21 replies to this topic

[DukeNukem]

The Rolling Stone has a pretty darn good summary article on this:

Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles
http://tinyurl.com/2z39t9

I'm always running into people who believe ethanol is a Good Thing. Industry and government has done a great snow job on the vast majority of us. But, it's good to see press setting the record straight.

[mitkat]

Ethanol is a really touching subject for a lot of people I've met. At school I've met a lot of people involved with some of the most dynamic western Canadian biofuels projects going, and seeing the passion these people have for their ethanol research....wow. It was inspiring, and what can you say? They believe they're doing a good thing, and they do see it as a stop-gap measure between petroleum and x new energy source, a practical solution for broke farmers. All of the research is applied, and thus obviously very industry driven.

Have of looksie and judge for yourself: http://www.oldscolle...nergy/index.htm
(Not to hijack the thread, Duke )

[biknut]

I saw a report the other day saying America might be the first country in history to burn up it's food supply in order to save the environment. I thought it was funny.

[Liquidus]

I'm always running into people who believe ethanol is a Good Thing.  Industry and government has done a great snow job on the vast majority of us.  But, it's good to see press setting the record straight.

I've never quite understood the whole ethanol craze myself (aside from the implications of $$$). When you consider all the massive amount of B.S. that is going on today, you'd think that everyone interested in ACTUALLY finding a clean fuel source would dedicate their time and resources (say for a global 10 year initiative) to develop Hydrogen-related energy (or equally efficient/clean source, ie. solar).

Is it possible that say in 2000 (when I started hearing the hints of Hydrogen technology), if everyone involved got on the hydrogen bandwagon, that by 2010, Hydrogen energy sources would be well developed, and even implemented more wholly on a global scale, it seems fairly plausible. What has happened in that time since? Well Iraq was invaded to help 'control' the oil race, there are still no good solutions to a problem clearly identified 7 years ago, and NOW we have this new beast coming up in ethanol.

I realize that there is a plethora of morons running the world right now (I could probably write a 500 page book about current morons involved in controlling the world), I'm trying to stay objective and unbiased, but if you actually sit back and look at who's running the world right now, they have the moral decency, and mental capacity of what only politicians and greedy corporate interests can create. I'm all for capitalism, but not when you're so lazy and useless that you have to cut corners, and take lives doing it while 'fixing' (ethanol) the problem, only be 'accidentally' creating a new one that people become dependent on.

FYI: I don't think hydrogen is the 'best' alternative to what we could have right now, but it's FAR better than anything we have right now. Solar power is the most logical since it's basically an unlimited resource, and if start talking about nanotech, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately for the morons running the world, and those following them, we're too busy burning up fossil fuel, and now corn, to even acknowledge this.

[Athanasios]

I'm always running into people who believe ethanol is a Good Thing.  Industry and government has done a great snow job on the vast majority of us.  But, it's good to see press setting the record straight.

I've never quite understood the whole ethanol craze myself...you'd think that everyone interested in ACTUALLY finding a clean fuel source would dedicate their time and resources (say for a global 10 year initiative) to develop Hydrogen-related energy (or equally efficient/clean source, ie. solar)....

FYI: I don't think hydrogen is the 'best' alternative to what we could have right now, but it's FAR better than anything we have right now. Solar power is the most logical since it's basically an unlimited resource, and if start talking about nanotech, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately for the morons running the world, and those following them, we're too busy burning up fossil fuel, and now corn, to even acknowledge this.

For clarification, the article is only really relevant to CORN ethanol. Other sources of bio-ethanol are much better, especially as we engineer/discover more efficient bacteria or have more abundant non-portable energy sources. Hydrogen, nuclear and solar panels can be great for fuel that does not have to be portable. They fail miserably when it comes to fueling small cars. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

[Brainbox]

Furthermore some economic consequnces as predicted in the OECD-FAO 10 AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK 2007-2016:

Currently strong world market prices for many agricultural commodities in international trade
are, in large measure, due to factors of a temporary nature, such as drought related supply
shortfalls, and low stocks. But, structural changes such as increased feedstock demand for
biofuel production, and the reduction of surpluses due to past policy reforms, may keep prices
above historic equilibrium levels during the next 10 years.

Growing use of cereals, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly
increasing biofuel industry, is one of the main drivers in the outlook. Over the outlook period,
substantial amounts of maize in the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil will
be used for ethanol and bio-diesel production. This is underpinning crop prices and, indirectly
through higher feed costs, the prices for livestock products as well.

On the other hand:

Given that in most temperate zone countries ethanol and bio-diesel production are not
economically viable without support, a different combination of production technologies,
biofuel policies and crude oil prices than is assumed in this Outlook could to lead to lower prices
than are projected in this Outlook.

[krillin]

It's even worse than the article says. To get an ethanol energy return on energy invested of 1.3, you have to count the energy included in the cattle feed byproduct. My car can't run on cattle feed. It gets worse yet when you consider all the energy required to ship it from the midwest to California.

I highly recommend Robert Rapier's blog mentioned in the Rolling Stone article.

Hydrogen is nothing more than workfare for engineers and scientists.

"Even if fuel cells were given away, maintenance and installation costs would cause users to switch back to conventional energy systems, said seminar chairman Michael Binder of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

It's also a way for Bush to reward some of his pals. Just after pushing through the Russian acquisition of the USA's only platinum group metals mine, (Some of his buddies were put on the board of directors in exchange for his help.) he pushed hydrogen in his 2003 state of the union address.

The only thing that could have a shot at mitigating peak oil is coal to liquids. Unfortunately, this ethanol fiasco is consuming our spare rail capacity, so it'll be tough to ramp up coal mining. It also doesn't help that the lead time for coal to liquids plants would be about 7 years.

[Athanasios]

The only thing that could have a shot at mitigating peak oil is coal to liquids.

I think it will be a combination of sources, but my bet on portable fuel is on microbial fuel production.

Here is a post on one company, of many, that is using this tech:
http://www.huffingto...-p_b_58388.html

Picture a liquid fuel that is derived from the same feedstocks as cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass, sugar cane, corn stover) but contains 50% more energetic content and is made via a process that uses 65% less energy.

Unlike cellulosic ethanol, this fuel can be distributed via existing oil pipelines rather than gas-hogging trucks and trains, dispensed through existing gas stations rather than specialized pumps, and used in existing engines rather than modified "flex-fuel" engines.

In short, it is a biofuel that can be substituted directly and immediately for gas or diesel, on a gallon-for-gallon basis.

...and the field is still in infancy to say the least.

[krillin]

The only thing that could have a shot at mitigating peak oil is coal to liquids.

I think it will be a combination of sources, but my bet on portable fuel is on microbial fuel production.

Wouldn't you have to sterilize the feedstock to prevent natural bacteria from competing with the long-chain hydrocarbon producers? Biological processes are too finicky in my opinion to be used on a massive scale to produce something cheaply.

The best use of biomass is probably gasification to deal with peak natural gas (already happened in North America), gasification to Fischer-Tropsch liquids, or burning it to make electricity for plug-in hybrids. But so long as we have coal, biomass can't compete. Very little biomass can be had for coal's cost per BTU. And coal is more energy dense so transportation is cheaper.

http://www.eia.doe.g...mass/index.html

[Athanasios]

Wouldn't you have to sterilize the feedstock to prevent natural bacteria from competing with the long-chain hydrocarbon producers?

It is done in pretreatment similar to cellulosic ethanol.

http://www.eia.doe.g...mass/index.html

That data is way out of date. They aren't talking about the same thing at all. Today, microbial fuel production can even use municipal solid waste to convert into fuel. Here is a company that is doing this:
http://www.brienergy.com/

These are engineered bacteria.

[niner]

I highly recommend Robert Rapier's blog mentioned in the Rolling Stone article.

Hydrogen is nothing more than workfare for engineers and scientists.

"Even if fuel cells were given away, maintenance and installation costs would cause users to switch back to conventional energy systems, said seminar chairman Michael Binder of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

Krillin, thank you for posting this. Hydrogen is a huge scam. It's a bigger lie than corn EtOH, though fortunately it has not progressed very far and probably never will. The problem is that hydrogen production and storage use a lot of energy, resulting in an unavoidably poor EROI. Hydrogen would also require a huge and expensive new infrastructure. Motor vehicle energy sources will gradually transition to electricity. The infrastructure for electricity is already in place, and it is so much more efficient that even if the electricity comes from a coal fired plant, an electric vehicle will produce much less CO2 than an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle. And the electricity could come from a variety of sources that have no carbon emissions. Battery and ultracapacitor technology is just now getting to the point that this transition will occur. You can see it now in the number of hybrids on the road. Next will come plugin hybrids, which are just hybrids with bigger batteries, and eventually you will see battery EVs.

Just to stay on topic a shard, corn ethanol is just welfare for wealthy agribusinessmen. My observation is that "poor farmers" are a dying breed. I've known a few farmers, and every last one of them was a millionaire.

[platypus]

I've never quite understood the whole ethanol craze myself (aside from the implications of $$$). When you consider all the massive amount of B.S. that is going on today, you'd think that everyone interested in ACTUALLY finding a clean fuel source would dedicate their time and resources (say for a global 10 year initiative) to develop Hydrogen-related energy (or equally efficient/clean source, ie. solar).

Hydrogen is not a source of energy, or have you ever heard of hydrogen-mines?

[Mind]

Hydrogen is a huge scam. It's a bigger lie than corn EtOH, though fortunately it has not progressed very far and probably never will. The problem is that hydrogen production and storage use a lot of energy, resulting in an unavoidably poor EROI. Hydrogen would also require a huge and expensive new infrastructure. Motor vehicle energy sources will gradually transition to electricity.

Word!

Electric vehicles are the only logical replacements for today's fleet of liquid hydrocarbon vehicles. Functional and useful vehicles already exist in significant numbers (all the way from small cars down to golf carts and mopeds). Electrical generation from coal plants and the resultant pollution is infinitely more easy to deal with than from millions of little internal combustion engines all over the globe.

Biofuels (including ethanol) and hydrogen are just in vogue stop gap measures for the time being that will soon pass. I don't think it is a big "scam", it is just what happens when society/media/politicians get behind an idea...logic falls by the wayside. It isn't a Dem vs. Republican issue either. Both sides dole out money to the large agribusinesses in return for future votes in their states. Blaming it all on Bush is myopic, although I realize it is the "in" thing to do nowadays.

[krillin]

Wouldn't you have to sterilize the feedstock to prevent natural bacteria from competing with the long-chain hydrocarbon producers?

It is done in pretreatment similar to cellulosic ethanol.

Which isn't even close to being a viable process either.

http://www.eia.doe.g...mass/index.html

That data is way out of date. They aren't talking about the same thing at all.

I was just using that to support my claim that coal is cheaper per BTU than biomass.

Today, microbial fuel production can even use municipal solid waste to convert into fuel. Here is a company that is doing this:
http://www.brienergy.com/

These are engineered bacteria.

That process makes me want to cry. They make perfectly good syngas and then turn it into (gag) ethanol. If not for the ethanol subsidy they'd Fischer-Tropsch it like Syntroleum or SASOL.

[suspire]

I'm always running into people who believe ethanol is a Good Thing.  Industry and government has done a great snow job on the vast majority of us.  But, it's good to see press setting the record straight.

I've never quite understood the whole ethanol craze myself...you'd think that everyone interested in ACTUALLY finding a clean fuel source would dedicate their time and resources (say for a global 10 year initiative) to develop Hydrogen-related energy (or equally efficient/clean source, ie. solar)....

FYI: I don't think hydrogen is the 'best' alternative to what we could have right now, but it's FAR better than anything we have right now. Solar power is the most logical since it's basically an unlimited resource, and if start talking about nanotech, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately for the morons running the world, and those following them, we're too busy burning up fossil fuel, and now corn, to even acknowledge this.

For clarification, the article is only really relevant to CORN ethanol. Other sources of bio-ethanol are much better, especially as we engineer/discover more efficient bacteria or have more abundant non-portable energy sources. Hydrogen, nuclear and solar panels can be great for fuel that does not have to be portable. They fail miserably when it comes to fueling small cars. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Yeah, I'm with you here. Corn ethanol seems to be a scam, no doubt, but I've thought that for years now. On the other hand, there are a bunch of other biofuels that have a lot of promise. For instance jatropha seems very promising:
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Jatropha_oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha

It yields ten times more fuel per hectare than corn and can grow in wastelands, in the crevices of rocks, etc--so it won't(or shouldn't) be competing with corn and other food sources for land/space. And the residue can be converted to biomass to burn for electric plants. Also, it apparently fertilizes the soil it grows in. I don't know if it burns any "greener" than gas, however, which is a genuine concern.

Still, the answer seems to be a hybrid of fuels--biofuels, solar, wind, even nuclear, etc--but not corn ethanol. Now we just need to dislodge the mega corn lobby.

P.S.: Just found another website on jatropha. It seems it does burn cleaner than most other biofuels: http://www.ecoworld....es2.cfm?tid=367

[Ghostrider]

I don't know why there are no plug-in hybrids. Most people have commutes short enough so that the car could run off the battery the entire way -- see the Chevy Volt project. If I had an electric hybrid, I would want to be able to force it to run off battery until the battery is dead and have the option of plugging it into my house to recharge at night. I bet a lot of corporations would even be willing to install a few plugs in the parking lot for cars to charge during working hours. Google already did this in California even though there are no commercial cars which are plug-in. Of course, consider how much could have been accomplished if all the money that was lost on the Iraq war was instead put into energy storage research. We could have instead attacked the root of the problem, oil -> funding terrorism.

[niner]

I don't know why there are no plug-in hybrids.

There are no plug-in hybrids today mostly because battery technology wasn't far enough advanced a couple years ago. It might be advanced enough today to see mass production of PHEVs in a couple years. Toyota is road testing a small fleet of plug-in Prii. GM has generated a lot of buzz with the plug-in serial hybrid Chevrolet Volt, but I'm not aware of any firm plans to manufacture it. If they do make it, I wouldn't expect to see it before 2010. As battery costs come down and people start to see how cheap it is to run a decent plug-in, I expect that we will see a lot of them. The rate at which this happens will be in part a function of the price of gasoline.

[Lazarus Long]

There are no plug-in hybrids today mostly because battery technology wasn't far enough advanced a couple years ago.

Actually there are already PHEV's and the battery tech, while a valid part of the problem was only one part. The European versions have included the ability to use a switch to manually deactivate the ICE (internal combustion engine) and run short distances (up to five miles) on pure electric as an option for years. This option was intentionally removed before sale to the US market.

I now own two Priuses, one of each generation and I intend to convert the second generation one to PHEV status. My experimentation with electric vehicles is now getting pretty extensive and I have been experiencing a lot of success.

I think that ultracap tech is also going to change the equation but we need fuels to make hybrids work and I am not any more confident about liquefied coal than I am about ethanol, however it is the source that I hold as the problem more than the result. If we harvested the waste stream of society instead of the food supply and agricultural reserves then this approach would have more traction. Hydrogen has potential but still has a lot of detail issues, safe and weight efficient containment (storage), transport, end use (fuel cells versus combustion), delivery and manufacture infrastructure etc.

[Lazarus Long]

Another point about what slowed the introduction of PHEV's, I do not want to sound conspiratorial but the automotive industry paid homage to its biggest shareholder, the petroleum industry.

The vast majority of patents for batteries, solar PV and syn fuels are all owned by various petroleum conglomerates. Clearly it is in their interest to do so but it is also in their interest to ration the distribution of competing methodologies and limit the rate of developmental progress at times.

In the case of PHEV's, the battery tech was never an obstruction to the basic option because short distance and emergency usage of a switch to override the ICE and allowing for a plug in re-charge option is a minor change that has actually been around since the beginning of this technology.

BTW, the PHEV mod is not possible on the Honda hybrids because their ICE and the EM share a power shaft. The Prius uses the electric transmission to apportion power from both sources independently.

Back to the market issue; the oil companies saw the idea of the PHEV as a potentially dangerous shift in market share away from oil based *pump* tech they control to grid based power that they do not have as much return from for many reasons.

When thinking of a PHEV it is important to realize that it is an integration of grid based and pump based technologies AND markets. Grid based power comes largely from coal now (60%) but it is also hydroelectric, wind, solar, and nuclear and in a way a PHEV is an *atomic car*. )

However technically the *electric recharge* part of a PHEV can be considered to be mostly powered by coal and that coal is burned with an economy of scale that is vastly more efficient, cheaper per kilowatt and cleaner than most individualized technologies (liquefaction) are going to ever provide.

Grid based power means much more than just a shift of fuel source away from a centralized product and profit structure by global cartels, it means a shift into energy generation that is significantly more *regulated* than pump tech and actually more free market based with the potential for many more people to profit from but those profits would not be as controlled by big oil and that represents a significant loss of market share on a global scale. Grid sourced power is a way of integrating ALL available energy sources on a large scale and moving engine development away from the ICE.

BTW I have just finished increasing the size of my solar PV array to 180 watts and I am powering my electric bikes largely by solar but the most efficient use of the solar energy would be to apply a grid-tie technology to it that allows for a back charge meter reversal to the grid. Decentralized energy production is an important part of the solution that is still vehemently resisted by industry as it represents a large scale loss of market share through increased competition and the loss of control through distributed sourcing and regulatory demand.

[Mind]

Well, Congress is about to pass an energy bill that will once again subsidize ethanol (mostly corn ethanol, but some other types as well). From what I have read on different blog posts, the version passed by the Senate MANDATES anywhere from a 5 to 7 fold increase in ethanol production/use through 2022. Think about this: if government has to mandate something, doesn't that mean the free market has already rejected it? If it was something worthwhile and actually produced a return on investment, entrepreneurs/corporations/VC money would already be flowing into it. Instead, the smart money (free market investment) is flowing into solar (big time), biofuels (other than corn ethanol), wind, electric cars, etc...

[edward]

All I can say after reading that Rolling Stone article is WOW. I was bamboozled along with the rest of the country simply because of my dislike for gas as a fuel because of how inefficient the internal combustion engine is at getting usable energy out of it and how much energy is lost. But wow, ethanol is even less efficient than gasoline not just by a little bit see page 2 of the article.

[jackinbox]

This is what happen when you let a state like Iowa to have so much influence in the primary process...