4 ms·

My family was into Fuel Ethanol big when I was a kid. That was very progressive and Green, then. Sometime in the 90s it became "Evil Big Oil Burning Food" and

My family was into Fuel Ethanol big when I was a kid. That was very progressive and Green, then. Sometime in the 90s it became "Evil Big Oil Burning Food" and then had never been an environmentalist cause. Keeping up with History is exhausting.

082349872349872 2y ago
I also fail to remember ethanol as green; in my recollection it came in (as did HFCS) due to Big Corn.
defrost 2y ago
> That was very progressive and Green, then. Was it though? Or was that just what the companies pushing it said? My recollection of that same period in history was that it really took off as a result of the 1973 oil crisis and not because it was especially green. https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/blog/article/2023/10/the-arab-oil-embargo-and-ethanol-50-years-later https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/blog/article/...
- eesmith 2y ago
  Yes, it started as an oil crisis response. It then became a clean air issue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988397000091 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098839... "Corn-based fuel ethanol has become an increasingly important fuel additive in the US since the early 1980s. Its use began in response to high oil prices and as a gasoline substitute and an octane-enhancing lead replacement as lead was gradually phased-out of the gasoline supply. More recently, its use has been promoted for environmental reasons. The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of November 1990 mandated the use of cleaner burning fuels in specific regions of the US during the winter months. These carbon monoxide (CO) non-attainment areas are required to use oxygenated fuels during the winter months, ranging anywhere from October through March in some locations. Going further, in the summer of 1994 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued new rules about the content of Reformulated Gasoline (RFG), the cleaner-burning fuel which must be sold year-round in many of our largest cities because of ozone non-attainment beginning in January, 1995." Only later, post Kyoto, was it proposed as a way to reduce CO2 emissions, and quickly realized that it would require massive amounts of land, which would compete with food and feed uses. As I recall, the dream was to come up with a cellulose agriculture source (like switchgrass) that could use other types of land and be more efficient as an energy source, but that never panned out. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_virgatum#Bioenergy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_virgatum#Bioenergy tells me corn yields "about 1.28 units of energy per unit of energy input", so a large fraction of the harvest is used simply to produce ethanol.) EDIT: since h20dragon elsewhere mentioned "Mother Earth News" we can read what they wrote in 1980 in "The Mother earth news alcohol fuel handbook" at https://archive.org/details/motherearthnewsa0000unse/mode/2up?q=%22mother+earth+news%22 https://archive.org/details/motherearthnewsa0000unse/mode/2u... I read it as clearly meant as a way to avoid high fossil fuel costs and personal independence from large petrochemical companies. It barely touches on environmental issues (the closest is with "alcohol production can turn our “‘energy crisis’ into an important economic (as well as environmental) boon for our entire nation.")
  - defrost 2y ago
    > More recently, its use has been promoted for environmental reasons. promoted ... in the USofA and in Brazil. I'm in neither country and I questioned then and still question today whether it was ever actually effectively a green solution or just an industry with influential lobbyists. The dependancy on large amounts of land was known from early on, it was written about in the 1970's. There's a good argument that ethanol is a net positive for GHG production: https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible-fuel-emissions https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible-fuel-emissions but the counter argument is in practice GHG emissions continue to increase when there's an excuse to avoid travelling less in smaller cars and not develop better city transport infrastructure. All that aside; h2odragon has simply pivoted away from the paper bag V plastic claim onto another "those darn environmentals say one thing then another" talking point. They're not uniform, they're not the same people decades apart, and often the statements people quote come from idustry think tanks and don't represent what the general zeitgeist of scientists of particular periods considered as their breadth of thought.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      I agree with all of your comments. I did not mean to imply that "promote" mean "was effective." I believe, with low confidence, that ethanol's net positive for GHG production wasn't realized until the 1990s, due to an increase in corn yields from what was possible in the 1970s and the oil crisis.

082349872349872 2y ago

I also fail to remember ethanol as green; in my recollection it came in (as did HFCS) due to Big Corn.

defrost 2y ago

> That was very progressive and Green, then. Was it though? Or was that just what the companies pushing it said? My recollection of that same period in history was that it really took off as a result of the 1973 oil crisis and not because it was especially green. https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/blog/article/2023/10/the-arab-oil-embargo-and-ethanol-50-years-later https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/blog/article/...

eesmith 2y ago
Yes, it started as an oil crisis response. It then became a clean air issue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988397000091 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014098839... "Corn-based fuel ethanol has become an increasingly important fuel additive in the US since the early 1980s. Its use began in response to high oil prices and as a gasoline substitute and an octane-enhancing lead replacement as lead was gradually phased-out of the gasoline supply. More recently, its use has been promoted for environmental reasons. The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of November 1990 mandated the use of cleaner burning fuels in specific regions of the US during the winter months. These carbon monoxide (CO) non-attainment areas are required to use oxygenated fuels during the winter months, ranging anywhere from October through March in some locations. Going further, in the summer of 1994 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued new rules about the content of Reformulated Gasoline (RFG), the cleaner-burning fuel which must be sold year-round in many of our largest cities because of ozone non-attainment beginning in January, 1995." Only later, post Kyoto, was it proposed as a way to reduce CO2 emissions, and quickly realized that it would require massive amounts of land, which would compete with food and feed uses. As I recall, the dream was to come up with a cellulose agriculture source (like switchgrass) that could use other types of land and be more efficient as an energy source, but that never panned out. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_virgatum#Bioenergy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_virgatum#Bioenergy tells me corn yields "about 1.28 units of energy per unit of energy input", so a large fraction of the harvest is used simply to produce ethanol.) EDIT: since h20dragon elsewhere mentioned "Mother Earth News" we can read what they wrote in 1980 in "The Mother earth news alcohol fuel handbook" at https://archive.org/details/motherearthnewsa0000unse/mode/2up?q=%22mother+earth+news%22 https://archive.org/details/motherearthnewsa0000unse/mode/2u... I read it as clearly meant as a way to avoid high fossil fuel costs and personal independence from large petrochemical companies. It barely touches on environmental issues (the closest is with "alcohol production can turn our “‘energy crisis’ into an important economic (as well as environmental) boon for our entire nation.")
- defrost 2y ago
  > More recently, its use has been promoted for environmental reasons. promoted ... in the USofA and in Brazil. I'm in neither country and I questioned then and still question today whether it was ever actually effectively a green solution or just an industry with influential lobbyists. The dependancy on large amounts of land was known from early on, it was written about in the 1970's. There's a good argument that ethanol is a net positive for GHG production: https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible-fuel-emissions https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible-fuel-emissions but the counter argument is in practice GHG emissions continue to increase when there's an excuse to avoid travelling less in smaller cars and not develop better city transport infrastructure. All that aside; h2odragon has simply pivoted away from the paper bag V plastic claim onto another "those darn environmentals say one thing then another" talking point. They're not uniform, they're not the same people decades apart, and often the statements people quote come from idustry think tanks and don't represent what the general zeitgeist of scientists of particular periods considered as their breadth of thought.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    I agree with all of your comments. I did not mean to imply that "promote" mean "was effective." I believe, with low confidence, that ethanol's net positive for GHG production wasn't realized until the 1990s, due to an increase in corn yields from what was possible in the 1970s and the oil crisis.