Why It’s Wrong to Agree with the Malthusians about Ethanol
In an op-ed article printed in the Denver Post May 8, editorial columnist Vince Carroll endorsed the view of population control advocate Lester Brown that the U.S. corn ethanol program is threatening the world’s poor with starvation. This endorsement is especially remarkable in view of the fact that, as the otherwise generally astute Mr. Carroll has correctly noted many times in the past, all of Lester Brown’s many previous limited-resources doomsday predictions have proven wildly incorrect.
In fact, Lester Brown is wrong about the alleged famine-inducing potential of the ethanol program for exactly the same reason he has been repeatedly wrong about the alleged famine-inducing potential of population growth. There is not a fixed amount of grain in the world. Farmers produce in response to demand. The more customers, the more grain. Not only that, but the larger the potential market, the greater the motivation for investment in improved techniques.
This is why, despite the fact that the world population has indeed doubled since Lester Brown, Paul Ehrlich, and the other population control zealots first published their manifestos during the 1960s, people worldwide are eating much better today than they were then. In the case of America’s corn growing industry, the beneficial effect of a growing market has been especially pronounced, with corn yields per acre in 2010 (165 bushels per acre) being 37 percent higher than they were in 2002 (120 bushels per acres) and more than four times as great as they were in 1960 (40 bushels per acre.)
Not only that, but in part because of the impetus of the expanded ethanol program, another doubling of yield is now in sight, as the best farms have pushed yields above 300 bushels per acre. As a result, in 2010, the state of Iowa alone produced more corn than the entire United States did in 1947. Of our entire corn crop, only 2 percent is actually eaten by Americans as corn, or 12 percent if one includes products like corn chips and corn syrup.
These advances in productivity do not only benefit the United States. America’s farmers are the vanguard for their counterparts worldwide. New seed strains and other techniques first demonstrated on our most advanced farms, subsequently spread to average farms, and then go global, thereby raising crop yields everywhere.
I respectfully disagree.
This is an equation dealing with allocation of scarce resources.
You cannot grow corn without significant inputs of oil – diesel fuel to run the tractors to plow the fields, tend to the crops and then harvest the corn, diesel fuel to run the trucks and trains that bring the corn to market, as well as natural gas to produce the urea that fertilizes the crop such that we enjoy increasing yields.
And all of that to produce a product the reduces the utility of the commodity it purports to benefit – a gallon of gasoline with ethanol has less energy potential than one without ethanol, thus reducing the gas mileage and range of the vehicle – its more expensive to run.
All of those inputs are drawn from scarce resources that would otherwise be utilized to produce crops for food, thus making them more expensive.
And for those of us that have to deal with the damage wrought by ethanol on small gasoline engines, well forget about it, it will be a day of rejoicing when this government-mandated debacle is swept from the American economy.
It’s common sense, really. If it’s tall, green and growing in neat rows in Iowa, we eat it. If it’s black and comes out of the ground in Texas, we burn it.
I am with you…..
I have read the same arguments against the ethanol program and they seem to make sense. However, I am not an expert on this subject so I am looking forward to the reactions of other readers.
There is however one thing mentioned by Robert I have to agree with.
The ‘West’ has to wean itself off ME oil.
Every dollar\Yen\Euro we send that way is used against us.
And don’t forget the total water bill to grow the corn and process the ethanol.
“In best-existing operations, assuming the corn is grown on the most energy efficient farms and the ethanol is produced in the most energy efficient plants, the net energy gain would be almost 58,000 BTUs for a net energy ratio of 2.09:1 …
Our conclusion is that under the vast majority of conditions, the amount of energy contained in ethanol is significantly greater than the amount of energy used to make ethanol, even if the raw material used is corn.”
*note published in 1995 and production is even more efficient now.
http://www.newrules.org/environment/publications/how-much-energy-does-it-take-make-gallon-ethanol
“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. “These strategies are not sustainable.”
Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705231841.htm
Man, is this guy wrong. The CEO of Nestle, one of the biggest food producers and consumers of US grain, said that America is throwing 30% of its grain in its gas tank. The food shortages began long before the price of oil rose. We are now having food riots in Portugal. Yes Portugal.
I recently watched an History Channel program about “corn” in which they stated that it took 1.15 gallons of gasoline (BTU equivalent) to produce one gallon of ethanol. have we become completely insane! Only subsidies keep this stupid concept alive.
He not wrong … He’s dead on.
First, ethanol is made from feed corn AFTER the proteins are removed … There is NO competition for food!
For the majority of ethanol plants in the U.S., the key co-product of ethanol production is dried distillers grains (DDG). This is the high protein feed product that remains after LOW-VALUE starch is removed to make fuel. As corn yields increase, the demand in many sectors are flattening. Ethanol production has not reduce food availability either for humans nor stock. So its really either put it in production for fuel or have the gov’t buy and store it as part of price supports.
Aside from that, it’s not an either/or proposition with corn.
The production of ethanol from corn uses only the starch of the corn kernel. All of the protein, minerals, and nutrients remain. One bushel of corn produces about 2.7 gallons of ethanol AND 11.4 pounds of gluten feed (20% protein) AND 3 pounds of gluten meal (60% protein) AND 1.6 pounds of corn oil.
Next, we should focus on METHANOL rather than ethanol. As Zubrin pointed out, methanol is already available at a lower price per BTU than gasoline without a subsidy. Plus methanol can be made from nearly any biomass.
I’m not a big fan of ethanol but least at least debate it without false scare tactics like it’s taking away from our food supply.
It takes more oil to make ethanol than you get in ethanol product. Using ethanol gives you less energy per unit than an equivalent amount of oil. anyone who says different is either ignorant or a bald-faced liar.
Here are a few simple questions that will illustrate the point. Why does every ethanol plant have a huge fuel oil tank? Why cant it run on a portion of the ethanol it produces? Why cant the production of corn and ethanol be powered by ethanol?
The answer to all these are that ethanol is a losing game kinetically, and the energy loss has to be made up with oil. Thus the production of ethanol actually increases the amount of oil we use.
Perhaps we could start squeezing ethanol proponents into biofuel….two birds with one stone there…..
I am currently in Europe where a gallon of gas costs north of $6.50/gallon. You get a choice here: 10% ethanol or no ethanol. The 10% ethanol is about 30 cents/gallon cheaper [about 5 percent] but you get seven to ten percent lower gas mileage. Most folks don’t realize there is a mileage difference. It would exist in the U.S., too, if we had a choice there because no government can revoke the laws of chemistry and physics.
If we want to decrease our dependence on ME oil, the only workable solution is to produce more of our own.
Whether or not gas stations in the US offer no ethanol gas must be up to state or local government. Where I live in SC, stations offer both the regular and premium gas without ethanol, as well as pumps with ethanol, or one type only. Because I drive a high performance car, I have experimented with using both the ethanol free and ethanol diluted gas over 4 years of driving it and kept meticulous gas records. Without a doubt, I get better performance from the engine when passing on one lane roads, as well as about 10 per cent better mileage with the ethanol free. It is frustrating to travel to Georgia and NC and not be able to find ethanol free gas, but so nice that it is available where I do most of my driving.
Ethanol is “toast” once we regain sanity in Washington DC. Any fuel that needs a government handout or subsidy to survive should be forced to go “cold turkey.” All the big farmers who make money like bandits at the government trough should also have their subsidies withdrawn. Oil should be drilled, natural gas should be drilled, nuclear should be developed and whean and if solar and wind can stand alone then they too should compete in the marketplace. Until then save your bull crap about ethonal.
It is absolutely ridiculous, from every mechanical, engineering, time, efficiency, cost , speed and value to market standpoint, to intentionally GROW motor fuels, from plants.
This money losing, abhorrently TIME CONSUMING process could only be imagined by criminals with a big government subsidy in mind……A free welfare check, from you and me, to “pay them” to do something that’s less efficient, A WHOLE LOT SLOWER, while taking up ENORMOUS amounts of SPACE , AND TIME to produce a inferior commodity, at a HIGHER PRICE , that other market proven technologies and processes are superior to, in every measureable way.
Someone for God’s sake please, study a little math, engineering, and economics before you re-invent the wheel, with right angles and flat planes.
Its real simple folks….a single busted well-head in the Gulf of Mexico leaked out more oil than all the cornfields in America produced in the same time frame.
Just one.
Sitting around, staring at a freaking CORN FIELD all season, whispering “grow damnit, hurry up and GROW” is a horrendous waste of time and resources.
Who the f*&k is making these decisions?
I understand we want to get off the Islamic oil/jihad cycle.
But we don’t need better ways to make oil, we need to use OUR OWN, while simultaneously developing better electricity generation and storage (nukes, fuel cells, etc.) . Get as much “fossil fuel” use to turn to new, efficient sources of electricity, and keep the petroleum use in places where it cant be eliminated from.
Growing, harvesting, transporting, and stripping CORN, one freaking one kernel at a time to make “gasoline” isn’t helping us get there, when OIL flows so fast you ban barely control it.
It’s a rip-off, a fraud, and a huge waste of time.
I could design a carburetor on my race bike to burn 100 year old single malt scotch, if I WANTED to.
Its still a stupid idea, even if someone pays me to do it.
The man making these decisions is the same man who said in his first address to Congress that the nation that invented the Automobile would never abandon the automobile.
Barack Obama appears to have been blissfully ignorant that the automobile was invented by Herr Benz in Germany. That all of the aids in the Whitehouse who must have reviewed the teleprompter feed were equally ignorant means that there is an intelligence cap in place in this Administration.
Most High Schools can field smarter people than the brain dead that are currently making the nation’s decisions.
Trivia: Barack was the name of a horse.
Some of us here that are promoting this concept, know more than a “little math”. Ethanol and methanol make tremendous sense. They are efficient to produce and the arguments against them have been well financed by those with a vested interest in maintaining the current status.
There is more than a little misinformation regarding these fuels. Ethanol and methanol are great for America and do not consume food resources.
I suggest that before you go off making silly analogies about running your bike on 100 year old scotch that maybe YOU do a little bit research so you can lower your blood pressure a bit.
…and for the record, no one uses carburetors anymore…
We are not all idiots because we disagree with you.
Zubrin is RIGHT on the money here.
Sam
Chemical Engineer.
“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. “These strategies are not sustainable.”
Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705231841.htm
Chemical engineer for whom, doing what? Do you have a vested interest in ethanol production? It’s just common sense that any industry that is not sustainable without gov’t subsidy is, by definition, not sustainable. It is a bad use of resources – a huge malinvestment of the available resources.
I will leave aside the economics of corn based fuel for now and focus on the variable nature of farm production. Do we really want to be dependent on a good crop year for both food and fuel? It is true that yields have improved significantly over the years, but there can still be year to year variations. In addition, many areas are drawing down aquifers to a critical level.
Also, we are sitting on top of an amazing amount of coal and newly discovered gas deposits. Unlike corn, they have no alternate use as food.
Thanks Robert.
A much calmer and shorter analysis of some key reasons why Ethanol is a really stupid idea.
I’ll have what your drinking!
We also have oil sands and shales in the US. Canada is already processing oil from its oil sands and exporting to the US. The US has the largest fossil fuel energy reserves in the world, if you include natural gas, oil, coal, oil sands and oil shales. And this doesn’t even include our potential for nuclear power.
But isn’t one of the major reasons why the price of food is going up so much here in the United States is because corn is becoming more and more expensive because more and more of it is being used for Ethanol? And if Methanol is such a great deal, how come we don’t use more of it? You would think that making fuel out of natural gas, coal, biomass, or trash (its current spot price is about $1.20 per gallon, without any subsidy, equivalent in energy terms to gasoline at $2.18/gallon) would be a no brainer. So if it is, why aren’t we doing it right now? Unless, of course, making these alternative fuels goes against those sadistic “Green” people in Congress who are married to this idea of “global warming.” Could that be one of the reasons why Methanol is going nowhere is because people like Obama are married to the idea of the electric car?
Flex fuel cars would definitely help. They have been a big success in Brazil, so if they can do it why can’t we? And why wouldn’t the major oil companies want to get on the Methanol bandwagon if it ment large profits for them if they produced it (not to mention less of a reliance on OPEC nations for conventional oil)?
Hopefully, in 2012 with a new president we can answer some of these questions. We have to, because we are going broke on our current reliance on conventional oil from the Middle East.
Hey ship,
I dont think Flex Fuel will help. Gasoline is such a cheap, plentiful, efficient motor fuel, these slow and expensive, less efficient “plant fuels” can never be a viable substitute.
I dont think we ever can “purposely” plant enough corn to make gasoline. I think we need better electricity generation and storage. I’m not sold on the Chevy Volt, but if we can get to reliable and long lasting electric (or fuel cell technology) then we can use alot less petroleum, and take power away from the Islamists.
Let one market build an electric car, based on the availabity of your wall outlet. They are car builders, not powerplant specialists. Dont drag them into the “approprateness” of creating what is ultimately today a “coal fired” electric car. just get the government out of the way, and them build the best electric battery storage or fuel cell technology they can.
Let ANOTHER free market concentrate on better, more efficient (nuclear) electric generation. The two will eventually fall together like software engineers and Computer chip manufacturers. Software runs on a comodity I already own, my computer. Conputers sell because all the cool software that can run on them.
The “game and data” makers dont care what chips MIGHT be developed, theyre selling software to run NOW. They are seperate markets, following their own needs and profit motives. That they are ultimately like two horses pulling MY productivity wagon, is the greatness of capitalism and free markets!
I put flex fuels, Ethanol, wind, solar, and biomas into the same “other” catagory…They should not be subsidized managed or “mandated” outside the natural market demand, because none of these has the capacity for speed, scale and volume like a gushing oil well. They will never be main replacements for petroleum, no mater how much we “wish” they could
Trying to make them be what they simply cannot be, is a step backwards IMHO.
If, however as BYPRODUCTS of other industries, the “waste” corn, grass clippings, cow dung, whirley-gig and sunshine can be “supplemental” niche sources of power or products (like household lubricants, or minor small scale personal/municipal additions to main line power grids) sure, by all means, dont waste it if you have a use for it.
But none of them can be the next “Gasoline”
And untill the markets get something new (and they will if we let them)
Drill here and now, and stop messing around with slow, slow growing corn
root, you completely missed ship’s point, which was, what about METHANOL from non- plant sources?
Ash,
Ship says “because corn is becoming more and more expensive because more and more of it is being used for Ethanol?..” He also mentions Biomas and trash
See my previous posts about the difference in EFFICIENCY between one single gushing oil well, and the “crickets chirping” level of output waiting for plants to grow. You cant have a “dedicated” fuel source from plants. It just takes waaayyy tooo freaking long. Eye droppers when we need tidal waves
Nor can societal “waste” fuel a major portion of a society. Its like looking for dropped change in your seat cushions to pay the mortgage…sure, you might recover SOMETHING, but its the BYPRODUCT of other, multi-exponentially larger things, and will therefore never BE large enough itself to fuel them…
Put another way, you cant FEED yourself with your own nail clippings and boogers…you need a reliable food source FIRST, before your body can grow nails and snot. Put all the solar, wind, biomas, corn, plant, cow dung all into that catagory and move on.
However, if the Marcelus (Mar-something? no time to google spelling) Shale deposits can yield a viable source of methane or oils, on par with the volume and efficiency we are accustomed to with oil/gasoline, then go for it. Work on nukes and fuel cells all you want, but remember…
What we HAVE NOW is plentiful, cheap, efficient fuel sources….Here, but were to wrapped up in red tape to get it…and THERE, but with a terrorist problem.
We need to stop wasting our time arguing the caloric value of nail clippings verses boogers, when we REALLY need is a big meal full of meat protein to build muscle, strength and endurance.
Root, if I’m not mistaken, Brazil is fully independent regarding energy production. About 80% of their motor energy requirements come from sugar ethanol. Most of what they drive are flex fuel vehicles. Sugar ethanol is more efficient to produce, therefore less expensive than corn ethanol. Our government has placed a $.55/gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol, to further subsidize the US corn ethanol industry. They are also given a $.45/gallon tax credit by the Feds. One thing not mentioned up to here is that at first 10% ethanol was mandated by some states (California first) because it increases octane and eliminates “engine ping”. It replaced a chemical that apparently ended up in ground water supplies. So its use started mainly as a ground water contamination issue, not a replace gasoline issue. Now the EPA is trying to up the percentage to 15%.
We have an ethanol plant close to where i live and they were closed down when gas was below $3.00/gallon. They said they couldn’t be competitive. Kind of makes you wonder why the government doesn’t really seem to care that we are almost at $4.00/gallon?
I saw a complete breakdown of the cost to manufacture ethanol and it explained that it took nine tenths of a gallon of gas to make one gallon of ethanol. Stupid.
Ethanol production absolutely depends on gov. subsidies and cannot compete with oil in an open market.
It’s a prime example of tax dollars down a rat hole, plus it harms engines.
“Rising food prices are the result of rising oil prices, not a growing market for ethanol.”
Right and the big oil companies are using secret computer files inside people’s gas tanks to track everyplace they go. This; along with sabotaging cell phones was directed by George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the three of which still control all of the oil companies in the world….
Just be thankful that Al Gore came along and discovered global warming; so that we could start using ethanol in our gasoline and then Obama had the foresight to devalue the dollar to junk status BEFORE the Republicans have a chance to win anymore elections and wreck all of our Nation’s forward progress.
Elections have consequences, but because of the huge amount of carnage and economic destruction; brought on by Tea Party Activists black mailing members of Congress it is going to take Obama much longer than anyone expected to get this mess under control.
Any questions..?
What a crock of baloney!
Tongue in cheek? Or are you really serious?
That sure read like tongue-in-cheek to me. We can only hope!
There is a limit to how many people the world can support, and if grain is not the limitation then something else will be. (Since it’s not our descendants who are increasing, I see no need to maintain that growth.)
My family is spending more on gasoline, but that that is not as big as the increase in our food budget. This tells me that consumer use of gasoline does NOT account for the lion’s share of our oil importation — more of it apparently is used to bring food to the grocery stores. (We should still look for ways to use less gasoline, but commercial use of imported oil might be an even bigger problem.) I think the author may be right that the cost of oil, rather than food shortage, is to blame for rising food prices.
Ethanol processing MAY make sense if we can develop the bacteria to process cellulose instead of kernels, but use of algae is probably more promising.
(I’ve read of someone who can economically create a small amount of oil from waste turkey parts. Why can’t we use this technology to solve the problem of how to dispose of the prisoners at Gitmo?)
“(I’ve read of someone who can economically create a small amount of oil from waste turkey parts. Why can’t we use this technology to solve the problem of how to dispose of the prisoners at Gitmo?)”
Thanks for the chuckle.
What a crock. The author argues that methanol and ethanol are good cost-effective fuel alternatives. Rather than let them compete in the open market for our fuel dollars, he then endorses a bill to force me to buy a car with an engine I don’t want.
F*ck you commie – I’ll take freedom.
If you actually want us to save fuel, fix our diesel standards to match werstern Europe.
The problem I have with methanol is technical. It attracts moisture and corrodes fuel distribution parts. I hate it, from that perspective.
and in cold weather (-10 and below) its horrible to start and getting engines to temp while driving requires thermostat and coolant mixture changes.
You are illogical. You say, “Flex fuel is the way to go.” You include methanol which has super abundant sources and is cheaper and uses its own source materials for energy in its production, not diesel fueled tractors, etc.
Yet you defend the all-out go-for-broke ethanol strategy which raises food prices and creates scarcities, while methanol would reduce costs of food and increase inventories of diesel dependent products.
The whole thing is nuts, and you are a shill for the Government and Agri-monopolies.
I work in an automotive/small engine shop and the amount of damage Ethanol has done to the 2 cycle engine world is astronomical. Most manufacturers no longer warranty fuel related issues, the units run like crap, and this 10% ethanol fuel destroys carburetors. About 3 years ago we averaged roughly 8 carburetor replacements a year. Today, we are looking at 80+. Considering the costs of making ethanol and their effects on our engines, what is the upside to using it?
I notice that in this entire article there is no mention of all the government subsidies and mandates that make ethanol possible. He is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start.
1. Just the process to make ethanol takes more energy than we get out of it, that is not including the growing of the crops either.
2. Ethanol is very harmful to engines that are not designed to handle it, how many older cars, stationary motors, tractors, outboard motors, etc., etc. would be destroyed or rendered useless if it was impossible to buy real gasoline. It is very difficult already to get decent gas already.
3. We export much of our corn crop, or we used to, the price of food has went up worldwide. The production of ethanol isn’t the only reason for that, but it is a large component. Egypt imploded because of a food price spike.
4. Finally the excuse for ethanol was Anthropogenic Global Warming, and anybody that can rub 2 brain cells together is aware it is a hoax. The REAL reason was a payoff to farmers to raise corn prices, hence that is why cropland prices have went through the roof.
Ethanol is a poison pill that is killing us now, once we stop taking it the cropland prices will crater and thousands of farmers will go bankrupt. There is no upside either way.
There are so many conflicting “facts” in these posts I don’t know where to start. First of all, it does not take more energy to produce ethanol than there is in a gallon of ethanol. That used to be true in the late 1970′s but no longer. This old chestnut never seems to die.
I continually hear about the damage to engines. I certainly can’t argue the point since I don’t know the circumstances but but we’ve been using ethanol since the mid 1980′s in everything we own. That includes many small engines, old vehicles (1950′s) chain saws, boats, atv’s trucks,new vehicles and on and on. No problems except one chainsaw that the mechanic thought the ethanol had eaten away an o ring.
Ethanol was started to give farmers another market for their crop. This is true. The early plants were mostly financed by farmers themselves in an attempt to raise chronically low prices.
The biggest reason for the huge increase in crop prices are crop failures throughout the world. We have been making ethanol for years and food prices were “normal” for most of those years. Ethanol is just one of several uses for corn and when we have short crops the prices go up. So yes, ethanol is responsible along with livestock and human consumption.
Many say ethanol should be put on the “free market”. What free market? It has to be blended with gasoline. The competitor has to blend it with his fuel. Fat chance of than being done voluntarily. I agree that it’s time to cut the subsidies, but all of our alternate energies are going to need help to get started.
Many alternatives have been suggested. Coal, nuclear, wind, etc. None of them run in cars though.
We should be drilling what oil we can because we’re going to need oil for years to come no matter what we do. But, we should also be trying to use every other alternative we can so we can eventually reduce our oil use.
One of the biggest problems is that we all seem to have our “favorite” fuel and feel we have to knock down all the others. No! We should be working on how to use all of them together. All have good and bad points, but lets quit running down all those we don’t personally like.
“Many say ethanol should be put on the “free market”. What free market? It has to be blended with gasoline. ”
Yeah, it has to be blended with gasoline, under FEDERAL MANDATE, because it SUCKS as a motor fuel.
We’ve been using it in gasoline for a long time, and car companies would have an easier time meeting CAFE standards (that shouldnt exist anyway) if the GOVERNMENT didnt force us to use LESS EFFICIENT GASOLINE WATERED DOWN WITH ETHANOL
No one wants it, no one needs it, its a criminal enterprise put upon us by force.
“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. “These strategies are not sustainable.”
Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050705231841.htm
The entire ethanol industry would collapse without subsidies. The reason being it is not competitive with other alternatives. That is the end of the story right there. If those claiming ethanol made economic sense were right we would have had a booming ethanol sector without the need for subsidies years ago. The technology is not new after all.
And of course grain prices are going up as a result of the mis-allocation of resources caused by these government subsidies. The capital, land, labor and resources that are being artificially redirected to be used for ethanol production would more than likely be used to fill the demand for grain in the food sector. That is *not* happening now because farmers and corporations are lining up to get government handouts to produce biofuels nobody needs or wants.
The amount of water needed to produce ethanol alone is a reason to kill it.
your point number 2 is no accident, its design
Dear Sirs:
Please ask yourselves the following questions:
In whose interest is that cars are NOT flex fuel?
In whose interest is it that Americans do NOT have fuel choice?
In whose interest is it that Americans are currently being prevented from cheap methanol in their cars, made from plentiful domestic sources, in place of expensive oil whose supply and price is controlled by the Islamists, and whose profits are reaped by them?
Thank you for your attention to these questions, upon which the survival of not only our republic, but Western civilization depends.
It’s in my interest – I don’t want that crap.
I want a BMW 123d – make that happen.
Amen! I want a European type diesel as well. When I lived in Europe, I drove them all, including a 123D! If Americans knew what they were missing out on, they would riot. 50% of the cars sold in Europe are diesels. Imagine getting 50 MPG while going 80 to 120 MPH!
Dearest Robert,
Thank you ever so much for having my and other Americans best interests at heart; we do indeed want choice, but our preferred option is the choice to burn unadulterated gasoline. This requires the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania to stop sabotaging the oil industry and the U.S. economy with ill-liberal energy policies.
We don’t like the cheaper methanol option because the associated lifetime costs are greater than we care to bear, i.e. corrosion of various engine system parts.
How’d that Mars mission thing go for you? I think your odds of success with tilting at this latest windmill will have equal success.
Sincerely with deepest regards,
One of your former colleagues in the field of Space Exploration
Zubrin is ANYTHING but a liberal. He is a staunch conservative.
Why not tell us who you are instead of lurking behind your aerospace background.
As a Chemical Engineer, I find nothing lacking in Zubrin’s thinking or logic on this matter. He is dead on.
Gasoline is a lousy fuel. Alcohol is far superior despite its lower energy content. This is NOT about Mars, it is about America.
…I say it again, you clearly have an ax to grind, why not make your point regarding why you believe this to be a bad idea and leave the petty stuff out?
It would be nice to focus on what is important.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
“Zubrin is ANYTHING but a liberal. He is a staunch conservative.”
Beside the point.
“Why not tell us who you are instead of lurking behind your aerospace background.”
This is coming from a guy whose handle is “Sam?” Someone call the Irony Police, I have a repeat offender here for you.
“As a Chemical Engineer, I find nothing lacking in Zubrin’s thinking or logic on this matter. He is dead on.”
You keep pulling out your credentials as a trump card. Try using good arguments instead. We’re having a discussion and just saying “I’m better educated than you and I know better, so just listen to what I say” isn’t going to cut it. There are scientists and engineers on both sides of this debate. Give us your reasons not your title.
“Gasoline is a lousy fuel. Alcohol is far superior despite its lower energy content. This is NOT about Mars, it is about America.”
I don’t care about your assertions that “Gasoline is a lousy fuel. Alcohol is far superior…” – give me some reasons! And not theoretical ones – I don’t care about a theoretical engine that can burn alcohol much better than current engines. It doesn’t matter – I don’t have that engine! And don’t just dismiss alcohol’s lower energy content – it does matter, your assertion to the contrary notwithstanding.
“It would be nice to focus on what is important.”
Yes, my point exactly.
if it is viable and cost effective enough to stand on its own merits in the marketplace then ill give it a shot
but foisting “alternatives” is a smoke screen for rewarding green cronies and limiting freedom
“made from plentiful domestic sources, in place of expensive oil whose supply and price is controlled by the Islamists, and whose profits are reaped by them?”
Mr. Zubrin, that statement alone would reveal you for a liar. We have plentiful domestic oil, which we could use. The sole reason we don’t is that our own government is preventing us from extracting it. Their (and your) motivation is an unholy allowance between envirowhackos and people like you working for businesses who make lots of extra money off government interference in the market.
In my opinion, you are a dishonest individual, and I would take the presence of your name on any proposal as an automatic indicator of fraud.
According to the article, “Of our entire corn crop, only 2 percent is actually eaten by Americans as corn, or 12 percent if one includes products like corn chips and corn syrup.” I can’t dispute those numbers. However, much animal feed is corn based and the recitation of how much corn we eat does not seem to include the quantities of corn cows and other food animals eat. Lots of people eat beef, pork, chicken and turkey. Lots also drink milk and eat cheese, ice cream, eggs etc.
All true…we rely on bio sub systems…I cant eat dirt and sunshine, but corn can. I dont like corn that much, feed the hogs and cows, I’ll eat them.
But it seems if we grow WAY too much corn than we need, were PLANTING TO MUCH CORN, right?
Rather than fuddle with jamming all that excess corn into my gas tank with a government pistol at my head, why dont they just sell it, or go broke?
One time I had a hot-dog cart….cooked ‘em all at once and they got cold, and I bought to many rolls, they went stale…
But boy, if there were a MANDATE for you all to EAT my cold hot dogs on stale buns, I’d have been a genius AND a millionaire!!
Well – a few years ago oil was over $140 a barrel and gas prices were cheaper.
This is a man-caused fuel shortage and it’s “necessarily” spiking the cost of everything.
Hemp for fuel. We can stop using corn for fuel right now if the federal government would make industrial hemp legal to grow in the USA.
And it grows like a weed. This article is absurd. It has nothing to do with agreeing with the brain-addled malthusians.
An acre of hemp will produce four times the ethanol as an acre of corn. In Canada they are using hemp to build cars, check out the Kestral EV body and interior all from hemp. If the government really wants to put people to work hemp can create a million jobs in a thousand industries.
Have another toke, dude.
If hemp is “4 times better than corn” for ethanol per ACRE,
it’s still only 1/10000000th as good as a gushing oil well.
The size of a manhole cover.
That flows product 24/7, RIGHT NOW,
Not squished and wrung out, at the end of the growing season, several months away.
“putting thousands of people to work” by forcing inferior products to be made in Government controlled factories, sounds like fun.
But hey, when you’re stoned….everything is cool
OOPS!
I forgot the most important words of all to fully discredit the economic, scientific and mathematical practicality of your assertions:
“In CANADA”
“If the government really wants to put people to work hemp can create a million jobs in a thousand industries”.
That’s the problem. Our government wants wind and solar power, also. And they are getting it by forcing them down our throats at a subsidy of over $250K per worker. How much government subsidy per worker is making what you describe happen? For 2011 the Feds approved a tax credit for the ethanol industry equivalent to $7 billion. What is that worth per every worker in the ethanol industry?
The key word in compel; it makes the rest of his economic argument worthless. The hard truth is that if carbon combustion (the sole reason to use ethanol, other than drinking) is a near and present danger to our society, then we and most of the world’s population are doomed. Our leaders should level with us, and demand personal sacrifices unknown in severity in our nation’s history.
We do not get honesty in our energy debates.
While Mr Zubrin is a brilliant engineer (as well as an increasingly annoying one), he is not a brilliant economist. Nor is he as brilliant scientist as he tells himself each morning when he looks in the mirror.
If he was that brilliant, he’d ask himself “how many gallons of gas must be burned to produce 1 gallon of ethanol.” He’d then ask that same question for gasoline and then compare the two. He would then be ablt to conclude that ethanol is not a good thing. Perhaps he might then advocate drilling for more oil to alleviate supply issues until that time other energy/technology eclipses the utility of burning oil.
By the way, Mr Zubrin posts here now because the aerospace community got tired of listening to his diatribes.
I don’t always agree with Dr. Zubrin but I do respect him. He is far to conservative for my taste. That said, I suggest that if you have something that you disagree with that you state it. Otherwise it just sounds like you have an ax to grind and add nothing to the discussion.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
Ethanol has its opportunity back when cars were first produced. Ford even built a Model T that ran on ethanol. But it lost out to gasoline. Gas is cheaper to produce and transport. It is far more cost effective than ethanol. Also, one must honestly state that Brazil uses the leftovers from the refining of sugar cane, and our sugar cane industry is a much smaller than that of Brazil’s. Brazil is getting multiple uses out of one product, much the way we do with oil, but with corn, one use only, food or fuel, we can’t do both yet. So lets stop the wastage of money, acreage, and resources trying to make corn ethanol work and concentrate on what does work. And while we are filling up our tanks with gasoline, the universities/private enterprises, using private sources of funding, can research ways to produce ethanol on a large scale effeciently and cheaply.
Ethanol is a good idea, but using corn as the feedstock is downright stupid on account of the fact that it’s just not an efficient vector.
There is but one question that needs to be answered before any meaningful energy discussion takes place – does the federal government seek to maximize the efficiency of our economy or does it want us reduced to the “fair-playing field” of the envious socialist nations? I vote the latter -it’s deliberate. No intelligent being would leave a sinking boat without something better to hop onto. Alternate fuels are fine -create them -produce them – and then switch from oil. The eco-worshippers have owned the research industry (education grant gazilllions) and have failed to provide reasonable alternatives to the horse -never mind the non-plug-in automobile.
Nice try. By and large, PJ Media writers and readers trade in rational thinking and common sense. If they have a “special interest” or bias it tends toward liberty, free markets and self reliance and against the perversions and costs that political machinery and its unholy alliances brings to our every day lives. We can smell a pile of self serving rationalizations and half truths a mile away.
If it made economic sense, it wouldn’t need a subsidy.
“If it made economic sense, it wouldn’t need a subsidy”.
And if it made “chemical sense”, you wouldnt have to “blend it” with a real motor fuel to hide the loss of efficiency you get from it.
Yeah, great idea that corn gas…
Takes forever to grow, has seasonal drought/flood/frost/fire variables built right in, its hugely expensive and inefficient to process, AND SUCKS as motor fuel.
Yup, only the GOVENMENT would thing THATS a good idea to throw money at!
let’s face it. All of these artifical fuels and alternative energy programs are a consequence of our irrational holy war against oil and the crony capitalism that follows along after it.
If ever something could be considered a gift to humanity it is oil. It is plentiful and relatively easy to extract. It is densly energetic but completely safe to handle, transport and transform into useful products. We have made its use relatively non-impactful on air and environmental quality and the net gain for “the environment” versus old ways of housing, feeding, heating and transporting ourselves is immense.
So that leaves the problem of “dependency” on the evil terrorist oil empires. The fact is that the world market is mature and oil is fungible and there is nothing we can do urgently that is going to have any socio-political affect whatsoever. When a politician starts to talk about oil dependency, ask him/her why the solution lies in these cockamamie schemes when our hemisphere has 25% of the world’s known oil reserves and only 10% of its population.
In point of fact there is a lot that we can do if we can override the people who want nothing done. Ralph Nader talked the Congress in the Sixties to give up the program that required American production before oil could be imported. I want to see him up before a Congressional Committee the way the oil industry was today.
The ethanol program is completely crazy, and I am surprised that a writer at the generally small gov conservative Pajamas Media would dare to defend it. Perhaps the subsidy is not starving people, but taking that much grain out of the food chain has to be raising prices. And the stats I have seen indicate that the extra gasoline required to grow the grain, process it to ethanol, and transport it, uses almost as much, and perhaps more, oil than we get back in ethanol.
Simple bottom line, if ethanol was really worthwhile, you would no longer need to subsidize it. This is just a boondoggle for corn farmers and agribusiness. Ethanol from Brazilian suger is apparently economical without subsidy, so why bother with corn.
Just because some crazy environmentalist condemns the ethanol program does not make it good. When so called repubs and conservatives defend subsidy boondoggles like this, instead of relying on the free market, it reminds me that the Tea Party seems to be the only organization in this country that really beleives in free markets. Too many repubs think being pro business means crony capitalism like this.
Wow! It is hard to comprehend how these beliefs still exist. It is truly a monument to the power of talk radio and it’s ability to delude otherwise clearly reasonable and intelligent people.
There is no shortage of corn in this country. We produce the corn that we need and then some. If corn prices are higher, it is because the cost to produce it is higher. That cost would be the cost of diesel fuel by the way – the stuff coming from the middle east, Venezuela and other fun places that hate us.
Those arguing that we are taking food out of the mouths of babes or livestock feed should keep in mind that we still pay farmers NOT to plant.
Moreover, the belief that providing subsidies for ethanol production is somehow evil because it interferes with free market forces is utter gibberish and without foundation. We subsidize MANY technologies in order to make their products more palatable to industry and to help them compete with well established alternatives. In fact, through ridiculous and dated policies, we continue to subsidize big oil even during these times of outrageous profits and CEO compensation while average American struggles to put food on the table.
Virtually every single industry in this country has been subsidized in one form or another in order to promote their establishment. This includes the Railroads, Coal, Oil, etc.
Oil has more than $12 Trillion in infrastructure in this country. There is absolutely NO HOPE that any other fuel could compete against such odds even if it were 10 times less in cost to produce.
We can produce methanol for as little as 52 cents per gallon (from natural gas stock). So where is the methanol? Why does it require an act of congress to declare it a fuel? Still think these fuels can survive without government support? Well, you will soon change your tune when you are paying $10.00 per gallon for gasoline and 70% of that money is use to finance terrorism or to diamond stud some Saudi prince’s Lamborghini or build the worlds tallest buildings in Dubai.
The ethanol program in this country has not been adequately supported by our government, AND IT MUST BE. The number of E-85 stations is still woefully low and laws for its efficient combustion in so called flexfuel vehicles: NONEXISTENT!
Both ethanol and methanol are superior fuels to gasoline. They have far lower flame front velocity making them more efficient fuels to burn. This means that despite the fact that they have a lower energy content, a greater percentage of that energy can be converted to useful work.
Misinformation regarding corrosion problems, incompatible seals, different fuel injector and fuel pump requirements continue to be promoted by one uninformed so-called “expert” after another. There is no difference in the fuel injectors used in a flex-fuel vehicle and the identical model in the non flex fuel version. In most cases it is blatant because the part numbers are the SAME! This is also true for the fuel pumps.
Those claiming that combustion of methanol damages spark plugs should keep in mind that the byproduct of ANY combustion reaction produces WATER and CO2. It doesn’t matter if you burn methanol, ethanol, gasoline or doggy doo. The corrosive product gas is always superheated steam and your spark plug survives this just fine.
Those of us that have modified vehicles to run on both methanol and ethanol (E-85) (for years) know that with just a small effort cars can get the same or nearly the same mileage on E-85 as they do on gasoline. Moreover with minor modification to an internal combustion engine (done at no additional cost during manufacturing) an alcohol optimized engine would leave a gasoline engine in the dust from an efficiency stand point.
I don’t agree with Dr. Zubrin about the Malthusian stuff. I think intelligent people can disagree as to whether this planet can continue to have an ever growing population. That said, he hits it out the park with his reasoning regarding ethanol and methanol as a vital component of this country’s energy future.
Liquid fuels have proven themselves. Battery technology continues to flounder and remains at least a decade off in the future before it MIGHT offer a low cost solution to meet our driving requirements. Those that have witnessed lithium polymer batteries self ignite and set everything around them on fire know what I am talking about.
Even those that think than an electric solution is best should consider that fuel cell technology that utilizes methanol exists today and can provide efficiencies exceeding 50%. This while gasoline engine brake efficiency hovers at around 18%-20%! Methanol is an AWESOME fuel as it ethanol.
Finally, those that believe that Zubrin hasn’t considered costs in his analysis should take a few hours to read his book Energy Victory. He makes a powerful argument for his assertions and backs them with fact while dispelling a great many myths.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
There is no shortage of corn in this country. We produce the corn that we need and then some. If corn prices are higher, it is because the cost to produce it is higher. That cost would be the cost of diesel fuel by the way – the stuff coming from the middle east, Venezuela and other fun places that hate us.
{Let’s stop by at FAO’s Food Price Index (February data out today – you guessed it, another record high). What do they think is driving cereal prices upwards?
The increase in February mostly reflected further gains in international maize prices, driven by strong demand amid tightening supplies, while prices rose marginally in the case of wheat and fell slightly in the case of rice.
In other words, this is mainly about corn. And who’s the biggest corn exporter in the world? The United States.
And where is 40% of US corn production going this year? Ethanol, for use in US car engines.
And will USAID acknowledge that this has anything at all to do with spiking food prices? Don’t hold your breath.}
http://www.globaldashboard.org/2011/03/03/did-we-say-feed-the-future-oh-we-meant-feed-car-engines/
{Mr. Pope says, get rid of the ethanol subsidies and the tariff. “I am in competition with the government and the oil industry,” he says. “It’s not fair.” Smithfield’s economists estimate corn prices would fall by a dollar a bushel if ethanol blending wasn’t subsidized. “Even the announcement that it is going away would see the price of corn go down, which would translate very quickly into reduced meat prices in the meat case,” he says. Imagine what would happen if the mandate and tariff were eliminated, too.}
http://blog.acton.org/archives/23049-hardships-of-ethanol.html
“Those arguing that we are taking food out of the mouths of babes or livestock feed should keep in mind that we still pay farmers NOT to plant.”
This is beside the point; we should stop the ethanol subsidy *and* we should stop paying farmers not to plant. End result – even more grains to sell.
“Moreover, the belief that providing subsidies for ethanol production is somehow evil because it interferes with free market forces is utter gibberish and without foundation. We subsidize MANY technologies in order to make their products more palatable to industry and to help them compete with well established alternatives. In fact, through ridiculous and dated policies, we continue to subsidize big oil even during these times of outrageous profits and CEO compensation while average American struggles to put food on the table.”
This is just a bald-faced attempt at whipping up class envy.
Oil companies get very little in the way of true subsidies. The little they get in the way of actual subsidies could and should easily be eliminated and the oil companies wouldn’t care (see the article link below for details on these minimal subsidies).
But that’s not what Obama and the Left are targeting. They want to take away tax credits and deductions that are broadly available to many businesses, the net result being a targeted tax hike for the perennial scapegoat of the Left and populists – the oil industry:
“In many cases, what the President and anti-oil crusaders label an oil subsidy is neither a subsidy nor a tax treatment specific to the oil and gas industry. These are broad tax policies that apply to many industries. When the Administration takes aim at these provisions specifically in the oil and gas industry, it is essentially a targeted tax hike. These provisions include:
* Section 199 Deduction. This tax deduction, under Internal Revenue Code Section 199, goes to all domestic manufacturing. Producers of clothing, roads, electricity, water, and many other goods produced in the United States are all eligible for the manufacturer’s tax deduction. The Section 199 deduction is unavailable to the service sector, and even that is a stretch, as the tax deduction includes music and movie production. Removing oil and gas production eligibility for this tax break is not removing a subsidy or closing a tax loophole but imposing a targeted tax hike. In fact, Congress already imposed a tax hike on oil and natural gas companies by freezing the deduction at 6 percent when other manufacturers receive a 9 percent deduction.
* Foreign Tax Credits and Deferral of Foreign Income. The foreign tax credit and deferral are two critical features of a worldwide tax system that prevent the U.S. corporate income tax from double taxing—and further crippling—the international competitiveness of U.S. companies. The President has proposed cutting deferral and limiting the applicability of the foreign tax credit. This would significantly increase taxes paid by U.S. businesses, subjecting more U.S. foreign income to double taxation and severely undermining the ability to compete abroad and grow at home. The President is charging in exactly the wrong direction. He should instead advance the competitiveness of American companies and workers by proposing to eliminate the U.S. tax on foreign source income. Foreign tax credits and deferral of foreign income are not unique to the oil industry, so the President’s proposal is just another punitive, targeted tax hike.”
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/05/Whats-an-Oil-Subsidy
Instead we should be dropping the far higher (as a % of the energy produced) subsidies to “green” power – mainly wind and solar:
“…the major federal subsidy for wind producers is the option to take a 30 percent investment tax credit or to receive a 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit.
“2.2 cents” doesn’t seem like much, but, depending on the time of year, it falls somewhere between 25 percent and 100 percent of the wholesale price of electricity. Forty percent if frequently used as the average.
So, what would an oil-production subsidy look like if it were the same magnitude?
Deepwater drilling rigs can cost over $400,000 per day. With other costs, a rough per-well figure would be $100,000,000 per well. If an oil company could get the same 30 percent investment tax credit as wind producers, the government would write the company a $30,000,000 check for each well completed. For the lower cost, shallow-water wells, the government would write a check closer to $3,000,000 for every well drilled.
If on the other hand, the oil company opted for a production tax credit (and it was set at 40 percent of the 2010 average price of about $75 per barrel) then the government would write the oil company a check for $30 for each barrel produced (onshore as well as offshore).
If a subsidy like that was the deal oil companies had, then cut away. But the $4 billion per year that oil’s detractors keep repeating works out to $0.60 per barrel, and upon closer examination they do not even qualify as oil-industry subsidies.”
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/05/13/what-if-oil-producers-actually-received-subsidies-like-wind-energy-producers/
Actually the most successful companies in our industrial history did *not* depend on government subsidies. Your assertion that every new idea or product needs to be subsidized in the early stages is wrong. Losses are incurred in the early stages but private investors will fund those losses based on the eventual returns. Private investors have not made those commitments with ethanol, why would that be?
At any rate ethanol and biofuels are not in their infancy. Mankind has been converting food stock to fuel for decades or even hundreds of years. If it made economic sense to do so it would have revealed itself by now. It becomes a matter of science and physics. The amount of land and water needed to grow enough corn or other crop to make a significant dent in our transportation fuel needs is astronomical.
Those asserting that biofuels will “eventually” make economic sense need to provide evidence that is the case. At what point does it become economical? How many more years of subsidies will be needed? How do we resolve the transport issues, as in the fact you cannot deliver ethanol through pipelines? How much land and water will be needed? Until we get some reasonable answers to those questions all we have is unsubstantiated claims of success.
I just finished reading this to my very precocious 6 year old granddaughter. She thought for a moment, turned to me and said, “Grandpa, that’s poo poo.” Out of the mouths of babes.
Hi. I’m a small farmer. Dr. Zubrin is not being totally honest here. I raise chickens and sell their eggs. The cost of chicken feed has doubled in the past couple of years – and it was going way up before the price of oil jumped. If animal feed goes up, the cost of raising animals goes way up – it had little do with oil prices until recently, when oil went through the roof, increasing grain prices even more.
As to increased corn production due to ethanol use – yes, indeed, I have seen this. I have seen farmers destroy good perennial hay fields so they could grow corn for one year to make a killing. The result of this – a lot less hay available for animals and hay prices climbing higher than ever – the result of that – much higher costs when raising animals that need forage.
3 years ago, I could by 50 pounds of scratch feed (pretty low quality) for $6. Now, I’m paying $12 for the same low quality feed for my chickens- if I want high quality feed, it is up to $16 to $17 for 50 pounds – 3 years ago, it was $9.
The ethanol need for corn caused this. Not gas prices.
Mo
Funny stuff there Bro
What nonsense. I’m ashamed of PJ for running this tripe.
If the ethanol program is so solidly sensible then let’s do away with the gasoline content requirements and see what results. The entire program is nothing but a give-away to farmers and should end now. It doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions (as if that matters anyway) and ethanol production is well-known to require more energy to make than it eventually releases.
The author is proposing a policy which will have the following effects:
void the warranty on 95% of cars
cause everyone’s gas mileage to decrease by 5-10%
make it harder for the poorest people in the world to buy food
enrich billionaire agribusinessmen and their millionaire lobbyists
I vote no.
Remember the law of unintended consequences. I read that the amount of “feed corn” used for ethanol went up to about 25% of the total available. If true, and the amount of feed corn being grown did not go up then it’s price went up. Thus the cost of raising animals on feed corn went up. If farmers are getting more for feed corn than for other crops then they may be planting more feed corn and less food corn or wheat or other crops. Thus the costs of those crops may go up. In addition, if people believe that the cost of the other crops may go up because of a decrease in supply then commodity trading may increase their costs. Thus, it is possible that the use of higher amounts of feed corn for ethanol production may affect food prices… not directly, but indirectly. I’m no economist, but I’m sure President Obama could figure this out.
I don’t have enough personal expertise to speculate on the causes of food price increases. However, I will say that the push for methanol use as a transportation fuel is fraught with so many problems as to make it untenable in the near term (10-20 years). Frankly, I think it really undermines Zubrin’s case for anyone in the know and that’s a shame, because I generally agree with his viewpoint.
While you’ll often hear horror stories from experts and pundits about how E85 (85% ethanol) will cause all sorts of problems with seals, pumps, etc., the truth of the matter is that most vehicles made in the last 10-15 years can run E85 safely with little more than a fuel pump and fuel injector upgrade – not for ethanol compatability, but for the increased flow volumes required for E85. Ethanol is mildly corrosive at best, and when moderated with 15% gasoline, we just don’t see corrosion in cars of the last generation or two which have largely already switched to multifuel compatable seals. I don’t dispute the lab results, just saying that the community of automotive enthusiasts and hobbyists using E85 aren’t seeing those issues.
But methanol is a different story. I’ve used it in a variety of race cars, and even with a fuel system designed and spec’d specifically to handle methanol, you still cannot just shut the engine down and let it sit after using methanol. It must be “pickled” on gasoline to prevent corrosion of spark plugs, cylinder walls (if using steel cylinder liners), piston rings, even bearings if sufficient methanol is making its way into the oil pan as blowby. Some race gasolines with as little as 10-20% methanol in the mix will cause similar problems to the point that the manufacturers specifically state that the fuel cannot be left in the engine after running. I learned a hard lesson many years ago when an engine running a methanol additive gasoline was not pickled and removing the spark plugs a few days later tore up the threads so bad that the heads had to be removed and remachined.
I am personally a fan of ethanol. Even if it was not subsidized (and I think that subsidies are a bad idea on fuels), I would still be running E85 in several of my vehicles as I am today. Right now, in Southern California, it noticeably cheaper than regular gasoline, offers the performance potential of race gas and tends to have a better tailpipe emission profile. I don’t care for the range reduction, but price/mile is similar, emissions the same or better, and I can make substantially more power than even on premium 91/92 gas. It’s like getting $15/gallon race gas for a third the price.
The only way I see methanol being a viable transport fuel in the near to medium term is as primary fuel source for fuel cells. As a combustion fuel, it simply requires too many changes to be viable vs. ethanol, even if in an optimal world methanol would be better.
“….but price/mile is similar….”
Price per mile using ethanol would be higher were it not for government subsidies. And if you include the higher cost of foods forced by ethanol production, what will ethanol price per mile be?
It is totally amazing how so many of the “posters” have been hoodwinked by the oil establishment. As an engineer living in the middle of the corn belt, I have watched the evolution of ethanol production. I’m guessing 90% of those responding here have never taken the time to find out the facts of today’s ethanol industry and are still believing 20 year old “facts” that the opposition to ethanol want you believe. The only one that is on the right track is “LOBOSOLO”. (please read above)
`1. Ethanol uses only the starch(which doctors say we eat too much of). Some of the byproducts are use as biodegradable plastic, etc. Most of the rest of the grain goes back to the feedlots and is mixed with ground stalks and low quality grass that by themselves would be almost worthless as feed. As a result ethanol production does very little in reducing our food supply.
2. Modern crop production and ethanol plants are very efficient compared to just ten years ago. One plant close to me uses coal for all of their plants power needs, while another has 6 windmills providing most of its electrical needs. Corn is now being raised with newer technology that has cut it fuel usage per bushel by 60% in just the last 10 years.
3. Ethanol now takes less than ½ gal of fuel to make a gallon (and some of that is ethanol or biodiesel) plus sunshine and rain. A gallon of gas takes .4 gallon of gas to produce + the gallon that is sold. Ethanol – .5 gal + sunshine and rain Gas – 1.4 gal So which is inefficient?
4. Ethanol may get a small subsidy, but guess what? So do the oil and gas companies.
5. For those who claim it can’t stand alone and need to be mixed. Baloney! It is entirely usable as it is, only the automotive industry, with its old friends the gas companies, have been dragging their feet on making the needed updates. Our grandparents couldn’t burn natural gas in their woodstoves either, but that didn’t mean wood was a better fuel.
6. The press is blaming the recent rise in food cost the farmers. Fact: The corn you are now eating from the freezer or can, was raised here in Minnesota and Wisconsin last summer. The price for that corn from the farm was set in the grower contracts in December of 2009. The grocery stores have marked up they prices 50 cents to $1.00 on these when in fact their cost has not yet gone up at all for what they are selling. Even at the price they will have to pay the farmers for this next crop, there is only 17 cents worth of corn in that can. That’s up by 5 cents and the first can of the more expensive corn won’t be on the shelves until September.
Northstar, you couldn’t be more correct. As an engineer myself, I have also examined these questions in great detail and have come to the same conclusion that you have. Ethanol MUST be a part of this country’s energy future. Moreover it must be supported by even more aggressive programs in order to counter act a destructive and predictable future that must inevitably come about if we continue to blindly support the oil industry. It is IMPOSSIBLE for any other fuel to make it while the oil lobby continues to be as powerful as it is.
Those that argue for “letting the market decide” are either woefully uninformed or just plain misinformed regarding the advantages of ethanol and hopefully methanol.
I can only imagine what the cost of gasoline would be today if it wasn’t for the fact that we have reduced consumption of gasoline in this country through the use of ethanol. Ethanol production from corn continues to become more efficient and products from the “spent” corn continue to find more and more uses in animal feeds and other commodities.
Ethanol is a WIN-WIN for this country. We need to increase the production of alcohol fuels NOT reduce it.
I would go a step further in requiring auto manufacturers to increase mileage from flex fuel vehicles running on E-85. I have personally modified vehicle PCMs to run more efficiently on E-85 and have never failed to increase mileage by less than 20% while running on E-85. I am very suspicious that E-85 efficiency is either being totally ignored by auto manufacturers or being purposely reduced.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
I guess the economist should have called you before writing their article:
“A recent issue of The Economist magazine has a special report on the world’s food supply. It discusses myriad ways that the world will attempt to manage feeding the expected 9 billion population of 2050. The magazine pointed out that a significant deterrent to meeting this goal is the push to use corn ethanol as a fuel. It quotes Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestle, in discussing the government biofuels targets: “This is the craziest thing we’re doing.” Brabeck goes on to say, “We can’t produce biofuels and feed the world’s increased population. … Ethanol makes up about 8 percent of U.S. fuel for vehicles, but uses up about 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop. The Economist estimates that if all the American corn crop that goes into ethanol were used as food, global corn food supplies would increase by 14 percent.”
“Mr. Pope says, get rid of the ethanol subsidies and the tariff. “I am in competition with the government and the oil industry,” he says. “It’s not fair.” Smithfield’s economists estimate corn prices would fall by a dollar a bushel if ethanol blending wasn’t subsidized. “Even the announcement that it is going away would see the price of corn go down, which would translate very quickly into reduced meat prices in the meat case,” he says. Imagine what would happen if the mandate and tariff were eliminated, too.”
http://blog.acton.org/archives/23049-hardships-of-ethanol.html
“Let’s stop by at FAO’s Food Price Index (February data out today – you guessed it, another record high). What do they think is driving cereal prices upwards?
The increase in February mostly reflected further gains in international maize prices, driven by strong demand amid tightening supplies, while prices rose marginally in the case of wheat and fell slightly in the case of rice.
In other words, this is mainly about corn. And who’s the biggest corn exporter in the world? The United States.
And where is 40% of US corn production going this year? Ethanol, for use in US car engines.
And will USAID acknowledge that this has anything at all to do with spiking food prices? Don’t hold your breath.”
http://www.globaldashboard.org/2011/03/03/did-we-say-feed-the-future-oh-we-meant-feed-car-engines/
Here’s the link for my first quote above:
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/04/letter_brazil_understands_how.html
1. Only the starch? You mean most of the kernel.
2. 6 Windmills would never supply “most” of the energy for anything. A 30% efficiency rating for a wind farm is considered good. Wind is not producing any usable power the majority of the time.
3. This varies greatly depending on where the crops are grown and what the climate conditions happen to be in a given year. The water/fuel ratio is quite high in many states. The government has even been dumb enough to subsidize ethanol production in California where it has gone as high as 100 gallons of water to 1 gallon of ethanol. If we are going to limit production to the areas that are optimal for growing corn, the supply won’t be enough to make any difference.
4. Oil and gas companies get no special subsidies, I guess you have been ignoring the debates about that very subject that have been in the news for the last month. They get tax breaks on making certain investments like all other manufacturers. They don’t need subsidies to survive and given the massive amounts of reasonably priced energy we get from those sources there is no comparison to ethanol which is giving us next to nothing.
5. It would take years and billions of dollars to change over the transportation fleet in this country. Many consumers can’t afford to throw away perfectly good vehicles just to support crony capitalism amongst politicians and farm belt states.
6. You clearly don’t know anything about commodities trading and futures. The current price is not based on the cost of producing corn last year it is based on the replacement value of those crops going forward. If it is going to cost more to replace those supplies, the cost of the existing supply goes up. That is why gas at the pump goes up immediately when the cost per barrel rises even though that fuel was refined months prior.
When ethanol producers can demonstrate they can viable without subsidies then their assertions might have some merit. Until then it is just hot air. The problem is once you get used to subsidies giving them up can be real tough.
The price system works because it conveys messages to producers that allow them to ascertain what works and what does not. When you distort that process with subsidies and artificially mandated demand it is destined for failure.
While we are talking about efficiency, a gallon of ethanol weighs about 7.5 pounds and sells for $4.00. 7.5 pounds of steak sells for???. If you know where I can buy 7.5 pounds of ribeye for $4.00 let me know
I say, Zubrin’s presentation does not pass the facial exam for the logic of causality; but hey, jest fer curiosity, how ’bout if we take a brave new step let the market decide? Git shed a the subsidies, . . . see who blinks, first, . . . never know, til ya try it, . . .
Take a hundred points for this article.
The hunger to place society into situations that cause millions to die I cannot understand. That the desire exists is beyond question. An actual majority of environmentalists may consciously practice to kill millions.
They are collecting the money not to pay for what they are selling now, but for the new corn they have to buy. Just like a gas station, the money you pay for a tank goes for the station to buy the next load.
You are missing his point, which is that it is NOT a supply problem.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
“Why It’s Wrong to Agree with the Malthusians about Ethanol
Rising food prices are the result of rising oil prices, not a growing market for ethanol.”
The Malthusians are perfectly wrong in assuming it is necessarily true that supplies diminish faster compared to demand as time goes on. There is a great deal of evidence the trend is always against them over a timeframe of several hundred years. Zubrin is perfectly wrong in thinking supplies are not from instant to instant fixed, and that the diversion of a supply to one end use does not raise prices for all other end uses. At the margins, the otherwise purchasers of a commodity as prices rise choose not to, or–not strictly choosing not to–simply have no funds for the purchase.
Mr. Zubrin spectacularly fails a question of economics so elementary that it calls his judgement into question on any of a half does other matters. I regret that because I rather like his ideas about Mars (assuming he’s the same Zubrin)…I hope they are not misfounded trash like his post above.
There is no shortage of corn in this country. We produce the corn that we need and then some. If corn prices are higher, it is because the cost to produce it is higher. That cost would be the cost of diesel fuel by the way – the stuff coming from the middle east, Venezuela and other fun places that hate us.
Those arguing that we are taking food out of the mouths of babes or livestock feed should keep in mind that we still pay farmers NOT to plant.
Moreover, the belief that providing subsidies for ethanol production is somehow evil because it interferes with free market forces is utter gibberish and without foundation. We subsidize MANY technologies in order to make their products more palatable to industry and to help them compete with well established alternatives. In fact, through ridiculous and dated policies, we continue to subsidize big oil even during these times of outrageous profits and CEO compensation while average American struggles to put food on the table.
Virtually every single industry in this country has been subsidized in one form or another in order to promote their establishment. This includes the Railroads, Coal, Oil, etc.
Oil has more than $12 Trillion in infrastructure in this country. There is absolutely NO HOPE that any other fuel could compete against such odds even if it were 10 times less in cost to produce.
We can produce methanol for as little as 52 cents per gallon (from natural gas stock). So where is the methanol? Why does it require an act of congress to declare it a fuel? Still think these fuels can survive without government support? Well, you will soon change your tune when you are paying $10.00 per gallon for gasoline and 70% of that money is use to finance terrorism or to diamond stud some Saudi prince’s Lamborghini or build the worlds tallest buildings in Dubai.
The ethanol program in this country has not been adequately supported by our government, AND IT MUST BE. The number of E-85 stations is still woefully low and laws for its efficient combustion in so called flexfuel vehicles: NONEXISTENT!
Both ethanol and methanol are superior fuels to gasoline. They have far lower flame front velocity making them more efficient fuels to burn. This means that despite the fact that they have a lower energy content, a greater percentage of that energy can be converted to useful work.
Misinformation regarding corrosion problems, incompatible seals, different fuel injector and fuel pump requirements continue to be promoted by one uninformed so-called “expert” after another. There is no difference in the fuel injectors used in a flex-fuel vehicle and the identical model in the non flex fuel version. In most cases it is blatant because the part numbers are the SAME! This is also true for the fuel pumps.
Those claiming that combustion of methanol damages spark plugs should keep in mind that the byproduct of ANY combustion reaction produces WATER and CO2. It doesn’t matter if you burn methanol, ethanol, gasoline or doggy doo. The corrosive product gas is always superheated steam and your spark plug survives this just fine.
Those of us that have modified vehicles to run on both methanol and ethanol (E-85) (for years) know that with just a small effort cars can get the same or nearly the same mileage on E-85 as they do on gasoline. Moreover with minor modification to an internal combustion engine (done at no additional cost during manufacturing) an alcohol optimized engine would leave a gasoline engine in the dust from an efficiency stand point.
I don’t agree with Dr. Zubrin about the Malthusian stuff. I think intelligent people can disagree as to whether this planet can continue to have an ever growing population. That said, he hits it out the park with his reasoning regarding ethanol and methanol as a vital component of this country’s energy future.
Liquid fuels have proven themselves. Battery technology continues to flounder and remains at least a decade off in the future before it MIGHT offer a low cost solution to meet our driving requirements. Those that have witnessed lithium polymer batteries self ignite and set everything around them on fire know what I am talking about.
Even those that think than an electric solution is best should consider that fuel cell technology that utilizes methanol exists today and can provide efficiencies exceeding 50%. This while gasoline engine brake efficiency hovers at around 18%-20%! Methanol is an AWESOME fuel as it ethanol.
Finally, those that believe that Zubrin hasn’t considered costs in his analysis should take a few hours to read his book Energy Victory. He makes a powerful argument for his assertions and backs them with fact while dispelling a great many myths.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
“Oil has more than $12 Trillion in infrastructure in this country. There is absolutely NO HOPE that any other fuel could compete against such odds even if it were 10 times less in cost to produce.”
The free market is very efficient in optimizing. If the economics and logic are right, it will eventually happen. Maybe not in the time frame you would like if you are in that business but trying to force a commercial result with the coercive power of government is never a good idea – even with trumped up “common good” and “externalities” arguments. Please stop.
That’s the best you can do? “It will eventually happen – but maybe not in the time frame I would like it to happen”??
The problems we are having need solutions NOW. They don’t need solutions after our economy reaches ruins. The cost of crude can be directly correlated to the health of the economy. The more expensive crude is, the worse it is for America.
Waiting for “Joe Bob” to figure out a way to bring ethanol and methanol to America and for cars that aren’t mandated to run it, while also facing gigantic oil corporations with trillions of dollars of infrastructure and a war chest of tens of Billions is like asking a two year old to put out the towering inferno using a beach sand pail.
It is time we take our heads out of the sand.
Zubrin is right. He is 100% right. We need an open fuel standard that mandates that cars can run on alternative fuels – including methanol and ethanol. We need a multifaceted solution to this problem. There is NO downside here.
Your response may be very good from an ideological stand point but in reality it will take us all to the poor house and bankrupt this great nation. You offer NO solutions beyond your ideological “faith”.
We aren’t playing in fair market here. OPEC is a monopoly and it ISN’T based in America.
I find it incredible that a lousy 0.51 cent per gallon incentive has so many people up in arms over purely ideological argument when it is benefiting Americans that are HELPING to lower the cost of gasoline for all of us!
THIS, when gasoline is poised to top $5.00 a gallon this summer and a lot of that money will line pockets of Saudi princes and finance more terrorism!
Want to pay $6.00 a gallon this summer? All you have to do is eliminate ethanol which is decreasing demand on gasoline significantly RIGHT NOW.
OPEC isn’t messing around here and they aren’t torturing us with a 50 cent hike per gallon of ethanol sold. They are hitting us with a $2.50 per gallon hit for every single gallon sold.
It costs about $4.00 per barrel for the Saudi’s to extract their oil. How much is it selling for? Can you monopoly??? Where is your free market now?
Try again, please…
Sam
Chemical Engineer
You just keep repeating yourself. See my refutation to your previous cut-and-paste comments.
Rising oil prices are also a consequence of a rising world population, especially one which is no longer content to live on the level of medieval serfs. The countries with the highest standards of living and quality of life are those with very low fertility rates (under 1.5.)
About the Methanol; It’ll never happen folks. Got enuff problems with people drinking gasoline, can you imagine if methanol was sold anywhere to anyone with a valid driver’s license for 4-5$ a gallon? Even at $10 a gallon it’d proly still be cheaper than the cheapest rotgut vodka.
Now some may consider this a feature, not a bug, but no Western government would accept it.
And because it can be absorbed thru the mucus membranes of the mouth or even inhaled as a vapor, that standard ‘makes-ya-puke’ chemical addition wouldn’t work as well as it does in other applications.
We already have methanol in use and it is available everywhere. Windshield washer fluid is 50% methanol. No one is drinking it.
Methanol offers an inexpensive solution to moving our cars.
What do you have against an inexpensive fuel that doesn’t feed the terrorist machine in the middle east and can be made right here at home.
Alcohol offers an immediate solution to our problems.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
You do realize that drinking methanol will kill you, right? It can also blind you in a hurry.
Also, to avoid more nonsensical misconceptions taking place, methanol is not that easily absorbed through your skin and inhalation in small amounts is not going to make you fall over dead. Methanol getting into your liver is the real issue. You pretty much have to drink it to die. Even then, if you drink a bunch of ethanol you can protect your liver (which will be preferentially metabolized in the liver) while the methanol safely passes through your system.
As I said, our windshield washer fluid is about 50% methanol. It is broken down quickly in the environment. It is what we call wood alcohol. It is far safer than gasoline.
…also I don’t believe for one second that anyone is going to drink it unless suicide is their goal, but it will be an unpleasant death preceded by blindness.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
There’s plenty of cheap ethanol being produced in South America from sugar cane. Making ethanol from sugar cane is cheaper than making it from corn. Yet we slap a huge import tarriff on ethanol from S. America.
No. We don’t need to base our next fuel on Sugar Cane. We don’t grow sugar cane in the US.
Do you have ANY idea how much tariffs Brazil imposes on American goods?
People that want to remove tariffs never consider how lop sided our trade policies are.
As an engineer that has seen our manufacturing jobs go overseas and our once prosperous companies lay off their work forces and put more and more Americans on the welfare dole, I am thrilled we have tariffs on incoming fuel – in fact, let’s double it, that way it will be only half as much as the tariffs they put on our goods when they come into their country.
What are you after putting farmers out of business too?
Do you know that Japan has more than a 500% tariff on rice they import?!
We need to put Americans at the front of the line for once.
We need a level playing field. I can’t compete with a nation that houses its workers in tents, working them 14 hours a day and seven days a week if I don’t do the same thing to Americans.
We need to create an infrastructure right here in the US using American talent and workers.
We can do this right here in America converting American Natural Gas to methanol and ethanol cheaply. We don’t need to base our energy policy on sugar cane that we can’t grow in this country.
We need realistic regulations that make it possible to develop our own technologies and stop promoting our supersonic march to third world status.
Moot arguments made roundly. Natural gas is here and now, fully American. Unlike ethanol and methano it requires absolutely no mixture with legacy fuels to make it efficient, nor subsidies to make market viable. States like California are modifiing infrastructures to deliver the pipe dream of hydrogen to the pump. Ocam’s Razor, people. Stop looking for the most complex solution when nature has provided the best answer in ample and easily accessible quantity.
You can’t carry methane in a car and go any great distance. Moreover, you aren’t going to have Natural Gas filling stations capable of catering to a lot of people. It takes too long to fill a high pressure natural gas tank and the equipment can be very costly and isn’t exactly self-serve.
Many cars that run on natural gas also run on gasoline because of the significantly shorter range of the vehicle on NG not to mention the substantially higher cost of fueling stations required or their rarity.
Moreover, the pumping energy required to fill a high pressure tank to 3000 psi is considerable. Converting methane to methanol uses about 30% of the energy of the natural gas but allows it to become a liquid so you can carry a lot of it.
Finally, we produce a LOT of methanol from Natural Gas right now (about 3.5 Billion Gallons a year). This is a proven and efficient technology that can quickly be ramped up to figures exceeding 30 Billion gallons a year in within just a couple of years.
Methanol can be sold at any gas station out there TODAY. We don’t need a massive infrastructure to support it. Methanol/Ethanol blends can be made from reformed biomass and will NOT add to the CO2 problem for those that are carbon conscious and from natural gas for those that are not.
Everyone can be happy.
Zubrin is right. This is a GREAT way to go. It is current technology that is in the field now. Inexpensive kits could modify everybody’s vehicles TODAY and we would be in a position to avoid having to pander to the middle east.
Conservative of liberal, this is a great solution we can all get behind.
The E-85 program proved that we could implement alternative fuels at our gas stations (although I would like to see a lot more stations carrying E-85). We just need to take this a bit further. If we expand the program to include methanol, this can ONLY help reduce prices at the pump further.
Sam
Chemical Engineer
I want to respond to your second point that methanol/ethanol require mixing with legacy fuel (gasoline) in order to be efficient.
The word GASOLINE should NEVER be used with the word EFFICIENT in the same sentence!
Gasoline is a HORRIBLE fuel. It is has extremely high reaction kinetics that make it inherently inefficient to burn. The more rapid the reaction, the more irreversible it is and the less efficient it is to extract work from it.
Gasoline engines typically suffer from horrible brake efficiencies often well below 20%. Diesel (because diesel burns slower and the fact that diesel engines have more than twice the compression ratios) have brake efficiencies of about 40%. That’s why you have diesel cars that get 55 and 60 MPG.
An alcohol optimized engine can have brake efficiencies of more than 45%!
Engines optimized for alcohol could achieve twice the mileage of gasoline counterparts as long as we get gasoline out of the mix. A car that gets 60 MPG on a gallon of ethanol is NOT out of the question.
Sam
Chemical Engineer.
If ethanol were the miracle fuel you claim that it is, it would be in wide use already. Do you think industry is going through all of these gyrations to get crude out of the ground and refine just for the hell of it? Is it some sort of conspiracy or are we all really that dumb? Are we just gluttons for punishment? Do we all want to kiss Saudi ass to keep our cars going? Man has been making alcohol for centuries, how could we have missed out on such a wonderful solution?
There are thousands of engineers and entrepreneurs who would love to put out an ethanol car that would get this amazing MPG you claim it is capable of. So the obvious question is this: Why hasn’t that happened? Anyone who could pull that off would have a license to print money! Where are the prototypes, where are the new companies pushing this wonderful solution you keep talking about? Why aren’t you out there lining up investors yourself rather than spending hours responding to posts on an internet comment thread? Just askin’…
The price of Gasoline and the price of Oil are controled by the USA, not by the Middle East, contrary to world opinion. I wish we had some clarity on that issue, because the oil is purchased and then refracted and refined into diesel, oil products, gasoline and lubricants. The passage of those oil barrels is controlled by US operators, pure and simple. What they decide to make the cost of oil is based on what they tell speculators the price should be, and the real cost also has to be covered. What happens is that Oil depots like Cushing, Oklahoma fail to send sufficient oil to the 5 local refining locations in other states and Oklahoma, because their pipelines are inadequate to send more than about 512,000 barrels per day, and the refineries are flush with gasoline and other products and can’t make their margins when oil is lower than $100 a barrel so they hold the gasoline out as long as they can, causing the fluctuations in the gasoline supply, so the costs waiver due to excess supply, not due to shortages. There is no oil shortage yet. Instead, you have powerful managers that control flows and delivery of products while the government sits around with no clue about their game of altering margins. Then farmers and consumers are stuck with the result, artificially raising the cost of all materials based on transport and ingrediants, and so the process negatively affects tax collection, which is per gallon instead of per dollar of product. And yet, the value for the oil people is like getting a 30% raise in margin, so they perpetuate it at our loss! So why subsidize them? Stupidity obviously, since they do not act in our behalf to improve anything but their pocketbooks at our expense! SO, support the cutting of oil subsidies. It won’t make things cost any more than they already are, they will just clean out the excess profits of overpaid oil companies and their CEOs! And that is why Ethanol supports do not really matter to the cost of gasoline or oil. It has to do with employing people, and it does not reduce corn availability, since even the types of corn are based on where the market directs its growth.
I agree that natural gas is the way to go with the internal combustion engine. there’s already a bill with 190 or so sponsors in congress to make this happen. But electrical generation needs to be attended to as well. Here the big solution is thorium.
Thorium, US energy independence and Obama´s Sputnik moment
By Coach Collins, on May 17th, 2011
When stacked up against the energy costs associated with various sources, thorium is stunning. One lb. of Thorium according to Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia is equal to 200 lbs. of uranium, or a breathtaking 3.5 million lbs. of coal.
Fuel costs for thorium are a tiny $0.00004/kWh versus coal and natural gas at less than 10 cents/kWh; conventional nuclear at approximately 10 cents /kWh; wind appx. 14 cents /kWh; solar thermal about 26 cents/kWh and solar photovoltaic a hefty 40 cents/kWh.
The U.S.G.S.’ estimate of 915,000 tons of high quality thorium ore (just considering holdings in Idaho and Montana) establish the U.S. as arguably the #1 thorium holding nation in the world.
Now if Obama is known for anything it is for his majestic non-sequiturs. His 2011 State of the Union proves the point. He stated: ” At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded.” Later on, he claimed “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment”.
While Obama curiously mentioned Oak Ridge in his address he did so highlighting efforts to basically tweak existing nuclear technology and ignored thorium reactors and the (if I can plagiarize his speech a bit) hard work and industry of our people (plus the millions of dollars already spent) to develop them.
Obama also seems to be oblivious to the fact that a Chinese delegation visited Oak Ridge in the autumn of 2010 and expressed interest in thorium fuel to scientists there. America’s economic crisis demands a quantum reduction in energy generation costs through thorium based power and the spectacular job creating dynamics these massive savings entail.
Following up, no doubt, on their visit to Oak Ridge, the Chinese announced within days of Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address that they intend to not only develop a research & development effort to create molten salt thorium reactors, but also to develop and control intellectual property rights to thorium for their own advantage! The Sputnik moment indeed has arrived.
http://www.coachisright.com/thorium-us-energy-independence-and-obama%C2%B4s-sputnik-moment/#