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The Case Against More Ethanol (2016)
- TimSchumann 6y agoEthanol is an indirect subsidy to corn farmers at the expense of the environment. Saying that as the son of a corn farmer, who’d agree.
- sandworm101 6y agoThere is also a political bend. It isn't just about farmers but the Iowa caucus. No party wants to anger the people who start each presidential race.
- jcampbell1 6y agoI believe ethanol is a complex plot by the Illuminati so the world’s farmers grow excess food to provide insurance against famine without bankrupting said farmers. I’m kidding about the Illuminati part, but it is one hell of a scheme that ensures there is always excess agricultural production.
- jobu 6y agoThis is actually a good idea (IMO), but the huge problem is that most states have mandated ethanol content required for gasoline, and there's no "circuit breaker" in place when food prices rise dramatically. When corn prices quickly doubled during the Great Recession (2007-2008) we could've stabilized the price by cutting the amount being used for ethanol in gasoline.
- jasonjayr 6y ago... which would have (probably) spiked the price of gasoline, which may have had other effects. I do not envy the people who have to research, analyze, plan, and execute these policies in complex economies in hard times like that.
- js2 6y agoThis isn't a conspiracy. It's one of the responsibilities of the Secretary of Agriculture. Here's Earl Butz in 1972: > “One of my responsibilities is to see that we have a continuing adequate food supply, and the best way to assure that is to let farmers make a little money in the process.” https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/16/archives/up-up-up-butz-makes-hay-down-on-the-farm-butz-makes-hay-down-on-the.html https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/16/archives/up-up-up-butz-ma...
- mistrial9 6y agoIs this the guy that said "go big or get out" ? or was that later.. (family-sized farms of all kinds across the United States died an ugly death under these policies in the 1970s and 1980s).
- js2 6y ago“Get big or get out.” (“Go big or go home” is a different expression.) That was him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
- abfan1127 6y agoits an interesting scheme, only issue is that "human corn" and "ethanol corn" and "feed-lot corn" are very different strains. Human corn is tasty, while the other two taste terrible.
- daddylonglegs 6y agoMuch of the corn is being grown in a way that erodes the soil and depletes the water reserves being used, compromising our ability to grow crops in those areas in the future. Someone should probably tell the Illuminati.
- medium_burrito 6y agoI mean, you aren't wrong- the US is the world's biggest producer of food, oil and natural gas. These are important strategically.
- adammunich 6y agoThe electric motor's dominance is inevitable, despite the best efforts of politicians. Hard to beat 95% efficiency and 100% torque at stall.
- hoseja 6y agoMaybe when the charging speeds are in the megawatt range (equivalent of pumping gas).
- LarvaFX 6y agoCar charges overnight. Not wasting any more time on trips to the gas station. On longer trips, charge while eating.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoMost people don’t live in houses with garages where they can charge their car.
- londons_explore 6y agoChargers will get cheap and public when electric cars become common. In the same way street lights are pretty much everywhere today. You could imagine a special type of paving stone that has a magsafe socket in, and you just pull a wire from your parked car to the kerb.
- lstodd 6y agoNo way. People can't get lousy fiber pulled to their houses and you're talking about multimegawatt electricity supply.
- londons_explore 6y agoI'm talking about slow chargers - the kind that are 60 amps or so AC. The kind that require no expensive electronics in the charger. The kind that'll take 12 hours for a full charge. Fast DC chargers will always cost more due to the need for expensive power electronics.
- MattGaiser 6y agoYes, but for environmental policies to gain traction, they need to appeal to people outside of cities. Ethanol is a way to get certain rural areas onboard, even if in a modest way. Good policy? Probably not. Essential politics? Yes.
- perfunctory 6y agoOn board of what? Farmers were never in the energy business, why do they need to get into it now.
- MattGaiser 6y agoThey are big consumers of energy, whether it be natural gas for heating or drying or diesel for machinery, so a carbon tax would hit them hard. They would be vocal opponents of such a thing.
- perfunctory 6y agoBy this logic everybody will be a vocal opponent of carbon tax. It's universal after all and hits everyone equally. But that's the whole point of a carbon tax - to move away from carbon.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoAs long as the price farmers get goes up to cover their increased expenses, farmers should be fine with a carbon tax. Not sure consumers would be happy with food prices going up. That's why carbon taxes should be accompanied by an appropriate rebate. If the price of domestic food goes up countries will just start importing more food from countries without a carbon tax. That would really annoy farmers. So any carbon tax needs to be accompanied by carbon tariffs.
- MattGaiser 6y agoIt hits everyone equally by use of carbon. It doesn't hit everyone equally overall. $100 a year is an annoyance, especially if rebated. $10,000 a year substantially changes farming economics.
- hasa 6y agoWhy is ethanol bad? We generate it from biowaste in Europe.
- goodcanadian 6y agoEthanol is not inherently bad, but in the US, it is largely produced from corn (maize). By increasing the mandate for blending ethanol in fuel, it will increase the demand for corn. Growing corn comes with its own environmental problems.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jabl 6y agoMaking biofuels from waste is fine, but you can't power but a small fraction of transportation demand with it. So it can't be your sole strategy of reducing transportation emissions. Most likely what will happens is that those uses that can be electrified will be (cars, city buses, light trucks etc.). Biobased fuels, synthetic fuels, hydrogen and so on will have a role for transportation sectors where electricity is not an option (long range planes, ships, trucks).
- bluedino 6y agoIt's terrible for your engine/fuel system. Attracts water, increases rust, breaks down faster. It's also less efficient than gas, it takes 1.5 gallons of ethanol to equal the amount of energy in 1 gallon of gasoline.
- hinkley 6y agoIt is also a solvent that can dissolve parts used in vehicles not designed for ethanol. Automakers complained because it'd cost them something like an extra $100 per vehicle under the hood. I recall watching an uncle rebuild grandma's carburetor, because her car kept flooding. He shows me part of the original fuel jet and the replacement. The new one has a little synthetic grommet on it, the old one has an empty notch in the same spot. They blamed it on the ethanol.
- thrweo42343 6y agoIs there anything new here ? I remember reading about the negative EROEI of ethanol back in school (~ 15y back) in 'Organic Chemistry by Morrison & Boyd'.
- trepetti 6y agoEarly on, I remember there being concerns about forcing ethanol in gasoline used in maritime applications on the theory that the water soluble ethanol would draw water in at a higher rate osmotically and cause corrosion in fuel pumps. I don't know if there have been any long term studies on it, though.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAsk anyone who deals with outboard boat engines (particularly 2-stroke ones). Basically all the concerns were confirmed. The manufacturers try and mitigate it with fancy coatings and whatnot but there's only so much you can do.
- lazide 6y agoIt is terrible in small engines too and kills a lot of them (chainsaws, lawnmowers, etc.). Watch any small engine repair videos on youtube and about half of them (or more) were killed because of ethanol in the gas.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoYeah. 2 stroke stuff seems to get hit the hardest regardless of environment. On the plus side carburetors are cheaper than ever. The price is being driven down by sheer volume.
- plaidfuji 6y agoThe case for more ethanol: Iowa’s absurd influence on presidential politics due to its early position in primary season.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoThis BS practice will continue for decades to come because corn farmers will only vote for Congresspeople that continue to give them that fat government teat to suckle from.
- jtdev 6y agoTry owning 1000+ acres of farm land, battling the elements, working daily to produce something, and then tell us all how these terrible farmers are getting a handout.
- bigbubba 6y agoListen up country bumpkin! If you were a sophisticated tech bro urbanite like me, you'd know that food comes from grocery stores, not farms. The only thing farmers grow is inedible corn (probably just to spite the environment); they're leeches on the teat of society who don't deserve an ounce of protection! If they weren't so dumb they'd learn to code and do something productive, like code mobile apps and ad networks. In the future we'll all be eating computer chips anyway. Stick around HN and maybe you'll learn a few of these things.
- t3rse 6y agoAny more recent research/studies on this topic?
- tengbretson 6y agoI think we just need to view ethanol as a carbon-neutralish mechanism for stabilizing the grain markets so that we don't have to do more drastic measures like dumping.
- sandworm101 6y agoIf ethanol is carbon-neutral. There are many who believe it not to be, that it takes more carbon output to grow/refine ethanol than it saves. The real question is, if we ran every tractor, processing and fertilizer plant on pure ethanol, would there be any ethanol left to sell?
- tengbretson 6y agoThat's kind of my point – that it doesn't even need to fully balance the scales to be better than the alternative. In order to guard against food shortages in bad years we incentivize over-production in all years. If this over-production has to happen regardless (meaning the energy inputs are a sunk cost regardless), then why not recoup as much of it as a fuel as possible instead of dumping it in a hole somewhere?
- AdamN 6y agoDefinitely not carbon neutral: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/12/02/5-reasons-agricultures-greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-usually-underestimated/?sh=5da29b256ac8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/12/02/5-reason...
- tengbretson 6y agoA lot of the points in this article are misleading or only look for gaps in one direction. For starters, as far as lost sequestration goes, even with the grain removed from the equation, a dense field of corn produces a similar amount or more biomass than the same field would laying fallow. Another point that is constantly brought up is the methane emissions of cows. Cows do not produce methane in a vacuum, they produce it by digesting grain, so the comparison must be made relative to that same amount of grain being digested elsewhere or decomposing on its own. Their point about the need to adopt things like silvopasture, no-till, or crop rotation sound great, they but fail to acknowledge that in vast portions of the US they are already the norm, not the exception.
- aurizon 6y agoIt all started from oil shortages, as oil's sun sets, so should ethanol for simple combustion decline, by all means keep that production as a replacement for oil feedstock for industrial uses.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoTopsoil is a "renewable" resource. It takes a really long time to replenish. Just like fossil water. Biofuel with crops irrigated with fossil water is very unsustainable.
- gwbas1c 6y agoTimes have really changed since 2016. "UBS Predicts EV Price Parity In 2024": https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/22/ubs-predicts-ev-price-parity-in-2024/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/22/ubs-predicts-ev-price-p... Ethanol makes no sense when EVs are quickly going to be cost competitive.