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375 comments on The Energy Balance of Ethanol versus Gasoline

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Nate Hagens on August 28, 2006 - 1:45am

Robert,

Clearly the ethanol advocates are not concerned about net energy. Mr Khoslas comment

It is time to stop asking the wrong question of "energy balance" or even the somewhat less wrong question of "energy balance relative to petroleum" but rather ask the two right questions (a) how much petroleum use can we displace per gallon of an alternative liquid fuel...

entirely misses the point that replacing one gallon of oil that society receives leverage of 10-15 times with one gallon of ethanol which society gets .3-.6 'leverage' implies borrowing resources from other areas of the non-energy economy in order to produce the ethanol. This does not imply that ethanol in itself is a bad product, but misses the larger issue that the commodity its trying to replace is truly awesome in its impact on our world, and cannot be replaced easily. See A Net Energy Parable for a primer on net energy.

Also, (although you take Argonnes results as given), I disagree with their boundaries of analysis, especially for long term sustainability purposes. 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 nearly 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, farm tools, labor, insurance, etc). Furthermore, Argonne models assumed the best yields and states for growing corn. To use corn ethanol nationally, it needs to be trucked because it picks up water in normal oil pipelines. This energy cost isnt factored into the models. Also, a tankful of ethanol can transport a car only 70% as far as a tankful of gasoline, so requires more fillups and driving 'downtime'.

Most importantly, the ethanol debate is ignoring multicriteria analysis and your critics are focusing exclusively on the irrelvance of the energy balance. Energy may or may not ultimately 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 ecological deficits are not being calculated in financial ethanol models.

If government subsidies were removed and full ecological and societal boundaries were used in the analysis, corn ethanol would take the same path it did in the 1970s.

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jokuhl on August 28, 2006 - 5:50pm

Thanks TLS, RR;
Is there a reliable evaluation available for the amount of water required to produce a gallon of Corn Ethanol, including Ag inputs and whatever would be involved in refining, if any? I think that this argument, which is already very valuable, needs to start adding some of the other very real costs of building a dependency on Ethanol, to add to the Eroei question. Whether Khosla or 'Tom' or Wang is convinced of that particular Value Judgement, I think the costs of this 'alternative' need to include some of the other costs that laypeople will recognize as a vital part of the equation.

(Those who think regular people can't add might not agree with this. I think people are smart when given good information and a chance to process it)

Bob Fiske

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