, a lot of people would quit driving it, especially if the train dropped them at a public trans hub.
Jeff Hebert -
I am with you on the electric cars, but why would it be necessary to go all electric? Why not an electric car, with a generator, for those who overextend the range? Maybe as an option?
As a partner to that notion, what about fuel tanks that are removable (possibly even modular)? That line of thought comes from hydrogen fuel and I doubt it's original. Why not provide a tank, similar to that of lp gas, for ones grill or RV? Encouraging people to keep the car charged, providing an alternative if they have longer trips to make. The advantage of using tanks like that, is to reduce the need for extensive fueling infrastructure. Rather than having fifty pumping stations around town, have one or two, that deliver the tanks of fuel to convenience stores and even grocery stores.
The other advantage of an electric car, built with a generator as an option, is that it would be somewhat modular. As newer, better fuels were developed, the generator could be changed to reflect that.
Of course, this lends itself to the biggest challenge in producing green cars, that being, producing cars that are adaptable. Making electric cars that have the ability to accept new and improved batteries, as they are developed. Building cars that aren't interdependent on whatever current technology happens to be. Unfortunately, we still seem bent on accepting, designed obsolescence. That, I think, is one of the biggest barriers we have to overcome, on the road to truly green transportation.
Posted by: DuWayne | June 21, 2007 11:35 AM
Jeff - the example you brought up doesn't square away - Hydrogen is essentially a battery, not a fuel source. So you have the same advantages/disadvantages as electric when it comes to changing your energy source. Hydrogen would be generated off of electricity at power plants. Change the power plant, change the source.
The fact is, Hydrogen and Electric are great long-term solutions, especially when it comes to cars for populated cities - less smog. But the problem is, we need to generate the energy somehow.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 21, 2007 12:57 PM
Why are we talking about technology here? Isn't this really more of a economic and social issue? The quickest and cheapest way to reduce dependency on oil imports is simply to change the mix of vehicle types on the road over the next ten years. Many types of very efficient cars are already on the market, no new models need be developed. Just get more folks into small sedans and bring back the minivan. Getting soccer moms out of SUVs and into minivans could save a lot of fuel.
Changing land use could make an even bigger difference over twenty years. Houston is known for its teeming millions who live in suburban sprawl, but I see a lot of pomising developments. The inner loop is having a population boom, and a big trend in suburban land use is little "gap-filler" housing developments that use small patches of underdeveloped land in older suburban areas.
Ethanol from corn is mostly just a wealth-transfer program. It takes money out of the pockets of the hard working urban area residents who are the backbone of economic productivity and gives it to agribusiness fat cats and traps our struggling farmers into a dependent relationship with agribusiness when they might do better in the long run by diversifying production.
Posted by: Bacopa | June 21, 2007 1:55 PM
"I saw a report on this subject a while back that also focused on the effect that this is having on impoverished Mexicans. Because corn is such a staple in Mexico, driving up the price of corn is making it too expensive for many Mexicans"
Actually higher corn prices have been a bonanza for Mexican corn farmers - possibly the largest group of extremely poor people in the country.
The urban poor have, for the most part. been protected from the higher corn prices by schemes that allow them to buy subsidised corn from special stores.
The main losers from the higher corn prices are the urban middle classes, who unlike the farmers and the urban poor have the means to make their views heard.
Posted by: Ian Gould | June 24, 2007 10:48 AM
"How in the hell can fuel from corn get more efficient?"
Well for starters you can find ways to convert some of the starch in the corn into sugar; then you can improve the processing of the corn to increase the ethanol yield and select more efficient strains of yeast; then you can add heat recovery technology to improve the efficiency of the distillation process which is where most of the energy is used.
Better still, you can eliminate the distillation process entirely using new technology that converts fructose into furans rather than ethanol without the need for fermentation or distillation.
Posted by: Ian Gould | June 24, 2007 10:57 AM
It's about time they brought back clockwork power! "If it was good enough for grandpa, it's good enough for US"!
Posted by: Ian | August 2, 2007 7:15 AM
Can any one give me some ideas/resource to produce rice husk based fuel cells which are packageable, easily transportable ? Thanks in anticipation.
Posted by: eswarrj | April 15, 2010 9:04 PM
eswarrj, start with a site like this. Using something else's waste as fuel (a la french fry biodiesel) looks like an okay way to use something that would've just been thrown away, but starting from scratch to make alcohol looks like more trouble than it's worth (more trouble than just sucking gas out of the ground, as God intended, anyway).
Posted by: Modusoperandi | April 16, 2010 12:22 AM
MO - "...more trouble than just sucking gas out of the ground, as God intended..."
Ah, that explains your posting style: you're a huffer (see defn 2).
:D Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | April 16, 2010 4:46 AM
Oui. Iz, how you say, "more classee", with a Fronsch ak-sont. "Huff-ay".
Posted by: Modusoperandi | April 16, 2010 5:51 AM