Corn Can’t Save Us
Dwindling foreign oil, rising prices at the gas pump and hype from politically well-connected U.S. agribusiness have combined to create a frenzied rush to convert food grains into ethanol fuel. The move is badly conceived and ill advised. Corporate spin and pork barrel legislation aside, here, by the numbers, are the scientific reasons why corn won’t provide our energy needs:
- First, using corn or any other biomass for ethanol requires huge regions of fertile land, plus massive amounts of water and sunlight to maximize crop production. All green plants in the United States - including all crops, forests and grasslands, combined - collect about 32 quads (32 x 1015 BTU) of sunlight energy per year. The American population today burns more than three times that amount of energy annually as fossil fuels. There isn’t even close to enough biomass in America to supply our biofuel needs.
- Second, biofuel enthusiasts - including agribusiness lobbyists and PR firms - suggest that ethanol produced from corn and cellulosic biomass such as grasses could replace much of the oil used in the United States.
But consider that 20 percent of the U.S. corn crop was converted into 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, and that amount replaced only 1 percent of U.S. oil consumption. If the entire national corn crop were used to make ethanol, it would replace a mere 7 percent of U.S. oil consumption, far from making the United States independent of foreign oil.
- Third, ethanol production is energy intensive: Cornell University’s up-to-date analysis of the 14 energy inputs that go into corn production, plus the nine energy inputs invested in ethanol fermentation and distillation, confirms that more than 40 percent of the energy contained in one gallon of corn ethanol is expended to produce it. The energy expended to make ethanol comes mostly from oil and natural gas.
Some investigators conveniently omit several of these energy inputs required in corn production and processing, such as energy for farm labor, farm machinery, energy production of hybrid corn-seed, irrigation and processing equipment. Omitting energy inputs wrongly suggests that a corn-ethanol production system offers a more positive energy return. In reality, corn is an inefficient choice from an energy-cost and transport standpoint.
Cellulosic ethanol also is touted loudly as a replacement for corn ethanol. Unfortunately, cellulose biomass production requires major energy inputs to release minimal amounts of tightly bound starches and sugars needed to make fuel. About 70 percent more energy - coming, again, from precious oil and gas - is required to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass than the energy contained in the ethanol produced. That makes cellulosic ethanol an even poorer performer than corn ethanol.
Also, the production of corn ethanol is highly subsidized: State and federal governments pay out more than $6 billion per year in subsidies, according to a 2006 report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Geneva, Switzerland. Calculated on a per-gallon basis, these subsidies are more than 60 times those for gasoline.
Moreover, the environmental impacts of corn ethanol production are serious and diverse. These include severe soil erosion of valuable food cropland, plus the heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that pollute rivers. Fermenting corn to make one gallon of ethanol produces 12 gallons of noxious sewage effluent. Making ethanol requires the use of fossil fuels, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to global warming.
- Finally, using food crops such as corn to produce ethanol raises major nutritional and ethical concerns. Nearly 60 percent of the people on Earth are malnourished according to the World Health Organization. Growing crops for fuel squanders land, water and energy vital for human food production.
The use of corn for ethanol has increased the price of U.S. beef, chicken, pork, eggs, breads, cereals and milk - a boon to agribusiness but a bane to consumers. Jacques Diouf, the director general of the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, reports that using 22 pounds of corn to produce one gallon of ethanol already is causing food shortages for the world’s poor.
One last set of statistics: The global population stands at 6.6 billion: A quarter-million mouths to feed are added daily. Energy experts report that the peak of oil production already has been reached. As cheap oil supplies decline, fuel prices will rise, causing food prices to climb, too, because maximum agricultural production requires the use of fossil fuels.
As global population soars to 8 billion or more toward mid-century and as we burn more grain as fuel, shortages and production costs could cause grain prices to skyrocket, taking food from the mouths of the world’s poorest people.
The science is clear: The use of corn and other biofuels to solve our energy problem is an ethically, economically and environmentally unworkable sham.
David Pimentel is a professor of entomology at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.
copyright Blue Ridge Press
The recent energy bill ignores renewable energy sources and subsidizes new nuclear power plants and ethanol production is supposed to reduce imported oil and clean up the air. It will do neither, while costing US taxpayers a bundle.
Combine that with the need to produce as much food during the next 50 years as mankind has produced in the past 10,000 years just to feed the world’s growing population at current standards and you have a REAL global crisis in the making.
Mr. Pimentel, your math has been proven wrong. Simply cite David Blume’s book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas!” on pages 519 - 524. In 1982 you were also exposed by Jack Anderson of being paid by Mobile Oil, were you not?
And did Mobil Oil not take out an ad to defend you, while admitting they paid you?
And your figures cited for farm equipment have been proven to be wildly overstated. In your 2005 study, you finally stated you were referring to a 6 or 7 ton tractor, an 8 to 10 ton harvester, and a smaller unspecified amount of other equipment.
If we generously assume a total of 20 tons of equipment with a 10 year life, it mathematically concludes that the average farm is only 81 acres, about 1/8 of a square mile. Farm equipment of this size would allow a farmer to be done with their work by lunchtime!
I am merely a reader of the book, but I encourage everyone to go to www.alcoholcanbeagas.com and get the truth. This information Mr. Pimentel is peddling has been proven false.
Pojer, do you mean that you can disprove the (reasonable, and correct in my estimation) assertion that there isn’t enough land to grow enough biomass to convert to ethanol to meet even current US transport fuel needs? If so, please show us how it is to be done, especially without impacting food production, which all of us actually need in physical reality.
This article may be by a shill of the oil industry, but I can speak from my own research that converting crops to transport fuels is inefficient and insufficient to continue with business as usual. Pipe dreams aside (like growing fuel through algae in the oceans or other geoengineering tomfoolery), there’s no reason I can see that continuing with BAU is even desirable, let alone possible with ethanol.
Why don’t we talk about getting off of fossil fuels simply by changing the way that we live? Stop shipping plastic crap around the globe, stop shipping food 1500 miles to eat, stop driving 50 miles to work… It makes much more sense to change to a less wasteful and destructive way of life than to find new ways to be wasteful and destructive, no matter how many nifty gizmos or ideas we might imagine.
By the harvest of 2009 there will be enough ethanol distilleries to turn every bushel of corn we now export into fuel.* The United States accounts for over 70% of the world’s corn exports. World grain stocks are already at all time lows. With the value of the dollar sinking faster that the Titanic exports of U.S. grain are soaring, up 26% over a year ago.
With America’s corn exports off the market starvation in the world’s poorest areas will become widespread.
Beyond this the byproduct of ethanol is distiller’s grain, the spent wet mash left over from fermentation, a poor quality livestock feed. Because it’s wet it’s heavy and can’t be economically transported more than 100 miles, because it’s wet it rots in a couple of weeks, drying it uses additional energy further increasing the energy used to make ethanol. Since it is such a poor nutrient that cattle (ruminants, critters with four stomachs) can consume a diet of no more than 20% distiller’s grain, other livestock can consume even less distiller’s grain. With the concentration of ethanol refineries in the Corn Belt the supply of distiller’s grain is going to far exceed the demand so the pressure to build massive new factory farm livestock feeding operations will be immense.
The byproduct of soy-diesel is soybean meal, a high quality livestock feed. The world’s largest soy-diesel plant just started operations in northern Indiana and is producing massive quantities of meal.
As food prices skyrocket it’s likely that the prices of grains and veggies will go up faster than meat and dairy causing America’s already poor dietary habits to get even worse.
*Assuming those now under construction are completed.
Alcohol can be made from plenty of dicerse feedstocks, including sugarbeets, artichokes, mesquite, cat tails,and even waste donuts.
Who says corn is the only answer. Ever had Kelp whiskey?
There are plenty of ways to make food for America and elsewhere using permaculture farming methods, not monoculture and factory farms. Wake up America, get with the program!
Community Supported Agriculture cuts out the middleman, and you can buy farmer direct. You can also trade out labor for food shares.
It’s obvious that corn-based ethanol is not the way to go. But hemp, switchgrass and other perennial “weeds” grown on marginal land make perfect sense. So does algae, of which there are at least 200 varieties, at least a few of which are highly likely to prove useful converters of solar energy into bio-fuels. It makes no sense to condemn “bio-fuels” just because major corporations like Archer-Daniels-Midland are using their political and economic clout to taint them with their own short-term agendas.
Madhoosier, your comments on the distiller’s grains are false. Please read Blume’s book and get the studies(u of Minnesota, Iowa State, etc) he links to. Cattle digest distillers grains better because the starch is removed; they can’t digest starch, of course. And there’s more protein in the DDGs. Animals absorb more protein from DDG than they do from soybean meal- how is the protein digested, Blume asks, a key point people like Pimentel leave out. (of course the ddg is mixed with hay, percentage depends on the animal, 30 % and higher for beef cattle) Also, yeast recovered from the fuel making process can give many, many livestock with all the protein and fat they need. Read the book.
Simple Sauce- world crop production produces twice the calories to feed everyone and the problem in the world isn’t food, it’s lack of protein. As the book states, mushrooms could provide the world’s balanced protein needs. Remember only 7 percent of US Ag land is in corn per USDA. 72 million acres or so a year on average. There’s still almost 1 billion acres of what the uSDA calls “farmland” which could support perennial crops that don’t require the soil to be plowed over year after year. Arid crops for ethanol include mesquite’s seed pods, pimelon, buffalo gourd,prickly pear. We won’t even talk about cattails’ potential.
Certainly all of us agree we have to make do with less and stop burning up the planet needlessly with consumption, etc, etc.
As Pojer notes, go to
alcoholcanbeagas.com
mad hoosier (from a former Hoosier),
Taking price-supported, under market priced corn off the international market will improve nutrition in other parts of the world. When we dump shiploads of single-strain GMO corn on foreign corn markets, we undersell local growers. This forces them off the land and shrinks the corn gene pool by driving diverse cultivars out of production.
Also corn mash may be a crappy feed but it’s probably a good carb source for composting.
Other than that, you probably right on track re: soy diesel. We should be paying close attention to that type of bio-fuel, whether Pimentel is 100% right about corn ethanol or not.
So what is David saying? Do we need a bigger world to grow fuel? I know that George and Dick are doing their level best to inflate this one, to blow it up that is.
All the points made in the article are salient: additionally, it might be added that our two market-based “green” solutions fail the thermodynamic test.
Ethanol is a partially oxygenated hydrocarbon. It cannot carry the energy per volume that a hydrocarbon can. Because it is partially combusted to begin with, it will put MORE CO2 in the atmosphere per kilocalorie than uncombusted hydrocarbons.
The second market solution is hybrid automobiles. The input of electricity
will make a difference at the gas pump, but we seem to have forgotten where
the input-energy comes from. It comes from(mostly) coal or petroleum-fired power plants which are notoriously(though necessarily) energy inefficient.
These are not energy solutions at all. They are corporate driven feel-good
options. You cannot cheat on thermodynamics no matter how seductive the corporate propaganda is.
google biofuels
the articles assumptions are confirmed from multiple sources in the first 2 pages
only 300 million acres of land in usa is cultivated, and often that is limited to 1 crop a year.This is all that will be available. climate, water availability, access, terrrain, poor soil have limit the commercial viability of the rest.This has to be a commercial enterprise. Are all of us going to make our own fuel?If 1 acre produces 350 gallons, well our entire cropland will support our current existing vehicles fleet.
corn/ any industrial crop has to be planted, watered,fueled with fertilizer, cared for(pests, frost,viruses, stolen) cropped, transported,converted to biofuel, the fuel transported. Each step requires fossil energy. petroleum is mined, transported, purified, transported.fewer steps and far lesser energy use. It is essentially solar energy stored by plants over millions of years.
the world may be growing enough food if only humans ate it, but a large amount goes to animal feed. Animals are prevented from walking, (and so burning energy), to get more animal mass.But in their life process of eating, breathing, standing, digesting, excreting, they burn energy, so at best, 5 pounds of feed is converted to 1 of meat. Perhaps 10-20% of food grown is wasted through transport and pest consumption. So yes, the food supply for the world, if not the US, is precarious.
the book site states that 8 units of energy are released with 1 unit of energy input for biofuels - finally the earth can be saved. The 2 nd law of thermodynamics has been reversed!
What about fuel efficiency ? All the talk is about new sources of fuel but there is less talk about efficiency. Cars should be getting over 50 mpg. Over the last 30 years there has been so much new technology: the internet, space shuttle, cell phones, etc. What have we done about fuel efficiency in cars. Nothing ! American cars average in the low to mid 20 mpg range with no real change in the future. Money should be spent on fuel efficieny, better mass transit, development of communities with less emphasis on driving, and ultimately something beyond the internal combustion engine.
Besides, biofuels depend on biomass which depends on the weather and with global climate change, there is a lot of risk.
Thank you solartopia.org !
greenskier: My point was exactly yours(though perhaps I implied without saying it very well). Thermodynamics demand nothing less than USING less
fuel.
The six top biofuel producing crops for the US climate have net average biofuel yield of about 22M BTU/acre/year which is TEN TIMES the yield of industrial corn. This comparison is VERY conservative as it does not account for the massive petro-inputs of industrial corn. There is also a long list of very important ecological and other advantages of these crops over corn.
Total cropland in the 48 contiguous US states is 350 million, of which perhaps 2/3 is devoted to livestock feed. Another 750 million acres are devoted to livestock grazing. Given the great strain on resources of meat consumption, and the great strain on societies of oil consumption, we might reasonably propose that the 230 million acres of cropland devoted to livestock feed be shifted to small independent biofuels farms, providing 5e+15 BTU/year.
This means devoting 12% of 48 states land area to supply 1/2 of 1% of total energy consumption. This does not seem very impressive at all, until we consider that it makes sense for biofuels to supply only that percent of applications which biofuels best serve, e.g. specialized and very high efficiency motive applications. Also, current energy consumption is massively wasteful and destructive and should be reduced at least by a factor of ten. Considering these things, biofuels begin to make a whole lot of sense.
A sensible public policy would specify this 12% of lower 48 states land to be dedicated to small independent permaculture food/fuels farms supplying all of the fuel for the designated motive applications. This policy would also encourage suburban residents to utilize their yards for food which greatly reduces the number of acres dedicated to crops. The net benefits of reducing the meat/energy consumption, shifting to small independent permaculture farms, high efficiency energy conversion and the suburban food production are huge.
Ethanol subsidies are simply a way to combat other clever methods to get around the WTO rules forbidding crop subsidies. The EU bans GM crops to protect their farmers, so the US subsidizes ethanol. If countries don’t want our grain, then we will demonstrate what happens when cheap US grain is not available. Just like OPEC limits supplies of crude oil to drive up profits but will increase supplies just in time to keep alternatives from taking hold. This is not rocket science.
just a note
Diesel the inventor not the engine…
designed and built the diesel engine to run on HEMP OIL..
if your / my forefathers came across the pond today to the USA they would all be sent to jail for the barrels of hemp seeds they all packed to make sure they had fiber and food and oil, in case of ship wreck on some inhospitable place, and for general well being when they got to the settlements
DO NOT SWALLOW THE CORPORATE PROPAGANDA ON HEMP
research it yourself…
on another topic
the USDA and the DEA still insist pot will kill you
yet not one case of death from pot has ever been recorded
they give a rat an amount of THC ( the active ingriedient of pot) equal to a human consuming 50 lbs of pot then say see it is bad for you..lol
put anything into a rat at those quantities and it will die or be very ill
greenskier, fuel efficiency can be raised to 200 mpg for a two-seater commuter vehicle with technology that has been available for eighty years (series diesel electric hybrid), plus a couple of semiconductor and turbo-diesel advancements that are now very cheap. Very little to no resources need be devoted to the development of high efficiency vehicles.
But there is a monster on the loose and it’s called “free market capitalism” and if we could legislate a six-fold increase in fuel efficiency the capitalists would raise the price to what the market would bear, and put the shaft to the public through their effective control over demand, which is a terrible violation of the basic rules of markets. While environmentalists cringe over the pollution, economists who know right from wrong cringe at this hijacking of markets, and it’s getting worst, with antitrust enforcement almost shot - the “free markets” are really very well controlled.
We can bypass the capitalists and demand from the markets the 200 mpg commuter vehicle along with 700 mpg high speed rail, bike lanes, and city layouts that put jobs near homes, and a new culture that puts jobs IN HOMES, i.e. cottage industries.
rtdrury makes a point with statistical back-up that I would have made intuitively. There is arabale cropland for growing biofuel crops. Something else should be kept in mind about inflation at the grocery store. Prices are up on everything because speculators have run up the price of crude (and everyone in the chain is paying more for petroleum fuel, starting with farmers,)and the U.S. dollar is sinking to new lows. Everything costs more at this moment because of the oil market. The point is, don’t spas out over biofuels because of grocery inflation, oil’s the primary culprit.
Pimental lumps all bio-fuels into one conclusion and all efforts in that regard as pointless. Every scientific body that I am aware of has concluded that biodiesel and not ehanol is the better use of fuel cropland. Many different species of plants produce oilseed (including hemp) and some of these crops require very little tilling (=tractor fuel usage) and most require varying degrees less fertilizer (some much less than)corn. While pressed seedcake seems benign, I view it as a possible accomplice in the continuation of industrial-style meat production. Seed cake is not pasture grass, and can be used as fuel or composted.
Biodiesel production proceeds at low temperature, requiring very little heat to process, is not a hazardous material (according to Fed EPA,) and can be used as a transport fuel and as a heating fuel, as well as elect. generator fuel.
There is not one single silver bullett that is going to solve our energy and environmental and our economic problems. By hoisting ethanol up to be the whipping boy for all alternative energy strategies, Pimental makes a leap that is unjustified and purposely helpless.
Commondreams should be careful whom they publish. Pimental is just an oil company hack scientist no better than the paid pro-smoking scientific “experts” of the 1990s.
Here are the goods on him: http://www.newrules.org/agri/netenergyresponse.pdf.
When Pimentel cites a Cornell University analysis, he is citing his own work, but he’s too dishonest to tell you that.
Ethanol isn’t the perfect solution, but it’s a lot better than gasoline. Nobody ever asks the same kinds of questions about fossil fuels that they insist on with ethanol. How much “precious oil and gas” does it take to produce a gallon of gasoline or diesel? (In addition to the gallon itself.)
No one is claiming ethanol can replace gasoline at the present consumption levels. It needs to be used in conjunction with major vehicle efficiency improvements. Every intelligent ethanol advocate advocates these as well.
Ethanol is providing new markets for poor farmers in the third world. The ethical arguments too are not necessarily so clear cut.
Good2go,
I just looked at the University of Minnesota’s site on distiller’s grain, while I can’t vouch for the quality of the rest of their site, their map of ethanol and liquor distilleries was incorrect in the extreme in so far as the Indiana portion was concerned, showing one plant in production and two proposed plants with no whisky distilleries.
I’m sure that will come to quite a shock to the employees of the Seagram’s distillery in Lawrenceburg Indiana. (to be fair this plant, which started production in 1847, is going to shut down later this year…like all the other factories in Indiana)
Beyond that there are ethanol plants in production, under construction or in the late planning stages in the Indiana towns of Rennssalear, Clymers, Romney, Cloverdale, Washington,, Rockport, Rushville, Connersville, Mount Summit, Winchester, Tipton, Portland, Hartford City, Marion, Montpelier, Bluffton, La Fontaine New Castle, New Castle, Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon (not a typo, there are two being built in these towns ) and North Manchester.
I compiled this list by News Googleing “Indiana ethanol plant” over the last year or so.
Three out of 22, not so good.
Yes, beef cattle can consume a diet of 30% distiller’s grain, but cattle in general average a diet of around 20% distiller’s grain and in some stages as little as 7%.
Virtually all of the distilleries seek to sell their distiller’s grain as wet distiller’s grain because the energy consumed by drying it eats into profits, a 12,000 lb. load of wet distiller’s grain requires a dairy herd of 300 cows to consume a load before it rots and because over half of the weight of the load is water it can only be transported economically around 100 miles.
Already every stream and river in Indiana is so polluted that the IDNR lists them as unsafe for swimming or wading. Much of this pollution is already from agricultural run-off. When Indiana is buried under a mountain of distiller’s grain the political pressure to add more giant factory livestock operations will be overwhelming.
jareiley,
Yes, in years past the dumping of subsidized American grain did hammer small farmers across the globe. Basically four crops feed the human population; corn, wheat, soybeans and rice. If the U.S. decides to burn it’s corn crop that will take 70% of the world’s corn crop off the market. There is not nearly enough tillable land not already in production to make up for that shortage.
In my more cynical moments I suspect that the timing of the ethanol craze is another neocon plot to depopulate the third world to make stealing their resources easier.
“Unfortunately, cellulose biomass production requires major energy inputs to release minimal amounts of tightly bound starches and sugars needed to make fuel.”
Eh? Burn it in a Steam Engine!
“So what is David saying? Do we need a bigger world to grow fuel?”
Our lifestyles are so energy-intensive as to be unsustainable by any means (unless someone cracks the secret of fusion power). In the future people will not, simply will not be able to commute 2 hours to work every day, each one using a vehicle big enough for five people.
Jareily: I am thinking the same thing.
johnycanuck - thank you for mentioning the original fuel for the diesel engine. the ting about hemp is that from processing one plant you have a number of options, biofuel, textile, paper. the comment about the “tests” done on lab rats is a perfect example of flawed research. until reasearch is truly transparent you can skew the results to suit your purpose.
johnycanuck - thank you for mentioning the original fuel for the diesel engine. the ting about hemp is that from processing one plant you have a number of options, biofuel, textile, paper. the comment about the “tests” done on lab rats is a perfect example of flawed research. until reasearch is truly transparent you can skew the results to suit your purpose.
corn ethanol = scam
So much confusion and ignorance. OK all you anti-ethanol bigots. Are you aware of something known as octane, enough of which today’s internal combustion engines will not operate. Presently, oil companies use carcinogenic octane sources such as benzene for which there is “no known safe level” (Google those words). Ethanol has an octane rating of 113, the highest of any fuel and it doessn’t cause cancer. No doubt you ignorant anti-ethanol types would prefer we use benzene.
Everyone seems to be forgetting global warming. Ethanol produces more global warming gases than gasoline when you include the growing and production CO2.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/03/30/ethanol-emissions.html
Ethanol contains 75,000 BTU’s per gallon, gasoline 114,000, diesel 130,000, etc. http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Energy_Equivalents.html
so using ethanol results in much less mileage or work done. AND burning all these fuels is just another nail in the coffin. Solar, wind, water and USING LESS is the way to go.
Seems Ed Shultz has shut his dim-bulb corporate mouth on this topic of late.
Wonder how any space-traveling planetary civilizations have gotten past this point ……… or if there even can be any?
The problem is that many alternatives for gas, including ethanol from corn, are are actually NET ENERGY LOSERS. Corn is currently grown using petroleum–planted, watered, harvested, distilled. It loses energy by a factor of 6 according to the study below.
For example, ethanol is explained here decently: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm
The transportation solution is electric vehicles and mass transit and of course bicycles, walking. To the extent electricity can be generated by renewable sources, that seems like the way forward.
But reducing our energy use–that’s the big challenge and we haven’t even begun to deal with it, most people know very little about these issues. I go to http://www.theoildrum.com/ for energy news and there’s a good article there now on EROEI for those who are new to entropy and energy problems.
I would like to see Hemp utilized as a means to provide for not only energy needs, but textiles, paper, building material, and other such necessities of modern life.
I prefer true multi-fuel engines. Gasoline, hydrogen, natural gas, methanol, ethanol etc.
Imagine if we had a free market in energy where we the user could decide what fuel we’ll use. This would totally destroy monopoly on oil we’re currently enslaved to.
“Alcohol Can Be A Gas” is not a fuel book as much as it is a playbook for successful relocalization, job creation, farming, smart government policy and ways to combat global warming.
And again, David Blume has been quoted as ready to debate Pimentel in a public forum any day.
Dear bfeam…nobody is forgetting global warming, you just don’t know anything about how an engine works. Dedicated E-85 engines can run at a much higher compression ratio and as a result their fuel economy can exceed that of gasoline engines.
What confused you is that you belived that the 39,000 btu difference between ethanol and gasoline would mean more ethanol would be required to go the same distance, which is only true in a flex-fuel engine. They are set-up to accomodate both fuels and thus it’s a function of engine design and not fuel capability. Incidently, those 39,000 more btus that gasoline has are the toxic hydro-carbons that make up our urban air pollution.
Lately, testing by US DOE and the American Coalition for Ethanol has even shown that E-20, E-30 and E-40 blends can also exceed gasoline’s mileage. You’ll be interested to know that GMs new flex-fuel plug-in hybrid Volt gets 150 miles per petroleum gallon (mppg) on regular gasoline and 525 mppg on E-85. See GM web site.
The CBC show you referred to was oblivious to the fact that ethanol CO2 emissions are recycled CO2, removed from the air and stored in plant form until harvested and turned into ethanol and emitted out the tailpipe of a green car, truck of bus. Don’t you just love the bio-symmetry. They’re known in the trade as life cycle emisssions, something you never hear of with gasoline.
Oh, and by the way, the US has 35 million acres of farmland that the bankrupt gov’t still manages to pay farmers not to cultivate. And last but not least, it is reported that there is a new breed of industrial sweet potato, containing so much sugar and starch that it will deliver 5,000 litres of ethanol/acre.
Sorry if I cross posted, but I think this is worth saying:-
But here is a way of improving our carbon footprint that is too
easy to overlook:-
We can begin to replace the internal combustion engine that we use for
cars with a compressed air one:-
http://web.aanet.net.au/webspace/BloodForOil/Postings/aircar.html
There are two often cited alternatives, hydrogen cars and battery cars:-
* Battery Cars: What is wrong with battery powered cars is that the
required sorts of batteries are very polluting to make. And very
polluting to dispose of. You may have reduced carbon production, but
you have laid waste to land, air and sea. Also, you only get a few
hundred charges out of them before you have to replace them. Also,
they are very dirty to dispose of.
* Hydrogen cars: What is wrong with hydrogen cars is that separating
the oxygen from the hydrogen in the first place is very inefficient.
You get about 1 Joule of energy out for every 10 you put in. And
then you have the inefficiency of the internal combustion hydrogen
engine.
Compressed air, on the other hand:-
* Is CHEAP. India may well have a million such cars in 2 years.
* Is CLEAN. (if given the energy to compress the air in the first place).
* Is SAFE. The carbon fibre tanks do not explode if ruptured.
* The engines are SMALL and LIGHT. No need for a gearbox or diff.
* Uses simple “low tech” technology.
* Have a range of 100 miles.
* The tanks are long lasting and do not need to be replaced.
Of course, the real elephant in the room is how to get the electricity
in the first place. Compressed air, like the other alternatives above
is only an storage mechanism. There are several alternatives, and a
combination of them should be used. But this solar power one proposed
in “Scientific American” is worthy of note:-
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
It would provide 70% of all our energy needs (including transport
needs), but comes at a once off cost of $450 billion. Solar engergy
collected during the sunny periods is to be stored for night and cloudy
periods in the form of compressed air. For many people the idea of
spending such a huge amount of money is simply unacceptable. But, we
currently spend $1 trillion per year on “defence”, and we havent got any
country to defend against. So really, we CAN afford this easilly. If
dont need the oil, then we dont need the war, dig?
So if we really put our heart to it, this is solvable. So why dont
we…
“What about fuel efficiency ? ”
Only that efficiency is often confused with frugality.
“if we could legislate a six-fold increase in fuel efficiency the capitalists would raise the price to what the market would bear, and put the shaft to the public through their effective control over demand, which is a terrible violation of the basic rules of markets.”
You lost me here, with increased efficiency, assuming frugality well applied, there would be a *decrease* in demand and thus the market would bear lower prices, not higher. And I don’t see why you think “they” control demand as you say.
Compressed air cars are neat and I hope we get them someday, although they may have trouble in cold weather, BUT let us not fall into trap of thinking the world of the future will not require multitudes of mid-size and large vehicles. Transportation reality does not consist of only the urban commuter and/or the family of two.
SIMPLE SAUCE: I applaud your approach. How much fuel would we save if we didn’t have a bloated military with 700 plus bases all over the world, and the ENORMOUS costs of supplying its vehicles (of death) with fuel? Not to mention the costs of getting them to all these places.
And let’s not forget about the electric car… there really was (is) an electric car with new battery technology that made it comparible with any internal combustion vehicle… what happened to it?? they were never sold, only leased, so it was possible to recall and crush all of them when (guess who?) Chevron bought the rights. And I’m sure if any of the above mentioned technologies became viable, the same thing would happen…
Does fuel ethanol policy increase oil use and oil profit?
* Some Folks think so
* Clean Air Performance Professionals
The message just keeps coming back clearer and clearer. Americans are simply going to have to change their lifestyles. No more fuel-guzzling SUV’s. No more 50+ mile commutes. No more winter Chilean grapes. No more wasting of energy. Give petroleum a few decades, max, before the cost of extracting what remains become prohibitive. And biofuels won’t bill the gap, no matter whose patter you subscribe to. Wave up, folks.
braithwa, I went to the Scientific American site and read that it would require $450 billion to build a solar energy plant to store compressed air in underground caverns for later use. The only problem I see with this is a big one. It calls for centralized power when what we need is decentralized power–solar cells on every roof compressing air into one removable air tank while we use another to power our compressed air vehicle.
Facing energy resource depletion is a form of grieving, and one passes through the classic stages of grief.
Most posting here today seem to be stuck in “denial:” there’s gotta be a way out of this energy pit we’ve dug ourselves in. Nuclear-powered electric vehicles save the day. If not, cars powered by the very air we breathe — yea, that’s the ticket!
Another camp is stuck in “bargaining:” if we would only embrace the almighty hemp, our consumptive sins will be forgiven; if we all got rid of our gas guzzlers and bought the latest, super-efficient car, Life Will Continue As We Know It, for just a couple examples.
“Acceptance” is a difficult state to reach that only Catch March seems to understand. (Sorry if I missed someone else’s “acceptance speech.”) Acceptance means coming to grips with the end of the fossil energy age with the realization that there is never going to be another party like the one we’re having now, and that the hangover is going to be a doozy. Acceptance means figuring out how to live, to the greatest extent possible, without petroleum. Acceptance means living in the smallest dwelling possible, surrounded by the least amount of consumer items. Acceptance means growing your own food and producing your own energy.
And even then, for every one who is enlightened enough to accept a future with 90% less energy, there will be many who will happily drive off into the abyss, the boiling frogs who are stuck in their grief for the passing of the Petroleum Age.
De-consume! Starve the beast!
Doug Nixon: Do you even know what octane is?
We have rocketed past good sense to find an oil replacement. We need energy, but conservation could reduce that need dramatically. We need to pursue waste streams for new energy in order to improve the environment while producing energy. Think waste treatment plants in every city and on every farm. Solar, tide, geothermal and wind where they work.
Curing our addiction to fossil fuels buy securing more supplies works as well as moving into a liquor store to cure alcoholism.
Finally, if oil, coal, nuclear, and ethanol are such good ideas, WHY ARE EACH OF THEM SUBSIDIZED MASSIVELY by the tax system, liability protection and directly in every country they are used?
All I can say about this article is no shit sherlock. America needs elecric and sola cars fast, the corn should go to the millions starving all over their country
Actually, the biofuel yield of about 22M BTU/acre/year is not 10 times the yield of industrial corn but about 2.2 times. But on an equal inputs basis the 2.2 times will probably be closer to 10 times more so for biodiesel than ethanol because the oil plants are perennial trees requiring fewer inputs. The ethanol annuals dump carbon to the atmosphere seasonally so are not truly carbon sequestering like the perennial oil trees. The oil trees have additional strong ecological advantages over the ethanol annuals as does the diesel engine over the otto engine. BTUs per acre are roughly the same for biodiesel and ethanol crops though a given region will favor one over the other depending on native species. All the issues are easily put on the table and sorted through logically but the capitalist wants to supress the discussion and dictate the policy. This is why progressives are working to cage the capitalist beast, and turn it into a beast of burden to take orders from the people.
BTU’s not valid measurement for comparing fuels. They are valid for comparing heat.
See Blume book.
Some ethanol annuals dump carbon year round. See Blume book, RT Drury. Think about carbon sequested under the soil naturally through mycorhyzzal fungi
Great posts, BTW
as stienman and catch march mention, we should get used to the post automobile world.
at best,and at its most efficient production, biofuels provide equal energy output to the fossil fuel input that is used to make it(and hence contributes equally to global warming). Biofuels just make the power source more mobile than coal.
additionally, the best internal combustion engines have a 20% efficiency in converting chemical energy to motion. The rest is given off as heat or incomplete combustion. Over the past few decades, the efficiency has increased a few % while the automobile numbers have exploded. So today we have 700 milion vehicles in the world running at 20% efficiency.
In the past 100 years, the only new energy source discovered, and not for lack of trying, has been nuclear energy.(Admitted, solar and wind energy are more efficently harnessed.But it takes a lot of sun or wind gathering to run a 4000 lb car for a short distance.)
Biofuels (vegetable oils) have been energy sources at the local level in the third world for the past 2000 years. And the best example of biofuel economics comes from visiting these subsistence farmers,real world economics, where the govt provides no subsidies in production. In not a solitary case will the farmer use the biofuel for transport - it is used for consumption or provide light.As fuel for transport, it is simply too expensive.
faith that a miracle technology will provide answers to the riddle of personal transportation seem misplaced.Conspiracies may prevent the adopting of a new technology in 1 country, but can hardly do so worldwide. Mass transit, high density housing, and bicycles will be the way.
I found the article interesting and thought provoking and all the discussion to be equally interesting.
I am wondering, however, what this ethanol based fuel will cost at the pump? Will we see a reduction in fuel prices? I would think not, but I could be wrong. And will the Big Oil Companies control the distribution and prices of this commodity as they do oil?
Just wondering.
Corn is for eating (Ethanol for drinking!).
The obvious answer (short-term, mind you) to the so-called ‘Energy Crisis/Peak-Oil’ is Nationalization of refinement/marketing, and the obvious/proven/proper conversion of fleets (cars/light-trucks) to easy/cheap/clean-LPG — whether it be made from NatGas or Crude (’sweet’-or-otherwise) — of which we have AMPLE supply’s.
JDRockefeller (and his ‘foreign-backers’) pulled-off this ‘gasoline/privatized-refinement/controlled-market’ Scam/monopoly back in the 1800’s. They then destroyed Mr. Diesel (and Tesla, who wanted DC/community-competitive power mini-Grids based on bio-diesel), forced us to adopt the LEAST efficient/dirtiest petrol-fuels imaginable/possible [’gasoline and petrol-diesel], and were planning/exploiting towards ‘Today/Global-Warming/Arc’s of Instability’ ever-since (with above-ground nuke-’tests’ after contrived WW-I&II, and HAARP since ‘92 — that melts the N.Pole while increasing the S.Pole, using a massive ‘electric-bill from an unregulated/coal-Utility).
C5H8 +O2 = CO2 + H2O [Exactly what you ‘exhale’, and plants-breathe!]
It’s all a big-Hoax to enrich ‘certain international-Interests’ that ‘coincidentally own most Uranium-mines, and defense/nuke-plant Developers’ — while stifling Fusion-research — and is intended to finance/Lead to a ‘neo World Order’ growing out of Banking-nonsense and ‘Carbon-Taxation’ a la Farce/bureaucracy (when CO2 actually helps ‘cool the planet’).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_G8hkqnJBE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuNLahhZFJ0&feature=related
All a Crock (Jones&David — just like ‘Hemp is the Answer’, or Ethanol from now-GMO ‘foodstuffs’).
Convert your SUV to run on LP (just like Ahnold did his Hummers!) — a tree somewhere/someday will thank you for it! [And, get a Listor-diesel to turn an old low-RPM DC-generator like grampa, and buy an inverter/battery-bank while collecting/filtering restaurant-grease, locally…and then, you’ll thank-Me someday!]
To those enquiring minds, modern day octane is a measurement of a fuel’s anti-knock properties. It used to be in the 1920s an actual number reflective of how much of an eight-chain hydro-carbon called octane was needed to achieve anti-knock standards of that day.
As years passed and engine compressions rose, this eight-carbon molecule was abondoned and more sohisticated chemicals and processes were employed, the most common being tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) as well as creating it internally, that being through the manufacture of the aromatic compounds benzene, toluene and xylene. At one point some 40% of gasoline contained these toxic and carcinogenic compounds. There still is 1% benzene allowed in gasoline, a product judged to have “no known safe level.”
But in answer to your question, octane is a measurement of a cability of a fuel to resist exploding until top dead centre of the piston cycle.
Feeding food to cars is crazy. it’s not about technology- although many arguments can be made there too. It’s about how we behave toward our fellow humans, and is it possible to consider humans- all humans including those in the Global South we so love to ignore- are of greater value than our cars? Because there is not enough land on this planet to make enough gas to satisfy our insatiable appetite for industrial fuel, and also feed the human family. Right now there are nearly a billion people who don’t get enough to eat. Farmers kicked off their land in Colombia and Indonesia to grow palm oil for cars, rainforests being cut down for the same enterprise- To love biofuels is to hate humans. look at this
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/
To arrive at such a conclusion and undertake no contact with the biofuels industry to see if your conclusions hold up is an intellectual disgrace. Go to work and do some in-depth Googling
Living off-the-grid for more than 20 years I learned this: the cheapest, cleanest energy is the energy we don’t use.
Some of it is simply behavioral:
One light on per person per room. No porch lights all night.
No unwatched television left on (actually, for me, no tv at all).
Walk don’t drive.
LED lighting will help, of course.
As will the pending depression.
When people discuss hybrids, they default to internal combustion engines. It seems to me that stirling engines, with their potential of greater efficency could well be used for hybrids.
Stirling engines used to be common on farms for pumping water and could well be advantageous for generating electricity (to charge batteries for electric cars???) from almost any combustible material or from concentrated solar energy.
Exactly right, Siouxrose, not to mention all the fuel to produce the items that are rather criminally discarded into the ‘burn pits’ in Iraq. Shameful.
I keep seeing all these commercials on TV about ‘clean coal’…a sham & a scam. The claim at the end that coal is a third the price of other energy sources is also suspect. Financially perhaps, but what are the long-term effects on the environment AND are they included in the calculation. What is a human life worth? It has been said 30,000 Americans die pre-mature deaths from the environmental impact of generating 50% of our energy from burning coal. Are their potential lifetime earnings factored into the equation…most likely not, just like the nuclear industry denies how deadly their energy generation form is. Let’s get real in these discussions, folks. “The facts, ma’m, just the facts”, as the old Dragnet quote goes. Append that with ALL the facts, not just those cherry-picked for propaganda, obfuscation, deception, greed, or political gain.
Right on Paul Smith. And just to bring it all back to David Pimentel, whose article started this chat, his prescription for clean fuel, given in a debate at the National Press Club, is to make all our gasoline and diesel fuel from coal.
This is a foregone conclusion. Corn STALKS gasified to synthesis gas and put through the FT process can make methane, methanol, ethanol, kerosene, gasoline or diesel. Just the corn stalks from the 90 million acres in production could create 50 billion gallons of gasoline per year. No food versus fuel debate. Food for people and animals and fuel for cars….same land, same fertilizer, same water, same crops, same harvest…simple.
There is a DVD out there titled, “Who Killed The Electric Car?” It infers that oil companies quietly paid off auto companies to stop production and take cars off the market which could only be leased. A real eye opener!
sjc_1. You’re absolutely correct. So why are we getting so much flak from environmentalists? It’s because they are being disingenuous.
They really have a hate on for cars and especially SUVs. They want us all on public transit, bicycles or walking, so clean, green bio-fuels are their worst enemy. As far as trucks go, well they want us to turn the economy totally upside down and just buy locally and all be vegetarians of course. Then along came ethanol and ruined there broader vision, so now they’ll grasp at any misguided science to defeat it.
Think forensically you enviro-types, if ethanol were even closely as bad as you have been mislead into believing by David Pimentel, then the fossil fuel industy would have dragged the evidence before the politicians long ago and successfully arranged to have biofuels taken out and shot at dawn.
Using US corn grain to make ethanol for fuel does not make econonomic sense. It would stop today if not for the tarif on Brazilian ethanol made from sugarcane which would be cheaper to import than domestically produced ethanol, even with the US subsidies. The current subsidy of ethanol is a way for the US to compete with other clever schemes to get around WTO rules against crop subsidies (like the EU GM bans). This is a great way for everyone to follow the “letter of the law”, while practicing protectionism. I do not pretend to know if the future of bio-fuel will turn out to be “good” or not, but the current program is politically motivated, and this is not all that hard to figure out.
Mr. Obvious. So stop subsidizing ethanol. It’s mandated and for quite some time now has been cheaper than gasoline. Why does it need a subsidy? Even if gas returned to it’s old lower price, a 10% ethanol blend would only be a few cents a gallon more and you could ban the lead-replacing, octane boosting and carcinogenic benzene. Or would you prefer to suck that stuff up until you get cancer?
Doug - My point: It is cheaper to buy ethanol from Brazil. Our subsidies are a ploy to get around WTO rules. I do not fault the program because it is a response to other countries similar ploys to get around these rules. As I said, I am not sure if biofuels will turn out to be beneficial. I am just pointing out the real motivation for the current policy.
Mr. Obvious. US ethanol subsdies have been in place since the 1970s, before the WTO ever came into existance. And as an environmental clean air initiative, the country has two choices. Either those causing the air pollution should pay any extra charges at the pump or those who breath the air should pay through their taxes. Which would you prefer?
Let’s get one thing straight, we are essentially at the beginning of the bio-chemical bio-fuel era and the end of the petroleum petro-chemical era. There are feedstock sources like new breeds of sweet potatoes that will deliver 5,000 litres of ethanol per acre, much higher than sugar cane from Brazil. The reason Brazilian ethanol is so cheap compared to corn is that sugar cane has a much higher yield than corn, but more importantly it is harvested and handled with very low cost manual labor — like China.
Doug - So we are putting tarifs on Brazilian ethanol to help out poor Brazilian laborers from expoitation, buy not putting money into their economy? These tarifs are not meant to subsidies American farmers?
Obvious. If the US would make the environmentally correct move of turning entirely to biofuels (combined with efficiency) then all thosse Brazilian laborers and American corn farmers will do well.
You didn’t answer my question about how you would like to make your unleaded fuel, with ethanol or benzene?
Doug - Both can be toxic given enough exposure, but yes ethanol is safer than benzene. I just don’t like the political games that are being played. In my opinion, corn grain seems like a poor choice as an etanol feedstock. I also think that biofuels is not likely the answer to our energy needs unless we use a by-product of a current crop (like corn stalks). My opinion is based on the disruptive nature of agriculture on ecosystems. I think we need to concentrate agriculture on as few acres as possible to leave more land available for other uses, including natural habitats.
Obvious. Are you aware that the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates that by 2022 the US will be required to consume some 36 billion gallons of biofuels or 25% of overall gasoline consumption, 21 billion gallons of which must be cellulose (corn stalks, etc) ethanol?
Doug - As I have said, I am undecided about ethanol. If human activities (CO2) are really responsible for global warming, then ethanol is at best a temporary solution. The corn fiasco though will cause quite a bit of hardship around the world, as does the politically motivate resistance to GM crops. I am sure that scientist/companies are working hard to figure out how to improve crops for ethanol production. This approach seems less likely to solve out energy needs compared to other technologies (e.g. clean burning fossil fuel, hydrogen cells, etc.), but what do I know? Government mandates don’t necissarily justify actions.
Obvious…if you’re looking for good sensible energy policy, check out the Institute for Local Self Reliance.
Doug - It seems like an institute for self reliance is an oxymoron. If your self reliant, then you consult yourself. We came from tribes that were mostly self-reliant. It is our reliance on one another that has led to our safe food supply, miricle drugs, and the longest life expectancy in history. We have real issues of pollution to solve, but I’ll put my bet on the collective scientific community to solve these problems. I understand the attraction to return to the good ole days, but for many they were not so good. Our fleeting youth may have a lot to do with our love of the past.
Obvious. Don’t give up before you’ve even checked them out. www.ilsr.org The emphasis is on “local” a concept that you might not agree with. If so, let’s hear how you would restructure things without letting half the world’s present population die from air pollution that causes cancer, floods, droughts and oh yes fossil fueel caused wars.
Doug - It does not seem that complicated to me. Certain things are better handled locally and somethings are better distributed over further distances. My wife and I raise good tasting tomatoes and sell them at a local farmers market. Tomatoes of this quality are too fragile to ship, so folks flock to buy them. Local wine taste like battery acid and is better imported from further distances. The market determines which things are best obtained from where. What interferes with this is protectionism, artificial subsidies and contrived obsticles. My efforts would be focused on exposing such protectionism and eliminating it. This allows individuals to choose where they obtain what they need and want, and allows production of goods where it makes sense. Real accountability for pollution must also be fundimental. When science and evidence say something is causing harm (not accutations based on phylosophy and religion), then this is where the government has a role and responsibility to enforce laws. Keeping markets free of artificial advantage should be the goal. If local outcompetes global, then so be it.
Obvious…please check out the ISLR web site, especially the ethanol stuff. Meanwhile, once the oil industry ended up owning all the cash in the world, democracy and free market capitalism became an illusion. Only by democratizing and returning local economic control over our energy system will things clear up, which includes our health and employment situation.
Doug - I checked out ISLR.com as you suggested. I should warn you that most people consider me to be a salesman’s nightmare. You want to subsidize loacalism, while I want no subsidies. I guess that I am nieve enough to think that political powers will actually let a free market exist. I guess that I am an idealist and would like to try to cut through the political favortism and try to restore people’s rights to choose. I am probably a dinosaur. The ethanol subsidy seems to be such a clear manipulation to provide crop subsidies that it is baffling to see why WTO challenges have not been raised (similar to the one won by the US and Canada against the EU for banning GM crops without any scientific evidence to do so). Like I already said, my wife and I benefit by the localism movement, but I do not buy into it as a general policy. Just my curent opinion - it may change in the future.
Obvious…the ethanol subsidies were not put inplace to subsidize localism. They wre put there at the insistnce of the petroleum companies who told Jimmy Carter they wouldn’t use it unless it cost less than gasoline, despite it’s octane, oxygen and energy security benefits.
Superior in all performance ways to gasoline and non-carcinogenic, it was still preferable for them to say ethanol had to cost less as well. This, despite the fact that every other gasoline additive (and there are several) cost more. Once they made their market-manipulating decision, farmers called on their go’vt for assistance and they responded.
Several years later, when lead was finally removed and ethanol’s true value was required even more by the market and by now substantially exceeded that of gasoline’s, the oil industry still demanded the public pick up the tab. Lower cost Brazilian ethanol had been available since the early 1970s, but they showed no interest. Their goal from day one has been to expel ethanol from the market and it has been this way since Ford created the flex fuel Model T in the 1920s. (Read “Alcohol the Forbidden Fuel”
So, tell me, Obvious, how do you suppose we ever got to $4.00 a gallon carcinogenic gasoline with all that $2.50 non-carcinogenic ethanol around. Could it be all that free market stuff? After all poisoning urban air quality isn’t against the law and neither is prematurely and permanently separating grand-children from their grand-parents.
Try Googling “benzene” and “no known safe level”, there being 1.4 billion gallons/year of the nasty stuff allowed in U.S. gasoline (400 million litres/year in Canada). And then remember that soon 1 in 2 people are projected to get cancer. How mcuh does the free market value a human life? When there’s billions of dollars at stake, not much. me thinks. I was heartened to hear that you prefer ethanol.
Doug - I am not defending the safety of gasoline - never have, never will. What I am advocating is a simplification of our convoluted system of subsidies. By the way, when you figure prices for gasoline, you need to strip out the taxes which do not reflect production costs, but are supposed to fund our road system. I would expect every big business to defend their markets. There is nothing wrong with this as long as they are not subverting our democratic/representative process, and as long as it is transparent. We should expect this behaviour from both small and large business and even from individuals. What is important is that we fix the system that allows curruption of our processes and makes them more fair.
Obvious…good to hear that you’re not defending unsafe gasoline. So what would you recommend we replace benzene with and is it okay if it costs a few cents more per gallon than gasoline, which at present ethanol does not? Presently, ethanol costs many cents per gallon less than gasoline.
Regarding subverting the democratic process, did gasoline’s poisoning of our air with one of science’s most dangerous carcinogens get the democratic approval of the people? Were they even asked? At least ethanol subsidies have been voted on by the people’s representatives.
Doug - My biggest problem with ethanol subsidies is the environmental effects of increased land use for agriculture. Maybe the offset from less benzene/gasoline is worth it. I just don’t like to see our food base and wildlife habitat risked for biofuels, but maybe this is the best immediate answer. I am hopeful that efficiency and alternative power sources can do more. I will have to tell you that the hyperbole of calling gasoline and benzene “one of science’s most dangerous carcinogens” is not lost on me.
Obvious….we may be winding down here, but if our society firmly committed itself to a clean, green, fuel-efficient, biofuel future then our plug-in hybridized vehicles would get double, triple or many times more their present gas mileage, and what little fuel they did require would largely come from cellulosic bioenergy crops as well as agriultural and forest waste, not to mention municipal garbage and various marine biomass sources, such as Japan is planning. (Google seaweed ethanol).
Doug - If we are going to burn fuel, why not burn fossil fuel. After all, it came from plants. Its just been in storage for a while. The complaint about fossil fuel is that it pollutes. Efficiency will help, but this is an independent issue from what we burn. The issue is not spewing so much stuff into the air. I am not sure why you think ethanol is “the answer”, maybe because it is a little better when burned. Maybe ethanol is part of the answer in the short-term?
P.S. I appreciate your civil tone here. You seem to be a minority on this site. Thank you. You have certainly inspired me to do more research in this area.
Obvious…I feel the way I do because many years ago I worked in oil refineries near Toronto and I saw up close what an irresponsible and dishonest industry they really are. Today, I publish a fuel ethanol newsletter. Anyway, it was nice chatting. What part of the world do you hail from?
Doug - I live in the midwest US but spent time on both coasts. I try not to judge all industry by the bad apples. They exist in all facets of life.
bravo, dave!
glad to see you’re sharp as ever on these issues.
wish you would do a similar piece on global warming.
eduardo.villagran@gmail.com