jihan3

That's an interesting point.

Kind of like the argument against widening highways in the US: you can never build large enough to get rid of traffic jams, since citizens will simply adapt to make more use of any new construction.

At any rate, the optimist in me hopes that the increased consumption (whether it be from hybrids/ethanol resulting in more driving or other issues) leads to some other positive effect - maybe a more productive economy or maybe even just a higher standard of living/happier citizens.

jpt

That's a real cost of the corn production, though. It would be a real cost of something else if they worked somewhere else. Discounting it is cheating, and if the study I quoted didn't count it that makes me more, not less, inclined to go with Pimentel's numbers.

As far as I can tell the general consensus is that it's just technically possible to get a net energy balance, but it is not economically feasible. I see no reason to consider spending money on oil worse than spending it on other things.

Well, consider the scenario that ethanol has a 200% net positive energy balance -- that is, 1 gallon of ethanol only requires you to consume the energy available in 1/2 gallon (this is far more than even the most optimistic assumptions I've read by the way). Assume further that we've completely eliminated fossil fuel from the cycle, and that we're burning ethanol to get the energy to create ethanol. Then the total pollution cost of burning a gallon of corn-gas in my car is the tailpipe emissions from burning 1 gallon, PLUS the emissions from burning half a gallon to create that gallon, PLUS the emissions from burning the quarter gallon that was needed to make that half gallon, etc etc... the limit of that series is 2, that is, the total amount of emissions you have to charge for per gallon of ethanol is twice as much as you actually see coming out of the car (this assumes that all burning creates an equal amount of emissions, which is not really true). The smaller the net positive energy balance, the worse the situation gets. If we burn fossil fuel to create the ethanol the picture doesn't look quite as bad but the point is that you have to account for the pollution emitted to create the fuel, not just the emissions from burning the fuel.


First of all, if all the oil in the Middle East dried up tomorrow, that would drive up energy prices for everyone. Moreover, there's way more energy available from domestic sources than some would have you believe. There's even more oil in our own oil wells than we're getting at, simply because it's marginally cheaper to get it elsewhere. And this is to say nothing of vast potential nuclear capabilities et cetera. Importing oil is the best choice for much of our energy needs right now, but that doesn't mean it's best by an extremely long shot. The oil crisis in the 70s was noticed primarily in its effect on cars, and even there the effect was pretty marginal (gas is more expensive in Europe today, just because of high taxes, than it ever was in America in the 70s I believe).

The right answer to this problem is speculation and investment, not government. There is plenty of privately funded research in this country, and I trust investors (who have their money on the line to make sure they are putting it in the right places and getting results) over Congressmen (who are gone in 6 years, have no expertise in the areas they govern, and whose primary incentive is to make voters in their home state or region happy) and government contractors (whose primary incentive is to maximize taxpayer cost) every single time.

You have no idea just how much pull they have. Go grab a copy of the tax code or U.S. code and see how many special exceptions there are for farmers alone. Special interests are responsible for probably 90% of the legislation made and tax dollars spent in this country. It's a total disaster.

jpt

This is actually untrue. The short-term price elasticity of demand for gasoline is extremely low, which is the fancy economist way of saying that when the price of gas goes up, people don't buy any less of it until they possibly get a more fuel efficient car next time it's time to buy one. This stands to reason, because if you can afford a car, gas is such a tiny portion of your budget anyway that any reasonable price fluctuation is nearly unnoticeable in your personal bottom line. How much do YOU personally restrict yourself from driving just to save a couple bucks' worth of gas?

I would think this is more about the fact that hybrid cars are a limited-usefulness gimmick that don't improve efficiency very much at all. Even the flagship of hybrids, the Prius, only gets an average mpg in the 40s, and a good chunk of that is a result of fuel-efficiency-oriented engineering (shape, weight, low power, overinflated tires) rather than the battery. The TDI Jetta has about the same true average mpg, and it's a bigger car with fewer compromises made for the sake of fuel efficiency (it has good tires and a normal shape to name two). Given the engineering challenges of a hybrid powertrain, it just seems to make more sense to work on building efficient conventional engines -- something Honda's been getting better and better at for nearly half a century.

The argument that corn lobbyists make is that burning ethanol is so much better that we won't have to care how much we use. They leave out the fact that to produce enough ethanol to power all of our cars today we'd need to turn the entire country into one big corn field.

jihan3

I disagree. The cost of the worker's gasoline consumption is tied to the presence of the worker on this earth, not to his employment at an ethanol production plant. Let's look at this by example. Meet Joe Blow. If NO ethanol were produced, Joe Blow would still consume gasoline (directly by burning fuel in his car AND indirectly through simply being an "on the grid" American). On the other hand, if ethanol WAS being produced, and Joe Blow was never conceived by his parents, Joe Blow would NOT consume any fossil fuels. Some other worker would take his place at the plant, but since Joe Blow is not around, the gasoline consumption of the US as a whole would be slightly less.

Thus, including those figures, as Pimentel did, is incorrect accounting.

Furthermore, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There's a fair amount of discussion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ethanol_fuel about various issues regarding Pimentel's study.

The reason that spending money on oil is worse is because at our current rate of consumption and production, we are forced to import about half of our oil. Energy is very important in our economy. Having such a critical dependence on foreign entities is costly and dangerous.

Your math is correct, but your assumptions are wrong. Ethanol is clean burning for two key reasons.

1) It contains oxygen, allowing for more complete combustion (fewer "bad" pollutants) of gasoline when mixed. MTBE also achieves this purpose, but is carcinogenic and was found to seep into ground water. MTBE has been banned by California and other states for this reason. Many states have substituted ethanol for MTBE. Bottom line: ethanol allows for cleaner burning gasoline.

2) Burning ethanol is carbon neutral. The main emission of burning gasoline or ethanol is carbon dioxide, widely blamed for global warming. Gasoline consists of hydrocarbons that have been sequestered in the earth for millenia. Burning gasoline releases carbon into the atmosphere (primarily as carbon dioxide). This increases the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. On the other hand, ethanol produced from corn consists of carbon that the corn plant pulled out of the atmosphere. Burning ethanol simply replaces the carbon dioxide that the corn plant recently extracted from the atmosphere.

Thus, assuming that no fossil fuels are used to produce the ethanol, burning ethanol has ZERO carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, this isn't realistic today. But as long as producing ethanol is energy positive, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced.

I agree with everything here (except for the vast nuclear capabilities - that has little to do with replacing gasoline in the US, but that's another topic).

Unfortunately, the reason I agree is that the argument has shifted away from whether or not the statement "Giving my tax money to corn farmers and ethanol plants will not reduce dependence on foreign energy" is true.

We are dependent on foreign sources of energy because they are cheaper. We can produce oil domestically at higher cost. But that puts us at a disadvantage. Since we can't produce oil as cheaply as we can import it, and we need oil to be cheap to remain competitive in the long term, we are dependent on foreign sources.

Now, given that we are dependent on foreign energy, domestic ethanol production reduces that dependence.

Private speculation and investment work well for small, relatively easy to solve problems. Large, hard problems require enormous resources and entail huge risk. These are significant barriers to private speculation and investment. Reducing our nation's dependence on foreign energy is a large, hard problem.

jihan3

Comparing a TDI Jetta to any gasoline car is an unfair comparison. Diesel has a higher energy density (about 10% higher), giving it an inherent advantage.

Hybrid technology works very well for stop and go driving. It doesn't do much, and just might hurt due to added weight, for highway cruising.

Since it's well known that hybrid technology does not help for highway cruising, and we are discussing the worthiness of hybrids, let's restrain ourselves to discussing fuel economy in stop and go situations. The Prius is EPA city rated for 60mpg. The TDI Jetta gets 36mpg. Adjust the 36mpg for the 10% extra energy in diesel, and the TDI Jetta gets about 33 miles when consuming the same amount of chemical energy.

While the EPA ratings are not necessarily reflective of real world situations, they do represent the results of a relatively controlled experiment. This allows for arguably meaningful comparisons between two technologies/cars.

Today, in the US, ethanol is mainly sourced from corn. This is simply because the US has excess corn production that would otherwise be burned off. Ethanol can be produced from other sources, potentially including biowaste.

I don't listen to corn lobbyists, so I haven't heard this "unlimited resource" argument. Perhaps they mean that all the ethanol that we can produce in the near future (ethanol production, like all things, takes time to ramp up) is produced from excess corn, effectively making it unlimited in the near term? I don't know.

Just because ethanol cannot completely replace gasoline in the near future (due to lack of supply) does not make it worthless. Use of ethanol will displace consumption of gasoline. Every little bit counts. A small incremental improvement is better than no improvement at all.

vidgamer

All of the other arguments are nearly irrelevant when compared to this one.

When oil prices get too high, then other technologies that are more expensive are suddenly a viable alternative. Why waste money paying twice as much for fuel when we have cheap mideast gas? Let's use the cheap stuff before someone else does! :-D It's not as if we conserve it, it'll get saved in the ground for people 1000 years from now. The best we can do is stretch it out. So, to me, the real answer is nuclear power (and electric cars or hydrogen, using nuclear energy), and everything else is a distraction. Hydrogen is a waste if you have to burn fossil fuels to create it.

Wired had a good article on this a few months ago. They had price points for various alternative fuel technologies (meaning, the price at which a barrel of oil would have to rise to and stabilize at that price). It's just so cheap right now.

As an example other than ethenol, they described how you needed to heat shale to extract oil. So, for a long time, it cost more energy than what you got out! They then described a technology which heated the shale in the ground which was more efficient, but still costs too much at current oil prices.

So, I agree with Jpt that these other technologies usually cost a lot more, burn fossil fuel to try to create fuel, etc., and just don't make a lot of practical sense.



Having said that, I like my gas-saving Acura. I get good milage -- great even, for city driving. 40% better city milage than many cars & suvs. 40% That's huge. You'd never get that kind of efficiency just by switching a gas-guzzler to a part-ethanol fuel. We need smaller cars and more efficiency, like what Honda/Acura already does well.


I know a couple of people who bought hybrids, and as far as I can tell, they're not going out of their way to drive more. One that I work with, he commutes to work every day, which is only a few miles anyway. Here again, is it cost effective to pay the higher price for the extra technology (two "engines", batteries, etc.), to save a couple of gallons a week? I say, if it's your money, and you want to spend more of it to "save the environment", then I say good for you. I'm willing to buy a Honda/Acura to do my part, but I draw the line at a hybrid.

Hey, what is wrong with driving more for the same amount of fuel, anyways? I mean, why does someone who graces the hallowed halls of NPR not want me to travel if I want? Maybe he can get my company to let the entire office telecommute, at which time, he'd probably say that we'd all pile into our cars and drive around the block in circles for a half-hour each day because of the fuel we weren't using. No, really, where are these people going that they weren't before? Did they obtain free time to travel all of those extra miles, along with the hybrid?

jihan3

I don't think it's as easy as you make it out to be.

Gas is relatively cheap now. It almost certainly won't be forever (I suppose we could discover that crude oil is being generated by the Earth's core (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/fre...otic_oil.shtml), but I would rate that as highly unlikely).

It's undesireable to pin all hope on a single replacement technology. Let's say we build a bunch of nuclear power plants and plan on using electric cars. Well, there are several technological breakthroughs that still need to occur to make that happen. Batteries don't have the capacity nor energy density to replace gasoline. Will there be a breakthrough there? Electricity generated hydrogen is another alternative, but again, storing enough of it in a car is impossible today. Is the hydrogen going to be used in fuel cells to drive electric motors? If so, there isn't enough platinum in the world to make the catalysts necessary for the fuel cell to work. Will someone find a replacement in time?

Instead, it makes sense to explore several options in parallel, if it is at all affordable in whatever sense is important (money, time, effort, etc). Ethanol is attractive for several reasons.

First, it enables a smooth transition and works right now. The vast majority of cars on the road today can burn ethanol. Car engine factories produce engines that can burn ethanol. The distribution network for ethanol can piggyback on gasoline's. These are all great advantages. Shifting to electric based cars and a whole new energy supply infrastructure will take a long long time and far more money than any corn subsidy. Ethanol is used today and can be gracefully scaled up.

Second, today, it converts excess food product to usable fuel.

Third, it's carbon neutral, minimizing global warming effects.

I'm not saying that ethanol is the end-all-be-all solution. We should look for answers from a variety of technologies. But in my opinion, ethanol looks pretty good with strong positives that outweigh its negatives.



Vidgamer's "let's use up all the cheap oil before someone else does, instead of paying more for alternate sources!" opinion illustrates exactly why free market forces cannot smoothly adapt to abrupt disruptions. Everyone does what best serves themselves in the near term, and not enough effort is put forth to solve the hard problems until it's necessary and too late. This effect is exacerbated when the presented problem is hard. "Paying more for alternate sources" is called nurturing a young promising industry so it can stay alive in case we desperately need it in the future. It's hedging our bets, paying more in the short term so we don't suffer (as much) in the long run.

jihan3

Forgot to summarize the third paragraph in my last post.

Since success of any one given technology is not guaranteed, we need to spread the risk across multiple technologies in the hopes that at least one will bear fruit.

jpt

And yet diesel doesn't cost any more than gasoline. The comparison between these two technologies is relevant because (according to diesel engine manufacturers) diesels don't get the as much efficiency benefit as gasoline engines from a diesel/electric hybrid system. So between two technologies that are able to provide about the same gains, but won't work well together, diesel seems like a much better alternative given its lower capital costs, easier maintenance and probable longer engine lifespan, and greater flexibility (Toyota's having major trouble building a hybrid full-size pickup, for instance, because gas/electric just can't efficiently deliver enough torque for this application, but diesel vehicles are very common in every size from MPV to semitrailer).

It is telling that, in Europe, where fuel efficiency matters significantly more due to high fuel prices and there are no specific government incentives to hybrid car building or state laws banning diesels, hybrids are almost nonexistent but diesels are common as muck. It's just not cost effective when you can get about the same economy for way less money with diesels.

All that said, Peugot/Citroen is releasing a diesel-electric hybrid that they say will get 69mpg (after refusing to create a gasoline-electric hybrid because it isn't cost effective). We'll see how the market takes to it.

Sure, we'll only talk about the parts that are favorable to your pet instead of everything that's relevant to drivers

These figures are both EPA ratings which are known far and wide to overly favor hybrids and punish diesels, and are way off most people's actual consumption figures. The real numbers are closer to 50 for the Prius and 40 for the Jetta in the city, and 55 for the Jetta and 40 for the Prius on the highway.

Unfortunately not, because the EPA mileage testing is based on tailpipe emissions, using methods of computation that simply give too high a result when used with hybrids and too low a result when used with diesels. They also are skewed in favor of large engines, which is why it's easy for small car drivers to get mileage that way beat EPA figures, but SUV and large truck drivers can easily get way worse and have trouble beating EPA numbers at all. EPA figures are best used for comparing engines of the same type and approximately the same displacement. They'd be even better used as... nothing, and let private reporters come up with numbers that are actually useful to people.


There's not enough waste to do the job either. Corn, one of the more efficient sources of ethanol although not absolutely the most space-efficient, gives a yield equivalent to 219 gallons of gasoline per acre per year. The entire land area of the US is about 2.2 billion acres, but only about 20% of that is usable as farmland. That's half a billion acres, which would produce 100 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent. Americans currently consume about 116 billion gallons of gasoline per year according to the last census. So if we dedicated our ENTIRE farming output ONLY to producing ethanol, we still couldn't replace gasoline completely. If we restrict ourselves to getting fuel only from biomass we are otherwise discarding, we wouldn't even be able to get a small fraction of that realistically.

Except that it's not an improvement. Ethanol costs more than gasoline, period. If you have to steal from taxpayers to make it look like an improvement, it's the wrong answer.

jihan3

I thought we were talking about fuel efficiency (mileage extracted per unit of chemical energy), not fuel economy (mileage extracted per dollar spent).

Regardless, today, at least in my local (Illinois), diesel costs about 10% more than gasoline. There is nothing fixing the price of diesel to that of gasoline. The supply of diesel is fairly fixed to the supply of gasoline. Demand is the variable. With increasing crude oil prices, there is growing interest in diesel worldwide. Free market forces will eventually push diesel prices up such that the price paid per mile is the same, regardless of whether you burn gasoline or diesel. The reason it hasn't happened already is that U.S. consumers haven't shown sufficient interest in diesel (because gas was cheap), so manufacturers did what was cheapest for themselves: not spend money developing/producing/marketing diesel engines to the US market.

I don't understand why hybrid technology is not as beneficial to diesel burning cars. Diesel burning cars waste just as much energy while braking as gasoline cars do. Are diesel engines less efficient than gasoline engines at low load (implying that they waste just as much gas regardless of whether or not an electric motor is helping out)?

The reason I suggested restricting the discussion to city driving is because hybrid technology yields no benefit in highway driving. Thus, anyone not interested in fuel economy in city driving would not buy hybrid technology (unless he/she is motivated by alternate means).

Fair enough - I'll admit I know nothing about EPA mileage testing. Nor did I know anything about real world mileage for the Jetta or Prius.

Regardless, I argue that hybrid technology works great for what it's designed for: improving the gas mileage in stop and go driving. When used in that condition, it provides a significant benefit. Do you disagree?

Maybe not. But just because a technology doesn't provide a complete solution doesn't mean that it's worthless. Every little bit helps. Even if ethanol cannot completely replace gasoline, it can displace some. I'm repeating myself, but I said this in the post that you replied to, and you've apparently disregarded it.

It's still an emerging technology. You cannot expect that all solutions will be profitable from the get go. I'll copy and paste another old response: "Paying more for alternate sources" is called nurturing a young promising industry so it can stay alive in case we desperately need it in the future. It's hedging our bets, paying more in the short term so we don't suffer (as much) in the long run.

jpt

I can't find the article now, but I read one a few weeks ago with an extended quote from an M-B engineering spokesman who claimed that the benefits from a diesel-electric powertrain are not as significant, percentage wise, as those from gas-electric because diesel engines are basically equally efficient at any load other than dead idle. Idle-stop is already a feature in some non-hybrid cars built by Peugot/Citroen, so that angle is taken care of without the complexity and added wight of a hybrid drive, and the benefits of regenerative braking are simply minuscule.

I still think a diesel engine with stop-start would outperform it with significantly fewer caveats (like firemen not being able to pull you out of your car in a crash) and lower total cost. Trying to find hard data to back that up now.

But you didn't explain why it's important for ethanol to replace more gasoline than it's worth -- that is, why we be forced to spend more money, and why YOU should be allowed to spend MY money -- on ethanol to make the price appear lower than it really is.

But there are already big investing companies that do this, and do it right, for a living. Why, again, must I be forced to participate in their experiments?

jpt

Sorry, I forgot to answer this before.

We aren't forced to import anything. If oil costs $50 to extract and transport a barrel from Iraq, and $51 to extract and move a barrel from Texas, we'll buy it from Iraq. There is plenty of oil in our oil wells for decades or centuries to come. It is just slightly harder-to-get oil -- why bother digging it up now when we can just buy it for less from someone else?

STL

Source?

vidgamer

That Google article I mentioned discussed extracting oil from shale, as I mentioned. There's a TON in there. There's still a lot of coal. There's still a lot of oil in Alaska, and I hesitate to mention off of Florida, as I don't want to see drilling in my backyard. ;-) I'm partially kidding. Noone likes the idea of a Valdez, but you gotta take a few risks sometimes.... But as soon as you find a cheaper alternative, that oil will sit.

Anyway, there's still (more expensive) oil for now, but let's say that that starts to run out at some point. That just gives more incentive for the alternatives. It's not like one day there's lots of oil, then the next day that last drop comes out and everyone panics because there is no technology that gov't could have been subsidizing for 30 years.

If we had to, we'd buy smaller cars. (And if fuel was more expensive, people just would.)

And I still think nuclear/electric sounds like the best way to go. Semis can just find an alternate fuel if batteries can't hack it, but clearly, cars can be made to use that technology today. I wish it were cheaper than oil so that we would have an economic incentive to go ahead and switch to it. But wishing does not make it so.

jihan3

Let me know when you find a souce to back your claims. After doing some brief research, I found several sources that claim similar efficiency benefits from diesel-electric hybrids (google: diesel hybrid, and lots of articles appear).

Some articles state that diesel-electric hybrids cost more than gasoline-electrics to manufacture, although no explanation is provided. Nonetheless, the fact that a car manufacturer is already (or soon will be) producing and selling a diesel-electric car is evidence that any extra cost in manufacturing is not economically insurmountable.

At the risk of repeating myself:

Free market forces cannot respond to sufficiently large problems (there are finite elements in the market, each with finite resources - there are sufficiently large problems that no self-organizing entity in any given free market will underwrite the risk for). Therefore, for these problems, the government has to step in and help move the market/nation for its collective good.

In the case of ethanol, our government has considered at least three key issues: monetary cost, environmental benefit, and dependence on foreign energy.

Monetary cost: today, ethanol has a greater DIRECT cost than gasoline. In the likely future, this won't be the case. Our government has decided to subsidize the development of ethanol sources. Maybe this is so that the infrastructure is in place in the future in the case we need it. Maybe gasoline has indirect costs or other negatives that make ethanol worthwhile in the future or even right now. Our nation's investment in ethanol may be paying off now, might do so in the future, or maybe it never will. The investment is a calculated risk.

An example: our government decided to build moderately sized and moderately strong levees in New Orleans. In hindsight, it's clear that it would have been cheaper to build sufficiently large levees to prevent the Katrina disaster. However, back then, it was a calculated risk. The federal government has to balance spending. They made the budget deficit easier to swallow for a few years, gambling that a sufficiently large storm would not strike until they had the money to fix the problem. They clearly lost on that gamble.

Environmental benefit: as long as ethanol is energy-positive (and we seem to have agreed that this is the most likely case?), ethanol reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, ethanol helps gasoline burn cleaner. This is a positive for sure.

Dependence on foreign energy: ethanol reduces it today and may or may not eliminate it completely in the future (this is impossible to tell today). This is a positive. I'll elaborate later in this post.

Based on these three issues, ethanol is neither a clear winner or loser. It depends on your values, of course. If you're a typical free market element, looking to spend as little money as possible today and in the near term future, then ethanol may be a loser. If you're a nation, and you need to balance your citizen's current needs against their long term needs (the big picture), then you have a harder decision to make.

In my opinion, the dependence on foreign energy issue is huge, far greater than the relatively small subsidy in place for corn/ethanol production. Here's why:




Why is our current practice of importing half our crude oil so bad? There are a number of reasons, but here's IMHO the big one: war.

Both Iraq wars are about oil. The war in Afghanistan and on terrorism is about oil. Let me explain why, and how this affects the ethanol/gasoline issue.

Now, some may read this statement and say "This is absurd - we aren't pumping oil out of Iraq or Afghanistan!". That's not the issue.

The issue is that we have a strong interest in stabilizing the Middle East because our nation and the rest of the world are dependent on them for cheap energy. Because we're meddling in their affairs, some extremists have developed a strong hatred for Westerners. These issues are the basis for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorism.

If anyone disputes these claims, we can have another long discussion to see if we can hash it out. And please do speak up - I feel that these are important issues and we all stand to learn from discussion.

Now, let's calculate the indirect cost of imported gasoline. Let's estimate that these wars cost the US 500 billion dollars (First gulf war: $61B. Through March 2006 only, the second war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan have cost about $300-350B. We've spent a good chunk of change on "Homeland Security" also).

How much gasoline have we imported over the years? We import about 200 million gallons a day today. Let's say over the last 50 years (approximately when we became a net importer of oil) we've averaged 100 million gallons of imported gas a day. That's 1.8 trillion gallons of gasoline over the last 50 years. Amortizing the $500B war cost across 50 years of gasoline results in a subsidy of about 27 cents a gallon. Not including soldier and citizen lives lost in war and in terrorist strikes. And don't forget, this 27 cent per gallon figure is still rising with no end in sight.

Today, E85 costs about 40 cents less a gallon. After accounting for the federal ethanol subsidy of 54 cents, E85 costs 14 cents more. After accounting for gasoline's indirect monetary costs, E85 is 13 cents cheaper.

So now I pose the question: why in the world should I pay more for gasoline than ethanol? Why should YOU be allowed to spend MY money -- on gasoline to make it look cheaper than it actually is?



This is just an example exercise. I've re-worded your question in a somewhat mocking manner. However, my point is that this issue is not as clear cut as you make it out to be. Just like it's very difficult to assess the true energy balance of ethanol, it's also very difficult to assess whether ethanol is beneficial for our nation. One thing is for certain though, you cannot analyze the issue by only examining a single metric (direct monetary cost), which is your argument against ethanol.

eo11

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles with nuclear generated electricity to make the hydrogen (at the station like in Denmark) is the best answer; but it will never happen becuase it doesn't employ enough people.

mrgold35

Actually the best answer is get back to having self contained communities for work, entertainment, living, schools, religion, etc.. We (me included) are so conditioned to drive everywhere, we cannot entertain the thought of living without a car. I believe we need to re-think urban planning and reduce the range for personal transportation. It would be nice to live 2-3 miles from everything I needed and had an electric golf cart to cruise around in or public trans to hop to use.

LuvMyTSX

Definitely a good idea. And now since we're using ethanol, food prices have gone up because so much land is being used to grow corn.

rb1

I don't know about that particular correlation, but it would take several acres of land per car to support ethanol as a complete replacement for oil. The idea that this is somehow "sustainable" energy is a myth, at least on a large scale.

Ethanol can also be produced via some advanced algae growing technologies that have the possibility to be very productive (in terms of amount produced per "acre" of biomass), but of course we don't see the Corn Lobby pushing for that now do we?

Bigtimebooch

I have to agree that we are all drunk on corn in the US. The subsidies are huge (51 cents a gallon)...we have farmers that were growing corn for food running to make ethanol so they can cash in (notice that beef prices have been higher lately?). Good for them, but I just can't see ethanol displacing gasoline unless some chemical engineers figure out a much better way to create it.

I recall a quick problem for an energy class that involved calculating the amount of land needed to displace 10% of our nations' gasoline use...I can try to dig the calculation up but it ended up being an area the size of Iowa or Nebraska all full of corn fields assuming it was entirely arable land.

I cringe every time I see the media stating that ethanol from corn is better for the environment...Many cars are not as fuel efficient using it, so you burn more. It can't be transported in large pipelines like oil because it is too corrosive; so it must be transported by truck or train. Corn must be watered, fertilized, harvested, refined and then transported. Corn is NOT a very efficient way to get ethanol. Sugar is much better at it and that is why Brazil is almost entirely using ethanol. Don't forget we eat corn (corn meal, high fructose corn syrup) and things we eat (cows), eat corn. So it's not like we just had it sitting there taking up space.

To date, I have yet to see a decent study that tries to evaluate the COMPLETE environmental effects of using ethanol from corn.

for a decent article see here:
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsourc...&query=ethanol

The bottom line is that if any one of the "alternatives" were really as good as some would have you believe, we would be using it already. But they aren't. A mix between them all while we try to at least SLOW (read: not reduce) is most likely what will happen short of some miracle invention.

What pisses me off is that we continue to give subsides to the oil industry when companies like Exxon Mobile post earnings over 15 BILLION per QUARTER.

Bigtimebooch

Almost forgot...now I must admit I don't know much about growing corn per se (I'm thinking out loud here), but if we were to somehow replace a large portion of our gasoline consumption with ethanol from corn, wouldn't production be limited to a growing season? Can corn be grown year-round? Anybody live near or grow up on a farm?

sidssp

I just think it is morally wrong to convert food into energy so that we can drive bigger and faster cars and yet millions of people around the world are starving.

LuvMyTSX

Actually, the price of corn has already risen as a result of so much of it being used for energy. It's pushing the prices of food up as we speak, so we'll just be paying for it in everything else we use, instead of just paying more for oil.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18173/

http://news.nationalstarch.com/NewsS...newsItemId=590

http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2007/0202.html

And that's just the start. Ethanol is stupid and not the answer IMO (at least not ethanol made from corn in the US).

owkone

This is a great topic - please keep debating the issue.

I will not go into individually arguing all the points made in favor and against ethanol - it will take too long. However, remember the basic law of conservation of energy - enegery cannot be or destoyed it can only be converted from one form to another. Also, remember the fundamental law of thermodynamics - no system is 100% efficient. Thus in converting one form of energy to another there will be enegry loss. Most engines (I think) are about 30% efficient. Now you can deduce the merits and demerits of ethanol as a fuel, as carbon neutral etc.

Another point to keep in mind that as more acreage is planted for corn for ethanolit will displace acreage for the production of wheat and other staples thus overall increasing food prices. I read recently that the price of pizza has gone up because the price of corn has gone up. I do not know how corn is used in pizza.

The only solution is to reduce overall energy use, i.e. conservation. If I recall the statitics correctly we US use 25% of world's energy production and we are only 5% of the world population. China uses only 7% and India about 3%.

The only possible way perhaps to be energy positive is to convert otherwise wasted or untapped energy into a usable form. Example wind or oceanic tide, solar etc to electricity.

rb1

Not to quibble, but the energy being derived from corn basically is solar energy. Sun shines on corn, corn grows, we convert corn into ethanol and burn it.

As you noted, it's less than 100% efficient (heck, it might even have negative efficiency when everything required to grow the corn is considered versus the energy output), but the sun is still the original energy source.

owkone

Agreed sun is the original energy source. But converting solar energy through two steps growing corn (photosynthesis) followed by conversion to ethanol (fermentation) is less efficient than a one step conversion - solar cell to electricity.

For those promoting corn based ethanol it is not a panacea as some are making it out to be. It is a small and (IMO inefficient step) in reducing dependence on foreign oil source. Ethanol from cellulose such as the whole corn or wheat plant would be slightly more efficient. As others have pointed out ethanol has less energy density so to get the same amount of energy out from burning it one will have burn more. Thus it offsets its energy advantage.

Ethanol burns cleaner than petroleum thus there is less of other kinds of pollution such as NOx, CO, and partially burnt hydrocarbons (the funky odoer that hangs in the air on hot summer days), soot etc. That is IMO perhaps the only advantage of ethanol.

jihan3

Solar cells are not particularly efficient. On the order of 10%. Just because it is a one step conversion does not make it more efficient than two step conversions.

I first saw this reported in an article. The reporter claimed to be the first (to his knowledge) to note this point. I found the article through a post on this forum. Since then, I have seen several people make this point.

It sounds to me like you (and others) are double-counting efficiency loss. Ethanol is less energy dense, so you have to burn more. But the energy efficiency of ethanol has already been factored in - so saying that you have to burn more is double counting.

Here's a quick analogy: let's say $2 canadian dollars are equal to $1 US dollar. Then let's say that canadian dollars are less "efficient" than US dollars. But wait, we also need to spend more canadian dollars to buy that TSX that we love. Is spending more canadian dollars an additional burden? No, it's already been factored out when we did the conversion.

Maybe I'm wrong and someone can point out my logical fallacy?

pahama

But don't forget, Wikipedia has been discredited on more than one occasion since anyone can edit any article to reflect what they think it should say.

I don't trust them anymore. My

pahama

jihan3

I don't trust them either.

Read the references provided. Use those to discover others. Then, based on the knowledge that you have obtained in the area, form your own opinion.

Finally, post your educated opinion on internet forums.

Nogard13

First of all, we're not going to have a single solution to replace oil. We're going to have to combine many solutions (such as geothermal, biodiesel, ethanol, compressed air, Hydrogen, solar, and electric solutions). We're going to need several different servicing stations, not just gasoline.

Secondly, ethanol is only about 67% as efficient as gasoline. Here are the Btu contents of certain fuels per gallon:

Diesel - 137,202 Btu
BioDiesel (in the form of raw vegetable oil) - 130,000 Btu
Gasoline - 125,073 Btu
Corn Ethanol - 83961 Btu

So, as you can see, you get much less energy out of a gallon of ethanol as you do out of any other available fuel right now. Not only that, but the net energy value of corn ethanol is terrible. It takes about 1 gallon of fossil fuel (to run processing plants, farm equipment, transportation, etc...) to produce 1.4 gallons of corn ethanol. Not only that, but after you factor in all the Btu loss from sun light, fertilizers, and soil nutrients, you are at a terrible loss.

Ethanol from switchgrass yields 10 gallons for every gallon of fossil fuels used. It's much more efficient to produce, it is a weed that grows faster than corn, does not have to be replanted, and is perenial so it grows all year long. You can also grow more per acre and produce more ethanol per acre of farmland without affecting the price of corn.


Here is a good article to read as to why corn ethanol is not THE solution: http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

More articles:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archiv.../grass0706.htm

Tsx6363

i don't htink it should be a problem, even if the gas mileage is affected it will only be a lsight difference. The drop in price should even out the miles you lose per tank so alls well that ends well

Simba91102

Don't know about up in Canada, but here in the states, I believe all gasoline now contains 10% ethanol. High test (what we used to call it anyway) varies by area. In Massachusetss, with the exception of a handful of retailers (and Sunoco), the choices are three: 87,89, and 93 (Sunoco did offer 94 and may still; I don't frequent that brand). I believe in other parts of the country, 91 octane is the best you can do. It sounds like the method used to determine the octane rating may be different up there. No matter, the ethanol thing is here to stay; the farmers (and the politicians they own) and the environazis are firmly in control in that respect. If it hasn't become the way of the world there, I'm sure it will soon.

jihan3

This is absolutely true. Everyone is bashing individual solutions for not being a single replacement for fossil fuels, when in fact there likely isn't a single replacement. We have been spoiled by fossil fuels into believing that there must be a single solution for transport fuel.

You are confusing energy efficiency with energy density. Energy density only matters if it's really terrible. An energy density of 67% of gasoline is pretty darn good. See this previous post in this very thread: https://acurazine.com/forums/showpos...7&postcount=66

BTU loss from sunlight is not a metric that matters at this point. Energy derived from sunlight today is sufficiently plentiful that it can be considered renewable.

The energy content of fertilizers are primarily derived from fossil fuels. The study that you quoted already takes this into account in producing their net energy balance figure (e.g. 1 gallon of fossil fuel to produce 1.4 gallons of corn ethanol).

Finally, fertilizers ARE soil nutrients.

In summary, the net energy balance studies are just that - NET energy balance studies. They've gone to great pains to take into account all the energy inputs already - don't blindly assume that they forgot something. In fact, some researchers are overzealous about including sources of fossil fuel consumption (e.g. Pimentel) and as a result, report negative energy balance.


In my world, 1.4 > 1. It's a shame the figure isn't closer to infinite:1, but that's the price you pay for a solution that works here in the US and one that works today.

Our government is encouraging the use of this solution, and because of that, the 1.4:1 figure will only improve in the future through efficiency gains in corn->ethanol conversion and other forms of ethanol production. In the meantime, we're taking an important first step towards reducing our dependence on foreign energy.