The Oil Drum

That was exactly the topic of a debate I got into on Friday. I wrote it up as a TOD essay, but I had about decided to pull it since we have had so much ethanol stuff lately. But I explain exactly why this claim is absolutely, 100% false. The government official that initiated the e-mail exchange seemed to be taken aback that I didn't roll over and concede when he started arguing from authority (how can we all be wrong?), but I think he found out pretty quickly that he had bitten off a bigger bite than he had anticipated.

In the end, I got him to reluctantly agree to publication of the exchange, provided I deleted his name and agency. The exchange also involved Michael Wang, the originator of the claim, and Vinod Khosla. But like I said, I had almost decided to pull it because so much ethanol stuff has been written lately.

I find this assertion totally absurd!

Learn "PR Logic" :

When refining you need MORE than four gallons of crude to produce four gallons of gasoline.
Ergo, if it takes only 3 gallons of crude to produce four gallons of ethanol, ethanol is BETTER.

It is the line "better than gasoline" which will be remembered.

Plus, they are probably right about an ethanol EROEI of 1.25 and CANNOT be criticised for this.

Would anyone care to tell us how this genus arrived at this conclusion?

Ron, I think you meant 'genius' but since youre Darwinian I'll treat the question as written.

We are genetically predisposed to believe things will continue the way they are. If someone tells us about Peak Oil we will glom onto the first answer that is vocally backed by respected people, even if it is wrong. On a growing planet with more and more energy, those of us who were pessimistic had less resources and attracted fewer mates.  There has been a genotypic advantage to believe in abstractions and follow the cultural herd.

Regarding ethanol, RR has written extensively that these 'higher-ups' are focusing on one misleading graphic by the Argonne GREET model which shows efficiency of gasoline to be lower than EROI for ethanol. Apples and oranges.

What is largely missing from the debate are 3 more important issues:

1. When doing energy (or financial) analysis, we need to include the widest boundaries possible. Oil is so ubiquitous in our societies transportation, that to count all the energy inputs is almost impossible. If oil triples in price, can we assume all products necessary to make ethanol will be available, irrespective of price? (like steel for pipelines, new trucks, highway maintenance, tractors, fertilizer, etc)

2. An EROI of ethanol of 1.25:1 vs an EROI of gasoline of 10:1 gives net energy of .25 vs 9, or a magnitude of 36 times less net energy. We should care about the delta - the change in magnitude of energy gain for society, not whether something is slightly positive.

3. Most importantly, the ethanol debate is ignoring multicriteria analysis and focusing exclusively on the irrelevance or incongruence of Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Energy may or may not be the limiting factor in corn ethanol infrastructure. What is the Energy Return on Soil Invested? or Energy Return on Water Invested? These questions are not being addressed because currently we have bumper crops and the environmental damage is accumulating outside of the public eye.

But God would never allow us to run out of oil so Im not personally concerned....;)