![]() | Remember Where the Offshore Rigs Are and What They Can Take? | The Oil Drum | The Energy Balance of Ethanol versus Gasoline | ![]() |
212 comments on DrumBeat: August 27, 2006
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212 comments on DrumBeat: August 27, 2006
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I find this assertion totally absurd! Ethanol has a better ERoEI than gasoline? Would anyone care to tell us how this genus arrived at this conclusion? Does it take three gallons of fossil energy to produce four gallons of gasoline? I don't think so!
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.
If they believe it, it is not deliberate misinformation.
I think you are wrong to ascribe such venal motive to people you don't even in know in total absense of evidence.
Ethanol or biodiesel producers can make lot of money by convincing people that it has better energy return on investement than gasoline. It hasn't, they know it, they deliberately make it look like it nonetheless, they make their money.
Are we not allowed to talk about the motives of people who hurt us, now? Because that's what this propaganda does.
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.
Now just one more question, are these people really that stupid or are they just dishonest?
The Shapouri study also considers distiller byproducts, the mash that is left over after fermentation, to be credits against the energy costs, when in fact this protein slurry will end up being more a municipal waste problem than an asset.
We can not blandly and blindly assume the best. Read Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood;Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower, by David Pimentel, and Tad W. Patzek, Natural Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005. This most recent research on this complex subject has yet to be refuted
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:
- 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)
- 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.
- 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....;)This is the scariest part. We can irrigate and fertilize our way into real-life deserts... just like the Middle East after the Sumerians. There is plenty of literature (google for it) relating irrigation to soil salinization. It's discussed in Jared Diamond's "Collapse" i.e.: the repeated application of surface water pulls salts from deeper sediments. Beyond that...any serious backyard gardener knows industrial fertilizers eliminate soil fungi and bacteria. Important tilth markers like earthworms simply disappear.
The ethanol path assumes the soil-aquifer system is endlessly robust. In Diamond's book, nearly every collapsed society made exactly the same assumption.