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As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a goo

As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop feed-stocks (switch grass, etc.) and none of the analysis has shown that crop derived ethanol is a good idea. I'm not a leading expert on this subject by any means, but I am a PhD chemical engineer and did a lot of research into alternative fuels science and economics about ten years ago. I'm not up on the latest research and analysis but the fundamental thermodynamics and carbon cycles of crop-based ethanol have not changed much in the past ten years or so.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil is not so bad.
jfengel 4y ago
Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season. No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  It isn't just Iowa[1], the Corn Belt across the upper Mid West is the Saudi Arabia of Corn. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Corn_belt.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
- labrador 4y ago
  which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" Iowa no longer first; Democrats reorder the presidential primary calendar for 2024 https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/12/02/dnc-democrats-primary-calendar-south-carolina-first-over-iowa-caucus/69695090007/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/1...
  - koolba 4y ago
    > which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.
    - labrador 4y ago
      Are you sure that's all that it's about? I'd say it's about a lot of things since Democrats have been unhappy about starting in Iowa for a long time.
      - fsckboy 4y ago
        everybody is jumping down GP's throat here by focusing on the word "Biden". him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they're doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections to avoid the kind of "self destructive" internecine primary battles with fringe candidates like Bernie Sanders--yes, he was very popular, but his views are to one side of the Democratic party which is to one side of the Republican party which makes his views part of the fringe in the uniform tapestry of views--which have taken place for many years. Not saying it's right or wrong, just saying GP's analysis holds together as part of the larger analysis everybody here seems to be basing their thinking on.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > him saying they’re doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they’re doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections Yes, it is. Because it refers to specific geographic strengths that Biden had as a candidate, not strengths that are uniformly typical of establishment-preferred Democratic candidates. (Now if, instead of referring to Biden’s particular and unique strengths that correlate with the change, they had said that it was to lock in estanlishment candidates by moving some larger, more expensive states to campaign in forward, and that that establishment support was more key in campaigning in those states – a weak but at least superficially plausible argument – that would be different. But “states with a higner percentage of black voters” are…a different thing.
- retrac 4y ago
  It is surprising how much politics and law can affect what is grown where. The US-Canada border cuts right across the prairies. Conditions are pretty much identical in northern North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Yet the border is clearly visible on some maps of agricultural yield: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Though lots of ethanol in Canadian gasoline too. Hard to find any without 10% ethanol, even in jurisdictions with limited corn growing. What caused that? Or do the US subsidies on corn make it cost effective for Canadians to burn ethanol? If so, where’s my cheap E85? I’d run it in my old Corolla and see what happens.
    - 1letterunixname 4y ago
      Here, let me Google that for you :) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-canada-ethanol-subsidies-1.3566564 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-can... Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla. https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in-my-older-engine/ https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in...
      - Scoundreller 4y ago
        [flagged]
        UncleEntity 4y ago
        Do you really think they would have put those “flex fuel” badges on cars if they all could run E85 without problems? From my interwebs knowledge you need a fuel sensor (to tell the percentage of ethanol) and an ECU that can take advantage of the different fuel blendings. So, yeah, maybe not a dead car but definitely not an efficient one.
- stolenmerch 4y ago
  That is commonly cited but there is evidence to suggest it isn't the whole picture. Ted Cruz was a vocal opponent of Ethanol subsidies and won Iowa.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Correction: W did this to give more power to agribusinesses and large-scale farmers who were drifting towards democratic socialism. The market price is destabilized and undercut by government subsidies who put most farmers in the unenviable position of taking corporate welfare in order to make a living. If the government got out of the business of picking winners and losers, and deciding who to rain money on and who to starve, the corn would be more expensive and sugar cane would be cheaper.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gowld 4y ago
  Up to 83% or 85%: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml Really fun to pull into a gas station and accidentally fill your tank with gas it can't handle.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  Democrats have said South Carolina is kicking off their primaries now.
- duped 4y ago
  Just because it was a plot point on the West Wing in 2006 doesn't make it reality. Iowa is not a kingmaker, and it's not even the first state in the primary season for Democrats anymore. It's really just more mundane: BigAg is powerful and our representatives take their money.
  - LanceH 4y ago
    I think the democratic party is upset that everyone wasn't going along with the superdelegates who really have the first votes. They want to choose their candidate and go through the motions of a primary.
    - duped 4y ago
      It's been speculated the reason they shifted to SC was to favor President Biden's The one thing the Iowa caucus did was make it easier for grassroots candidates. If they hadn't bungled the caucus so badly in 2020 for example, Pete Buttigieg would have had a better shot at it like Obama in '08 (he won the caucus, but we didn't find out for weeks!).
      - Drunk_Engineer 4y ago
        Buttigieg "won" the caucus because of Iowa's calvinball rules for assigning delegates. Sanders actually had more votes.
- rapind 4y ago
  It’s not enough that we already subsidize them…
- westurner 4y ago
  Can Ethanol be sustainably produced from corn? Which other crops have sufficient margin given commodity prices? Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the difference? Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach? What rotations improve the compost and soil situation?
  - westurner 4y ago
    > Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the difference? Can row covers etc be made from corn; from cellulose and what other sustainable inputs (ideally that are waste outputs)? Compostable thermoformable biopolymers for food packaging FWIU transparent wood "windows" are made out of treated cellulose? How do they compare with glass and plastic in terms of transparency for full spectrum UV for e.g. plant growth, sanitization, and vitamin D? > Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach? From "Solar-Powered Plant Protection Equipment: Perspective and Prospects" (2022) https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7379 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7379 : >> The unmanned system (robot) is well suited for weeding operations, and it helps to minimize the required workforce and herbicide usage while weeding. Two solar-powered weeders, EcoRobot and AVO robot models, are developed by Ecorobotix, Switzerland (Figure 2). These models work more effectively in row crops based on the detection of weeds (>85%), and a herbicides is applied precisely on the weeds to destroy them. The solar power used in EcoRobot and AVO models is 380 W and 1150 W, respectively, and they have a working time of 8 and 12 h once fully charged by solar panels [64]. > What rotations improve the compost and soil situation? Crop rotation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
- parineum 4y ago
  We subsidize corn for the same reason we subsidize oil and are starting to subsidize the semiconductor industry. If we didn't subsidize food, we'd be importing a lot of food. In the event of war, famine, plague, etc, we don't want to be without a supply of food, fuel and now electronics.
- kuhewa 4y ago
  Is there any particular reason why another state hasn't snubbed Iowa yet and moved their caucus/primary up? Granted, it would cause a chain reaction but...
tstrimple 4y ago
> places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). I'm not sure this is the case. The vast majority of corn is field corn grown for silage anyway. The ethanol extraction process leaves a mash which is then fed to cows. Given the soil conditions, corn and soybeans will likely remain the most profitable cash crops so unless subsidies are created for other crop types not much would change. My perspective from living in Iowa for 2/3rds of my life.
- _greim_ 4y ago
  > The ethanol extraction process leaves a mash which is then fed to cows. Do analyses typically factor this sort of thing in, or do they assume corn is grown solely for the purpose of ethanol extraction?
- cashsterling 4y ago
  I have a part 1 and part 2 reply. Part 1: My statement you quoted above was super 'hand wavy', but it is a mass & energy balance situation. Ethanol production from corn, corn stover, or whatever (you can tell I'm not a farmer), removes carbon & energy from the "farm field system" that would otherwise stay in/on the field, be tilled or decompose into soil, and end up in next years' corn (or the year after that, etc.). It makes the farming cycle less efficient from a carbon management perspective and, as others have mentioned, that means more fertilizer, etc. to make up for the carbon loss. Without increased fertilizer use and general land management... crop production would decline year over year as result of removing plant material for ethanol production. Also... one could imagine corn breeding and propagation scenarios in a 'field corn' field where (a) silage is maximized for feeding cows and (b) a trade off between silage and stover is made to maximize overall profit. So there does end up being a competition between (1) optimizing for efficient food production and soil management and (1) optimizing for maximum profit. The second option does diminish food production unless made up for by there means. Still not a great explanation. I don't have any references to share but there are some good review articles out there that talk about this in detail. Part 2: I was "sort-of" conflating corn with other crops for biofuel production. I should not have done that. My statement that ethanol production from corn "places additional competitive demand on our food supply" might not be completely true in a high-impact sense. But ethanol production from corn does still impact food production and land-use as described in part 1. In the case where a crop like switch grass is cultivated specifically for biofuel production... here we would definitely have a case where there is competition for use of arable land, a finite resource, between biofuel production and food production.
hatsunearu 4y ago
Ethanol also is used as an octane booster. I'd rather take Ethanol than MTBE or TEL.
- throwaway5752 4y ago
  This should be the highest rated response to the parent because it's overwhelmingly used as a low octane fuel booster additive, not a fuel. If you have 85 gasoline and need to get it to 87, you blend it with an appropriate quantity of ethanol (octane rating 108.6, thanks for the correction). Reference: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html
  - fabianbumberger 4y ago
    Yeah, gas producers like it as cheap octane booster.
    - fuzzfactor 4y ago
      Actually most of the time it costs more for oil companies to purchase the ethanol than it would for them to use smother burning hydrocarbons which they already have access to in larger quantities.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    pure ethanol according to wikipedia has an octane rating of 108 on the scale that's normally referred to. 100 is the octane of a particular isomer of the hydrocarbon C8H18 which is called... octane! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples and for people not familiar with the subject, the purpose of an octane booster is to make your fuel less explosive (even though the point of your fuel is to be exploded to release it's energy) The problem with low octane fuels is not that they have lower energy, but that when you compress them they can explode prematurely (before you're ready to collect the energy) and compressing them is a way to get more energy out of an engine. Ethanol is less explodey, and so is tetraethyl lead.
Scoundreller 4y ago
Ethanol is great for gas stations too. Your tank doesn’t go as far so you need to visit them more often. Dunno how the complaints about ethanol = bad because it’s hygroscopic really are. Yeah, 100% ethanol will pull in atmospheric h2o, but in a gasoline+ethanol mix? If anything, a small bit of ethanol helps “break the phase” and at least runs any moisture through your engine instead of a separate layer which is surely worse. Dunno if any unscrupulous gas stations/suppliers deliberately water down their ethanol laden gas just to earn some extra margin.
- greedo 4y ago
  Ethanol gas is terrible for most car engines and fuel systems.
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    This was a problem when ethanol first appeared in large percentages for a few years until proper materials were included in engineering specifications for things like fuel pumps & hoses. Some conventional wisdom about not putting alcohol into your gasoline does go way back to the Model T days, it was widely regarded as safest just to not do it, since you can't be sure how much water is in the alcohol.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    You saying the manufacturers haven’t adapted anything for cars to run on E10 in the first place?
    - dontlaugh 4y ago
      Which is the default minimum in most of Europe. Some places have even higher ethanol mixes. Even 90% ethanol is fine for any injection petrol engine. You just need to mix it with something that burns with a visible flame and some detergents.
  - staringback 4y ago
    source: trust me bro
colechristensen 4y ago
It’s not so much corn farmers as the operators of the ethanol plants who benefit. Lots of funds and support and mandates for their products to be bought. Various things will always be done to prop up commodity prices for American farmers, if not ethanol then something else.
benp84 4y ago
I was under the impression that corn ethanol was effectively solar energy because corn turns sunlight and carbon into biomass then we burn the biomass back to atmospheric carbon. Isn't that the fundamentals? Is there a big, basic reason it doesn't work or is it lots of little side effects? Thanks for weighing in.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- marktangotango 4y ago
  The fundamental reason is producing ethanol from corn requires quite a lot of energy; for cooking the mash and distilling the final product. If the cycle was entirely ethanol "all the way down" it could be carbon nuetral although using ethanol for production would detract from the "total efficiency". Invariably other fuels are used in production. I went through the math a few years ago from the perspective of "micro power plants" for powering BTC mining. Coal is the winner from a cost perspective; but terribly dirty obviously. And capital intensive. Burning corn as fuel to a high efficiency boiler is actually more efficient than ethanol.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  One other big, basic reason from early school Biology you are missing is the Nitrogen Cycle. Earth crops are not particularly efficient at fixating Carbon into biomass and generally need plenty of other mineral inputs such as potassium and phosphorous and zinc and especially Nitrogen. Nitrogen alone is an interesting problematic "inefficiency" because Nitrogen wants to be a gas at Earth pressures/temperatures (like Carbon) and so also needs to be fixated and plants very rarely have evolved that sort of fixation directly, instead relying on "the Nitrogen Cycle" to (eventually) fixate it into soils. One of the things humanity has done as it has industrialized agriculture (to deal with the time issue of that "eventually") is that it has industrialized "the Nitrogen Cycle" as much as it can, and in so doing added a lot of additional Carbon inefficiencies to how we fixate Nitrogen for use by our crops. Modern crops couldn't grow at the same industrial scales without modern fertilizers, but modern fertilizers generally don't exist without massive carbon subsidies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle
specialp 4y ago
There is competitive demand with food supply but that is the point. If we did not have surplus corn produced, the USA would be very vulnerable to food disruptions. Because as we saw during COVID, business supply chains are only optimized to current demand without disaster. So if there is another channel to purchase corn it creates more demand and keeps excess production going at a price that is still possible to produce at. If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production could be stopped.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production could be stopped. Could it? 99% of corn grown (including that used for ethanol) isn’t the sweet corn for eatin. Would take a while to switch and I’m guessing there isn’t much excess capacity for turning it all into corn syrup and such. COVID couldn’t even figure out how to redirect institutional toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And that’s the same product! The real buffer for a “food crisis” (whatever that is) is the amount of crop fed to livestock and food exported, not ethanol.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >COVID couldn’t even figure out how to redirect institutional toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And that’s the same product! Did the TP "shortage" actually get bad enough that a non-negligible portion of the population had nothing to wipe their bums with? Regardless, starving is much more dire than having nothing to wipe with. If people were actually starving, I'm sure they would have no issues eating field corn intended for animal consumption.
DennisP 4y ago
Wasn't ethanol added to replace MTBE, due to pollution concerns after MTBE replaced lead? What should we use in place of ethanol?
photochemsyn 4y ago
It does have one plausible benefit which is managing crop overproduction (supply demand mismatches) because if the market is glutted, converting some of the production in ethanol or similar long-lasting products is not a bad idea. As the basis of a fuel supply, it's a very poor idea.
windexh8er 4y ago
I don't have any credentials on the topic but I've tracked Ethanol inefficiencies for years in my vehicle. I tow often (between 3000-7000lbs) and my tow vehicle has the capability to run up to 15% ethanol. On average, over the last 7 years, I will lose on average 30% tow range and significant power loss at 10% ethanol. Ethanol has rarely ever been cost effective but it's also harder on engine components because of the less efficient power cycle and quicker buildup in the downpipe of the turbo system in my vehicle. I monitor other engine vitals with an OBD reader while towing and my engine cycles through thermals faster when running Ethanol as well - the engine gets hotter faster because Ethanol burns hotter, but the BTU output is less - leaving me with that less efficient power cycle. Overall Ethanol is a complete detriment to any and all IC operations. And don't even think about using Ethanol in any 2 stroke motor. Not only will it basically destroy your motor in record time but it's the worst type of fuel for fuel delivery systems that may not be used on a daily basis. Ethanol and all the ridiculous subsidies tied to it are one of the biggest rackets out there. It's been known from the beginning that the only thing it's good for is wasting valuable crop land. If it were actually useful we wouldn't need to continue to subsidize corn production for its use decades later. Ethanol is a joke.
chuckwolfe 4y ago
I have a weekend car that is supercharged. E85 is a lot cheaper than race fuel. It has a benefit in the more efficient forced induction engines as seen many foreign automobiles.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil is not so bad.

jfengel 4y ago

Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season. No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.

ch4s3 4y ago
It isn't just Iowa[1], the Corn Belt across the upper Mid West is the Saudi Arabia of Corn. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Corn_belt.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...
labrador 4y ago
which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" Iowa no longer first; Democrats reorder the presidential primary calendar for 2024 https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/12/02/dnc-democrats-primary-calendar-south-carolina-first-over-iowa-caucus/69695090007/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/1...
- koolba 4y ago
  > which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.
  - labrador 4y ago
    Are you sure that's all that it's about? I'd say it's about a lot of things since Democrats have been unhappy about starting in Iowa for a long time.
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      everybody is jumping down GP's throat here by focusing on the word "Biden". him saying they're doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they're doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections to avoid the kind of "self destructive" internecine primary battles with fringe candidates like Bernie Sanders--yes, he was very popular, but his views are to one side of the Democratic party which is to one side of the Republican party which makes his views part of the fringe in the uniform tapestry of views--which have taken place for many years. Not saying it's right or wrong, just saying GP's analysis holds together as part of the larger analysis everybody here seems to be basing their thinking on.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > him saying they’re doing it to lock in Biden (their mainstream/establishment frontrunner) in large early primaries in 2024 (the next election) is not really different from saying they’re doing it to lock in their mainstream/establishment frontrunner in large early primaries in future elections Yes, it is. Because it refers to specific geographic strengths that Biden had as a candidate, not strengths that are uniformly typical of establishment-preferred Democratic candidates. (Now if, instead of referring to Biden’s particular and unique strengths that correlate with the change, they had said that it was to lock in estanlishment candidates by moving some larger, more expensive states to campaign in forward, and that that establishment support was more key in campaigning in those states – a weak but at least superficially plausible argument – that would be different. But “states with a higner percentage of black voters” are…a different thing.
retrac 4y ago
It is surprising how much politics and law can affect what is grown where. The US-Canada border cuts right across the prairies. Conditions are pretty much identical in northern North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Yet the border is clearly visible on some maps of agricultural yield: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Though lots of ethanol in Canadian gasoline too. Hard to find any without 10% ethanol, even in jurisdictions with limited corn growing. What caused that? Or do the US subsidies on corn make it cost effective for Canadians to burn ethanol? If so, where’s my cheap E85? I’d run it in my old Corolla and see what happens.
  - 1letterunixname 4y ago
    Here, let me Google that for you :) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-canada-ethanol-subsidies-1.3566564 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-can... Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla. https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in-my-older-engine/ https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in...
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - UncleEntity 4y ago
        Do you really think they would have put those “flex fuel” badges on cars if they all could run E85 without problems? From my interwebs knowledge you need a fuel sensor (to tell the percentage of ethanol) and an ECU that can take advantage of the different fuel blendings. So, yeah, maybe not a dead car but definitely not an efficient one.
stolenmerch 4y ago
That is commonly cited but there is evidence to suggest it isn't the whole picture. Ted Cruz was a vocal opponent of Ethanol subsidies and won Iowa.
1letterunixname 4y ago
Correction: W did this to give more power to agribusinesses and large-scale farmers who were drifting towards democratic socialism. The market price is destabilized and undercut by government subsidies who put most farmers in the unenviable position of taking corporate welfare in order to make a living. If the government got out of the business of picking winners and losers, and deciding who to rain money on and who to starve, the corn would be more expensive and sugar cane would be cheaper.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gowld 4y ago
Up to 83% or 85%: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/flextech.shtml Really fun to pull into a gas station and accidentally fill your tank with gas it can't handle.
dwighttk 4y ago
Democrats have said South Carolina is kicking off their primaries now.
duped 4y ago
Just because it was a plot point on the West Wing in 2006 doesn't make it reality. Iowa is not a kingmaker, and it's not even the first state in the primary season for Democrats anymore. It's really just more mundane: BigAg is powerful and our representatives take their money.
- LanceH 4y ago
  I think the democratic party is upset that everyone wasn't going along with the superdelegates who really have the first votes. They want to choose their candidate and go through the motions of a primary.
  - duped 4y ago
    It's been speculated the reason they shifted to SC was to favor President Biden's The one thing the Iowa caucus did was make it easier for grassroots candidates. If they hadn't bungled the caucus so badly in 2020 for example, Pete Buttigieg would have had a better shot at it like Obama in '08 (he won the caucus, but we didn't find out for weeks!).
    - Drunk_Engineer 4y ago
      Buttigieg "won" the caucus because of Iowa's calvinball rules for assigning delegates. Sanders actually had more votes.
rapind 4y ago
It’s not enough that we already subsidize them…
westurner 4y ago
Can Ethanol be sustainably produced from corn? Which other crops have sufficient margin given commodity prices? Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the difference? Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach? What rotations improve the compost and soil situation?
- westurner 4y ago
  > Can solar and goats and wind and IDK algae+co2 make up the difference? Can row covers etc be made from corn; from cellulose and what other sustainable inputs (ideally that are waste outputs)? Compostable thermoformable biopolymers for food packaging FWIU transparent wood "windows" are made out of treated cellulose? How do they compare with glass and plastic in terms of transparency for full spectrum UV for e.g. plant growth, sanitization, and vitamin D? > Is solar laser weeding a more sustainable approach? From "Solar-Powered Plant Protection Equipment: Perspective and Prospects" (2022) https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7379 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/19/7379 : >> The unmanned system (robot) is well suited for weeding operations, and it helps to minimize the required workforce and herbicide usage while weeding. Two solar-powered weeders, EcoRobot and AVO robot models, are developed by Ecorobotix, Switzerland (Figure 2). These models work more effectively in row crops based on the detection of weeds (>85%), and a herbicides is applied precisely on the weeds to destroy them. The solar power used in EcoRobot and AVO models is 380 W and 1150 W, respectively, and they have a working time of 8 and 12 h once fully charged by solar panels [64]. > What rotations improve the compost and soil situation? Crop rotation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
parineum 4y ago
We subsidize corn for the same reason we subsidize oil and are starting to subsidize the semiconductor industry. If we didn't subsidize food, we'd be importing a lot of food. In the event of war, famine, plague, etc, we don't want to be without a supply of food, fuel and now electronics.
kuhewa 4y ago
Is there any particular reason why another state hasn't snubbed Iowa yet and moved their caucus/primary up? Granted, it would cause a chain reaction but...

tstrimple 4y ago

> places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). I'm not sure this is the case. The vast majority of corn is field corn grown for silage anyway. The ethanol extraction process leaves a mash which is then fed to cows. Given the soil conditions, corn and soybeans will likely remain the most profitable cash crops so unless subsidies are created for other crop types not much would change. My perspective from living in Iowa for 2/3rds of my life.

_greim_ 4y ago
> The ethanol extraction process leaves a mash which is then fed to cows. Do analyses typically factor this sort of thing in, or do they assume corn is grown solely for the purpose of ethanol extraction?
cashsterling 4y ago
I have a part 1 and part 2 reply. Part 1: My statement you quoted above was super 'hand wavy', but it is a mass & energy balance situation. Ethanol production from corn, corn stover, or whatever (you can tell I'm not a farmer), removes carbon & energy from the "farm field system" that would otherwise stay in/on the field, be tilled or decompose into soil, and end up in next years' corn (or the year after that, etc.). It makes the farming cycle less efficient from a carbon management perspective and, as others have mentioned, that means more fertilizer, etc. to make up for the carbon loss. Without increased fertilizer use and general land management... crop production would decline year over year as result of removing plant material for ethanol production. Also... one could imagine corn breeding and propagation scenarios in a 'field corn' field where (a) silage is maximized for feeding cows and (b) a trade off between silage and stover is made to maximize overall profit. So there does end up being a competition between (1) optimizing for efficient food production and soil management and (1) optimizing for maximum profit. The second option does diminish food production unless made up for by there means. Still not a great explanation. I don't have any references to share but there are some good review articles out there that talk about this in detail. Part 2: I was "sort-of" conflating corn with other crops for biofuel production. I should not have done that. My statement that ethanol production from corn "places additional competitive demand on our food supply" might not be completely true in a high-impact sense. But ethanol production from corn does still impact food production and land-use as described in part 1. In the case where a crop like switch grass is cultivated specifically for biofuel production... here we would definitely have a case where there is competition for use of arable land, a finite resource, between biofuel production and food production.

hatsunearu 4y ago

Ethanol also is used as an octane booster. I'd rather take Ethanol than MTBE or TEL.

throwaway5752 4y ago
This should be the highest rated response to the parent because it's overwhelmingly used as a low octane fuel booster additive, not a fuel. If you have 85 gasoline and need to get it to 87, you blend it with an appropriate quantity of ethanol (octane rating 108.6, thanks for the correction). Reference: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_fuel_basics.html
- fabianbumberger 4y ago
  Yeah, gas producers like it as cheap octane booster.
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    Actually most of the time it costs more for oil companies to purchase the ethanol than it would for them to use smother burning hydrocarbons which they already have access to in larger quantities.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  pure ethanol according to wikipedia has an octane rating of 108 on the scale that's normally referred to. 100 is the octane of a particular isomer of the hydrocarbon C8H18 which is called... octane! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating#Examples and for people not familiar with the subject, the purpose of an octane booster is to make your fuel less explosive (even though the point of your fuel is to be exploded to release it's energy) The problem with low octane fuels is not that they have lower energy, but that when you compress them they can explode prematurely (before you're ready to collect the energy) and compressing them is a way to get more energy out of an engine. Ethanol is less explodey, and so is tetraethyl lead.

Scoundreller 4y ago

Ethanol is great for gas stations too. Your tank doesn’t go as far so you need to visit them more often. Dunno how the complaints about ethanol = bad because it’s hygroscopic really are. Yeah, 100% ethanol will pull in atmospheric h2o, but in a gasoline+ethanol mix? If anything, a small bit of ethanol helps “break the phase” and at least runs any moisture through your engine instead of a separate layer which is surely worse. Dunno if any unscrupulous gas stations/suppliers deliberately water down their ethanol laden gas just to earn some extra margin.

greedo 4y ago
Ethanol gas is terrible for most car engines and fuel systems.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  This was a problem when ethanol first appeared in large percentages for a few years until proper materials were included in engineering specifications for things like fuel pumps & hoses. Some conventional wisdom about not putting alcohol into your gasoline does go way back to the Model T days, it was widely regarded as safest just to not do it, since you can't be sure how much water is in the alcohol.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  You saying the manufacturers haven’t adapted anything for cars to run on E10 in the first place?
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Which is the default minimum in most of Europe. Some places have even higher ethanol mixes. Even 90% ethanol is fine for any injection petrol engine. You just need to mix it with something that burns with a visible flame and some detergents.
- staringback 4y ago
  source: trust me bro

colechristensen 4y ago

It’s not so much corn farmers as the operators of the ethanol plants who benefit. Lots of funds and support and mandates for their products to be bought. Various things will always be done to prop up commodity prices for American farmers, if not ethanol then something else.

benp84 4y ago

I was under the impression that corn ethanol was effectively solar energy because corn turns sunlight and carbon into biomass then we burn the biomass back to atmospheric carbon. Isn't that the fundamentals? Is there a big, basic reason it doesn't work or is it lots of little side effects? Thanks for weighing in.

deleted 4y ago
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marktangotango 4y ago
The fundamental reason is producing ethanol from corn requires quite a lot of energy; for cooking the mash and distilling the final product. If the cycle was entirely ethanol "all the way down" it could be carbon nuetral although using ethanol for production would detract from the "total efficiency". Invariably other fuels are used in production. I went through the math a few years ago from the perspective of "micro power plants" for powering BTC mining. Coal is the winner from a cost perspective; but terribly dirty obviously. And capital intensive. Burning corn as fuel to a high efficiency boiler is actually more efficient than ethanol.
WorldMaker 4y ago
One other big, basic reason from early school Biology you are missing is the Nitrogen Cycle. Earth crops are not particularly efficient at fixating Carbon into biomass and generally need plenty of other mineral inputs such as potassium and phosphorous and zinc and especially Nitrogen. Nitrogen alone is an interesting problematic "inefficiency" because Nitrogen wants to be a gas at Earth pressures/temperatures (like Carbon) and so also needs to be fixated and plants very rarely have evolved that sort of fixation directly, instead relying on "the Nitrogen Cycle" to (eventually) fixate it into soils. One of the things humanity has done as it has industrialized agriculture (to deal with the time issue of that "eventually") is that it has industrialized "the Nitrogen Cycle" as much as it can, and in so doing added a lot of additional Carbon inefficiencies to how we fixate Nitrogen for use by our crops. Modern crops couldn't grow at the same industrial scales without modern fertilizers, but modern fertilizers generally don't exist without massive carbon subsidies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle

specialp 4y ago

There is competitive demand with food supply but that is the point. If we did not have surplus corn produced, the USA would be very vulnerable to food disruptions. Because as we saw during COVID, business supply chains are only optimized to current demand without disaster. So if there is another channel to purchase corn it creates more demand and keeps excess production going at a price that is still possible to produce at. If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production could be stopped.

Scoundreller 4y ago
> If the USA suddenly had a food crisis, the ethanol production could be stopped. Could it? 99% of corn grown (including that used for ethanol) isn’t the sweet corn for eatin. Would take a while to switch and I’m guessing there isn’t much excess capacity for turning it all into corn syrup and such. COVID couldn’t even figure out how to redirect institutional toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And that’s the same product! The real buffer for a “food crisis” (whatever that is) is the amount of crop fed to livestock and food exported, not ethanol.
- gruez 4y ago
  >COVID couldn’t even figure out how to redirect institutional toilet paper into consumer toilet paper. And that’s the same product! Did the TP "shortage" actually get bad enough that a non-negligible portion of the population had nothing to wipe their bums with? Regardless, starving is much more dire than having nothing to wipe with. If people were actually starving, I'm sure they would have no issues eating field corn intended for animal consumption.

DennisP 4y ago

Wasn't ethanol added to replace MTBE, due to pollution concerns after MTBE replaced lead? What should we use in place of ethanol?

photochemsyn 4y ago

It does have one plausible benefit which is managing crop overproduction (supply demand mismatches) because if the market is glutted, converting some of the production in ethanol or similar long-lasting products is not a bad idea. As the basis of a fuel supply, it's a very poor idea.

windexh8er 4y ago

I don't have any credentials on the topic but I've tracked Ethanol inefficiencies for years in my vehicle. I tow often (between 3000-7000lbs) and my tow vehicle has the capability to run up to 15% ethanol. On average, over the last 7 years, I will lose on average 30% tow range and significant power loss at 10% ethanol. Ethanol has rarely ever been cost effective but it's also harder on engine components because of the less efficient power cycle and quicker buildup in the downpipe of the turbo system in my vehicle. I monitor other engine vitals with an OBD reader while towing and my engine cycles through thermals faster when running Ethanol as well - the engine gets hotter faster because Ethanol burns hotter, but the BTU output is less - leaving me with that less efficient power cycle. Overall Ethanol is a complete detriment to any and all IC operations. And don't even think about using Ethanol in any 2 stroke motor. Not only will it basically destroy your motor in record time but it's the worst type of fuel for fuel delivery systems that may not be used on a daily basis. Ethanol and all the ridiculous subsidies tied to it are one of the biggest rackets out there. It's been known from the beginning that the only thing it's good for is wasting valuable crop land. If it were actually useful we wouldn't need to continue to subsidize corn production for its use decades later. Ethanol is a joke.

chuckwolfe 4y ago

I have a weekend car that is supercharged. E85 is a lot cheaper than race fuel. It has a benefit in the more efficient forced induction engines as seen many foreign automobiles.