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End the Ethanol Rip-Off
- guscost 12y agoI'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. Here's a good resource if you're looking for ethanol-free gas in the US and Canada: http://pure-gas.org http://pure-gas.org
- swah 12y agoIn Brazil, the amount of mandatory ethanol in gas was raised to 27%, to stimulate ethanol producers.
- guscost 12y agoIf the rumors are true, that mix could also eat through an otherwise reasonably efficient four-cylinder in record time, which would be a shame.
- sigzero 12y agoNot to mention motorcycles...yeesh.
- dataker 12y agoBrazil uses sugar cane, so the process is more efficient than in the US
- swah 12y agoWhat about the environmental impact comparting to the US method?
- superflit 12y agoIt is drastic. My sister worked in one of the farms... The crop is not good? It went spoiled? Well light this matches and watch it burn.. yes literally The cities nearby suffer a lot with respiratory problems specially kids. But you will not see that on News the companies pay a lot to "promote" their eco images
- dataker 12y agoThey actually burn it to avoid harm to the workers and use its ash to fertilize their land. However, mechanization has reduced the need to burn fields and pollution has gradually been decreased.
- dataker 12y agoIt has similar issues, such as using fertilizers and water usage. At the same time, one of the main issues is deforestation in the Amazon and field burning before harvest. Still, it probably still makes sense to use it. For example, its energy balance(ethanol/energy for its production) is ~8-10 whereas in the US is ~1-2.
- pedalpete 12y agoI've always wondered about this argument in an environment suffering from an obesity epidemic, often blamed on another corn product, high-fructose corn syrup. Having lived in many different countries, the cost of food in the US is incredibly low. I assume (and have heard) this is mostly a result of subsidies to farmers. All the while, US exports of 'corn based products', which I assume is also corn, has continued to grow http://www.fas.usda.gov/data/us-exports-corn-based-products-continue-climb http://www.fas.usda.gov/data/us-exports-corn-based-products-....
- guscost 12y agoThis is an important point, American farm output is strongly manipulated by other subsidies and regulations. But I don't think there's any reason to believe that rising domestic corn prices would not have an effect on the larger domestic and foreign food markets, or that the effect would be good.
- eastbayjake 12y agoI'm hopeful that normalized relations with Cuba will be the end of our crazy corn subsidies. If you want to make ethanol, sugarcane is 7x more energy efficient in producing ethanol compared to corn, and you can produce twice as much ethanol from an acre of sugarcane as an acre of corn[1]. And if you want to sweeten food and beverages, the same energy efficiency applies to cane sugar harvesting: you can get more sugar with less harvesting energy per acre of sugarcane than corn. (Although there's little science supporting cane sugar being healthier than high-fructose corn syrup.) It seems like the Cuba detente has broken a constituent stalemate in Congress: a small group of Florida sugarcane farmers corner the market on US cane sugar and no one has wanted to normalize relations and import sugarcane from Cuba because of those farmers' political clout, even though our countries' comparative advantage should dictate growing sugarcane in poor, developing Cuba and exporting it for food and ethanol use in the US.[2] There's been a gentlemen's agreement among senators that props up these farm subsidies because no one wants to rock the boat and jeopardize their own state's subsidies, but California is pushing back as our farmers get hammered by drought and Florida now has little to lose for opposing Midwestern farmers' lucrative corn subsidies. [1] https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/ethanol/case-study-brazil/sugarcane-vs-corn-based-ethanol/ https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/... [2] http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tastes-for-consumers/ http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tast...
- soylentcola 12y agoNot to mention that it's essentially impossible to find non-ethanol fuel nearby to put in my motorcycle. It's not exactly the best thing for carbureted engines. I understand that I'm in the minority and I wouldn't expect an otherwise sensible policy to change on behalf of people who commute on motorcycles and scooters but I wouldn't complain if it became easier to avoid.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y agoNot good for plastic gas tanks either.
- lutorm 12y agoSince ethanol has been a part of fuel for many decades, the vast majority of auto parts today are fine with ethanol. There are exceptions, like the Ducati gas tanks, but by and large ethanol is not a problem in any fuel-injected vehicle.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y agoTriumph has had the same problem with their plastic tanks and have somehow managed to avoid a recall like Ducati did. It doesn't help that European vehicles aren't designed to account for an alien fuel.
- modoc 12y agoAs the owner of 3 ducatis, a snow blower, and a generator... when ethanol gas sits around for a while it does awful awful things:( Fuel stabilizers help a little, but the only way to REALLY make things work is to either run the engines at LEAST once a week all year, or to fully drain everything, and then deal with another sort of hassle when you need the generator running immediately.. While my car runs the ethenolized gas okay, it kills me knowing that I'm losing HP/efficiency just due to corn subsidies:(
- maxerickson 12y ago
- joezydeco 12y agoHow much petroleum is used to produce ethanol, from seed to harvest to processing? The answer seems to vary depending on which side of the ethanol/no-ethanol fence you ask. It's hard to find real numbers.
- lutorm 12y agoThe majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.
- analog31 12y agoNot to mention the greenhouse footprint of cattle farming. You can't really feed more people -- at least in the US -- because we already consume food in quantities that are arguably toxic. But you could turn the corn fields over to other kinds of crops. Disclaimer: I eat meat, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week.
- ArkyBeagle 12y agoIt's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. Each side ( and oh boy are there sides ) cherry picks their own figures. I know that in Texas, the biggest reason people let family land that could be used for cow-farming go is taxation - there are Land Trusts that allow you to keep nominal control of the land while agreeing never to use it productively again, to get a tax abatement. Also, the lyrics to James McMurty's "South Dakota" from the new record are really interesting on this subject. I mean - we call noodging "eat your vegetables". I like vegetables just fine, but I like meat, too. I doubt the results of any of the analyses since anybody who gets paid to do the work will probably be biased by who pays them. And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Using acres of Western Kansas for grazing seems pretty low-impact relative to that.
- Inception 12y ago>>It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. It is hard to say for certain, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the inputs required to raise cattle. Water, grain, antibiotics, petroleum based fuels to plant, harvest and transport the grain, petroleum based fertilizers to aid in growing the grain, and herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted organisms (I'm sure I missed something). Not to mention a few of the by-products such as manure and chemical run-off, methane emissions, and soil erosion (from conventional agriculture practices). The above describes a CAFO, which is where the majority of beef comes from. Managed intensive rotational grazing would be my preferred alternative, but there still wouldn't be enough land available to keep up with our consumption. >>And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Can you please site some of the sources that you are using to determine that vegetable farmers are receiving more subsidies than any other industry? I assume you meant "the biggest receivers of any sort of Agriculture subsidy", but I still don't think that is right.
- D_Alex 12y ago> It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. OTOH, ten years ago, the prices for farm products were so low that farmers in countries with no farm subsidies could not make ends meet. The biofuel industry has at least had the benefit of making the lot of farmers in such countries - who by the way were among the poorest people in these countries - a bit less dismal.
- guscost 12y agoThat sounds like an argument for rolling back the farm subsidies, not adding more laws to balance them out.
- fennecfoxen 12y agoAre there more poor people in the world who are farmers who benefit from this, or are there more poor people who purchase food who will suffer or starve?
- yason 12y agoHunger has never been a problem of production in particular but of distribution. For decades, there's been plenty of food for everyone on this planet; it just hasn't been distributed, by politics or by markets, evenly and probably won't be in any time soon. It doesn't necessarily mean growing vegetation to produce ethanol fuel is a good thing but not doing so wouldn't make things effectively better either. On the other hand, at least the process is renewable unlike fossil fuels. On the other hand, it would make sense to grow this biofuel only in places where the environment is optimal for the most aggressively ethanol-producing plants. The bigger problem is the demand for fuel. You could build cities where you don't need millions of people to consume fuel in order to merely get by their ordinary days moving between work, shopping groceries, and home. Unfortunately, those cities don't seem to be built until fuel prices get high enough that it's cheaper to abandon suburbia and rebuild the city based on walking and public transit.
- 12y ago
- sliverstorm 12y agoThere are uses for (some) ethanol in gasoline. It boosts octane and decreases CO production (smog) by increasing fuel oxygenation, for starters. Oxygenated fuel is fuel with extra oxygen that is released during combustion. Nitromethane is an especially dramatic example: The oxygen content of nitromethane enables it to burn with much less atmospheric oxygen... The amount of air required to burn 1 kg (2.2 lb) of gasoline is 14.7 kg (32 lb), but only 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) of air is required for 1 kg of nitromethane
- shard972 12y ago> It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Then why on earth is the Australian government making us put this shit in our cars unless we want to buy 100% premium fuel.
- sjwright 12y agoMate, many of our servos sell straight 91 RON fuel. Check your local Caltex, United or 7-Eleven. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2224794 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2224794
- eru 12y agoI blame it on the people voting for the Australian governments.
- shirro 12y agoOnly the sugar cane growing states and the politicians bought by the cane sugar industry. You can buy fuel with ethanol in the other states at shitty "discount" outlets but many people avoid it. The major outlets generally don't sell it. It has lower energy density so you aren't getting better value, and while every modern car here is designed to run it in theory hardly any manufacturers recommend it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- analog31 12y agoA chemist told me that ethanol is actually cheaper to produce directly from petroleum, than via corn. I'm not sure he meant oil or natural gas. The ethanol subsidies are strictly for corn based.
- Qwertious 12y agoI've heard that ethanol production actually uses more fuel than it produces, so you'd be better off just not producing it and using the fuel directly. On the other hand, it allows oil companies to pretend they're doing something about climate change (without changing any of their infrastructure) and it gives farmers more money, so you'd have to take on the oil lobby AND the farming lobby to get rid of it.
- lutorm 12y agoThe "uses more fuel than it produces" argument is a bit of a red herring. Gasoline also "uses more fuel than it produces", because it takes a substantial amount of fuel to bring one gallon of gas out of the ground, refine it, and truck it out to the pump.
- HNaTTY 12y agoThat doesn't make any sense.
- GhotiFish 12y agoIt's a confusion of the concepts "Expenses" "Profits" and "Revenue" say you have 100 barrels of revenue, but you must expend 60 barrels to get the 100 barrels, then you have 40 barrels of profit. you consume more barrels than you produce. See?
- Gustomaximus 12y agoCan you expand on this claim? I figure there is some word play here around 'gasoline' and 'fuel' definitions, otherwise logic dictates this doesn't meet basic logic. E.g. diesel isn't included in gasoline but is in fuel used to power trucks/machines etc. I'm curious if this is an interesting fact, or wordplay to make something sound interesting.
- jschwartzi 12y agoDoes anyone know what the relative cost of MTBE is vs. ethanol? One of the reasons ethanol is added to gasoline is to increase the octane rating. We used to use MTBE instead. I'm curious if the argument against ethanol continues to bear out when considering alternative octane boosters.
- lutorm 12y agoWell, MTBE was phased out because of groundwater contamination. If you include cleanup costs, I doubt it would be cheaper than ethanol.
- Spooky23 12y agoDepends on how you define cost. MTBE infiltrates groundwater very easily, and cleaning up contaminated sites is ridiculously expensive.
- maxerickson 12y agoThis characterizes MTBE production costs: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/special/pdf/mtbecost.pdf http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/special/pdf/mtbecost.pdf It uses oil and natural gas feedstocks, so goes up and down with them. I guess it is somewhat cheaper to produce than ethanol, something like 1/2 the cost when the various input costs make the comparison the worst, and similar at other times (this is just a ballpark guess, not based on any careful analysis).
- post_break 12y agoAs someone who runs E85 because it's essentially race gas for about $1.25 a gallon, I'm conflicted.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y agoWhich gets you what exactly? You can do racy things with an engine running on 87 octane with the two wheeled varieties more than capable of satisfying any speed lust.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoEvery performance sports bike I've owned (capable of 15K rpms) requires high octane fuel because of the compression they run at (~11:1). 87 octane fuel in a race engine?? No. No. No.
- TylerE 12y agoE85 is SO far from "essentially race gas". It has much LOWER energy density than non-ethanol gas. It takes 1.39 gallons of E85 to have the same energy as 1 gallon of conventional dino juice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent The only way to get more power with E85 is to have some sort of extreme engine running INSANE amounts of turbo boost, like the Koenesegg CCXR. In a normal street car any level of octane high enough to keep the engine from pre-detonating is more than sufficient - there is no boost in power.
- lutorm 12y ago"Race gas" is commonly understood to refer to octane number. E85 is 94-96 octane, according to wikipedia, which enables you to run higher compression or higher boost. The fact that it has lower energy density just means you burn more of it, so your tank runs out faster. It has nothing to do with the power you can get out of the engine.
- modoc 12y ago
- mrbabbage 12y agoFurther reading for the interested: - "All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. However, many important environmental effects of biofuel production are poorly understood. New metrics that measure specific resource inputs are developed, but further research into environmental metrics is needed. Nonetheless, it is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology. " http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5760/506 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5760/506 - "[Prior] analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. " http://www.whrc.org/resources/publications/pdf/SearchingeretalScience08.pdf http://www.whrc.org/resources/publications/pdf/Searchingeret... This second citation is key. Most of my friends who aren't studying this stuff all the time aren't aware of the critical role land use changes (e.g. deforestation) plays in global carbon emissions, and biofuel's perturbation of international food markets tends to accelerate these deleterious trends.
- PythonicAlpha 12y agoThank you for making all the citations! I made my post (with similar subject, but without citations) before I saw yours.
- minthd 12y agoIt looks like there's a company, prottero that makes sucrose by bacterias,using a special bioreactor, at less than half the cost, much smaller area and probably much less environmental harm. So it might be that ethanol will be green, or at least greener. http://www.proterro.com/ http://www.proterro.com/ Another nice benefit is that sugar is a very useful input in many bio manufacturing industries.And many of those products are much more controlled than what nature offers(like healthy dairy fats for the food industry by solazyme), so if available at the right price, they could be quite important, and low cost sugar could be helpful here.
- IgorPartola 12y agoThis article directly contradicts my understanding of some key points. For example, does the production of corn ethanol really increase food prices? I was under the impression that the US overproduces so much corn that the farmers were specifically getting tax credits to produce less of it. Also, is growing and harvesting this corn (taking out the final burning of ethanol out of it for a moment) a net positive or negative in terms of carbon emissions? Is the fact that the corn is growing and absorbing carbon dioxide enough to offset the planting, fertilization, and harvesting? What about all that + conversion to ethanol + disposal of the conversion byproducts? The real question is this: what is greater? (a) CO2 emissions from planting, harvesting, transporting, converting, disposing of corn + CO2 emissions from burning the ethanol + CO2 and other emissions from having to recycle/downcycle/dispose of engines that die earlier because ethanol is bad for them. or (b) CO2 emissions from drilling/fracking for oil, transport, refining, disposal of byproducts + CO2 emissions from burning gasoline. If I accounted for all the factors, the questions of whether a > b or b > a should determine the policy. There is of course a (c) CO2 emissions from mining and transporting coal/oil/natural gas to the power plant * loss factor for transporting the electricity + losses in charging systems + CO2 and other emissions from mining and processing lithium and manufacturing, transport, and recycling of lithium ion batteries.
- snowwrestler 12y agoFrom the perspective of global warming, all that matters is the net contribution of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels to the atmosphere. The reason oil companies object to the Renewable Fuel Standard is that it results in lower net usage of oil. If it resulted in higher net oil usage, they wouldn't oppose it. So that answers your question.
- eru 12y agoIt's not quite as simple. Oil companies are interested in making money, not in your burning oil. If they could make more money with your burning less oil (eg by raising oil prices high enough without damaging demand too much), they'd go for it. In this case, the conclusion might still hold. But the proper argument has one more step.
- jmspring 12y agoVaguely unrelated, but petroleum politics, especially between the US And Europe are weird. I've got a diesel VW, I get roughly 40MPG, and my car has 3 catalytic converters in it. I live in California. Last year, my wife and I rented a diesel 7 series while in Europe (a minor upgrade to the car we had reserved). 70% of our driving was non-Autobahn, but still a lot in the 120kph range, with some traffic. 30% Autobahn, having fun. A larger car, a larger engine, comparable mix of driving to what I do at home, yet still roughly got 37MPH. Smaller diesel cars, we've started way north of what I get in my Jetta for even faster driving. Europe seems to have cleaner diesel (and air) yet fewer contraptions in their cars (compared to CA) and comparable or even larger cars there meet or exceed lesser cars here.
- philwelch 12y agoEurope also seems to have less driving than California on account of actually having transit.
- maxerickson 12y agoThe EU generally does not have cleaner air than the US, despite more stringent regulations. Population density is a major factor. Diesel regulations are roughly equal (Europe got there earlier though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low-sulfur_diesel
- imsofuture 12y agoPlus, ethanol is bad in cold weather climates. As I understand it, it can phase separate and put a bunch of water in your tank (basically).
- pbreit 12y agoThe opposite: ethanol serves as a gas-line antifreeze.
- leetrout 12y agoEthanol most certainly causes fuel to capture and retain more moisture. Not sure about any antifreeze properties but on the whole it's not good for small carbureted engines.
- hueving 12y agoEthonal free gasoline doesn't freeze easily either so that isn't relevant.
- upofadown 12y agoThe ethanol absorbs any water and stops it from separating out. If the water separates out it can freeze in the fuel line and cause a blockage. In my part of Canada people were actually somewhat happy when the 10% ethanol showed up as it meant that you didn't have to add any fuel line antifreeze over the winter.
- ars 12y agoIt's sort of both. Ethanol does absorb water from the air. But that's how it works as a gas-line antifreeze: It absorbs undesired water from the fuel line and mixes with it so that you can burn it.
- leetrout 12y agoI live far below the Mason-Dixon line and I can't comment on ethanol in colder climates but I can tell you that I treat any ethanol gasoline for my small single cylinder engines in the can when I fill it up since we have such high humidity in the South in the summer and the ethanol will increase the moisture content in the fuel.
- pbreit 12y agoSounds like the perfect tax: driving is discouraged, cash flows to production instead of the government and it's (slightly) environmentally-friendly. And if we're getting into the details, how do we allocate the trillions of dollars spent on the Middle East?
- eru 12y agoWhy is cash flowing to people who can afford lawyers a good thing?
- pbreit 12y agoI think in general cash flowing to people/businesess who are working for it is better than it going to the government. In this case, the "subsidy" is exactly proportional to work performed.
- eru 12y agoIf you agree at all on having a government, then it needs some funding. And now, why should the government touch and move around more flows of money than are strictly necessary to fund it? More money touched and redirected just leads to more corruption and rent-seeking. If you want the government to have less money, let's just reduce eg the `sin tax on honest work' aka the income tax.
- PythonicAlpha 12y agoThe whole ethanol story is a weird one. In the EU ethanol was (and still is) promoted as "environment friendly". Facts are against it. There are plenty of studies, that ethanol is doing more harm to environment than it helps. The reason is, that conventional thinking that "corn growing reduces CO2" is just to simple. You must take into account all factors and also damages that are made by the ethanol production. And it is a fact, that rain forests and other natural plants are displaced by corn farms for ethanol. So conventional thinking "great we have more plants and CO2 is reduced" is just plainly wrong. This thinking was misguiding and misused by the ethanol lobbies. It would be better to stay on normal gasoline and at the same time reduce the gasoline usage of cars and factories in mid-term. In long term, we should go for better energy sources (preferably solar and wind energy). So, the environment is no valid reason for the ethanol promotion. What is the only (valid) reason to do so?: To get less dependent from the oil-countries. (so politics again) But the best way would be to get rid of this environment-costly energy source for real environment-friendly ones.
- troubled5 12y agoEthanol is "environment friendly" when compared to gasoline, the latter having no good environmental aspects making it a bit of a low standard to beat. The fact that rain forests are destroyed for corn plantations is probably independent of ethanol consumption, the ethanol driven investment mostly just increasing the existing rate at which deforestation happens. Corn is not only used for ethanol after all.
- PythonicAlpha 12y agoWe can argue right and left here. Fact is, that there are multiple studies (somebody also cited some here) come to the result that ethanol when every effect is taken into account is worse than mineral oil for the environment -- and who says different, is most likely paid by the ethanol lobbies. And to your "rain forests are destroyed anyway"-argument: You argue without any proof just by guessing. (BTW: rain forests where only one example, in fact, I don't know what areas are destroyed by fuel plants, but fact is, that there are areas destroyed and they are mono-cultures that grossly harm nature).
- molecule 12y agoEnd subsidized food burning: > Corn is the top crop for subsidy payments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year, guaranteeing demand, but US corn ethanol subsidies are between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_Sta...
- ck2 12y agoCongress only passes about 200 bills per year and declining. This kickback is never going to end and if it got close, someone would just put an anonymous hold on the bill until it died. But if you want to waste taxpayer money by renaming post offices after dead presidents, they are all for that.
- zobzu 12y agoNot to mention that ethanol means using food supplies - which, you know, a lot of people could use. (world hunger still being a problem)
- bcg1 12y agoThe food vs. fuel argument is total propaganda anyhow. As mentioned above, most US corn is used for cattle feed ... and incidentally is only DIVERTED for ethanol production. Even if it wasn't, over 90% of the corn produced in the US is GMO corn that is probably unfit for human consumption anyhow (I suspect GMOs are the tobacco of the 21st century, but only time will tell). The by-product of large-scale ethanol production is large amounts of dried distillers grains (DDGS). The starch that is consumed during distillation is not nutritional for the cows anyhow, and the DDGS are sold as a HIGH QUALITY feed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains). That said, large scale ethanol production is not the best way to produce fuel, especially when it could be quite easily distilled on site where it is harvested to greatly decrease the energy input for producing the fuel. It is not a coincidence that many large ethanol plants are owned by oil companies... this would be like Microsoft buying Red Hat, adding dependencies on ActiveX to the kernel, and then claiming that their studies show that Linux is total shit. Also, whether or not you have a law, they'll still add ethanol to the gas to increase the octane and act as an oxygenator, so I agree that tax subsidies and mandates need to end... also wars, political corruption, the income tax, and mass surveillance, but you have to start somewhere I guess.
- tim333 12y agoThe corn ethanol rip off is kind of ridiculous. I still have hopes though that algae produced ethanol may be cost effective. There's a company called Algenol that's been trying for a while with genetically modified algae and projecting cheaper than oil ethanol next year for quite a few years now but you never know - they may get there one day. ( http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/01/26/worlds-largest-oil-refinery-adds-algae-demonstration-project/ http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/01/26/worlds-larg... for example of their stuff)
- jrs235 12y agoI'm surprised no one has commented on the amount of fresh water we use to produce ethanol, particularly ethanol derived from corn. Water is needed to grow the corn and also in processing it. "The amount of water it takes to produce ethanol varies according to how much irrigation is needed for the corn, particularly since row crop agriculture for corn is the most water consuming stage of ethanol production. In Ohio, because of sufficient rainfall, only 1% of the corn is irrigated while in Nebraska 72% of the crop is irrigated. It takes 19 gallons of water to produce a bushel of corn in Region 5, 38 gallons in Region 6, and 865 gallons in Region 7. The Baker Institute estimates that producing the corn to meet the ethanol mandate for 2015 will require 2.9 trillion gallons of water. Most of this irrigation water is drawn from groundwater aquifers in a region that is already water stressed. Conflicts over water allotments have occurred in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies under the Great Plains and supplies 30% of the nation’s groundwater for irrigation, is in danger of running dry. Growing corn also requires a great deal of fertilizer, and extensive use of nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides is having severe impacts on water quality now. Fertilizer laden runoff into streams in the Midwest makes its way to the Mississippi River, and eventually contributes to the eutrophication (when algae bloom, then die, depleting the area of oxygen and suffocating plants and animals) in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2010, this dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was estimated to be almost 8000 square miles and it continues to grow. 2.39 million additional tons of nitrogen fertilizer will be needed to meet the 2015 mandate. Easily erodible and less productive land set aside by the conservation reserve program, that paid farmers to retire inferior land, is now being pressed back into service due to the lure of high corn prices. This land will likely need additional fertilizer and irrigation to be productive, which will result in more polluted runoff and water consumption. Although biofuels are promoted because they are said to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists argue that when the life cycle of ethanol production is compared to that of conventional gasoline, there may be no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at all. More corn is being planted on more land fertilized with nitrogen, resulting in additional air and water pollution from nitrous oxide, a chemical 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Processing corn to make ethanol requires substantial amounts of water for the grinding, liquefaction, fermentation, separation and drying procedures. Over the last ten years, however, some of the nation’s 200 biorefineries have been able to reduce water use from 6.8 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol to 3 gallons by boosting the efficiency of their equipment. South Dakota based Poet,the world’s largest ethanol producer is aiming to cut its overall water intake by 22% by 2014, and use only 2.33 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced. This would reduce its annual water use by 1 billion gallons." http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/21/ethanol%E2%80%99s-impacts-on-our-water-resources/ http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/21/ethanol%E2%80%99s-im...