With EROEI of around 1±0.4, alcohol is surely the road to Hell.
Food is one area where the USA has a significant energy surplus, and while this policy may aid rural economies in the USA it is likely to do untold harm to other areas of the world and to US image abroad.
... it is likely to do untold harm to other areas of the world and to US image abroad.
Is it really the US taxpayers duty to deliver highly subsidized cheap food to the rest of the world? I don't think so. People all over the world must learn to plant their food, where it is used. To ship food from one continent to the other does not make sense at all.
Also to remember: The EU is currently expanding ethanol and Biodiesel production on a unprecedented scale. And nobody here in Europe cares about its image "abroad".
Is it really the US taxpayers duty to deliver highly subsidized cheap food to the rest of the world?
No of course its not - but back in the good ol' days when the Americans were the goodies, they did. This has bred a dependenecy and several hundred million people - so I guess I feel that if you provide the food that allows a population to survive / explode, then is there not a moral obligation to sustain it, or at least to manage its decline.
We're in a mess, and I don't see using a major part of the world's food supply to sustain a 50 mile round trip commute in a tank is a wise approach to the solution.
Hey - I've just had an idea - put LNG in the tank (that technology has been around for decades) and keep growing food. I'm not sure how wide spread bio-fuels are here in Europe, but with EROEI close to 1 you are as well paying farmers to paint stones white.
While nat gas does release as much CO2 when burned as other fossil fuels considerable amounts of CO2 are released at or near the wellhead. Measured on this basis nat gas isn't any better than gasoline.
That's a new one for me. Whilst I know of nat gas reserves that contain significant CO2 that are not being produced because of this, I never heard of considerable amounts being released at the well head on a routine basis - refs please.
At any rate this misses the point. Using nat gas to make corn ethanol is a way of upgrading the energy quality from a gas (nat gas) to a liquid (ethanol) - with the bonus that it keeps farmers and Wall Mart happy. Nat gas can be upgraded to a liquid much more effectively by freezing and compressing it - you just cut out all the labour growing corn etc. - so long as you are happy sacrificing some space in your trunk for an LNG tank. In fact, USA is importing increasing amounts of LNG - why not stick this straight in your tank? Cut out all this regassification crap as well.
So thats the choice - sacrifice some space in your trunk or let thousands starve to death. Which do you think is the right answer if the USA wants to regain some of the substantial amounts of international good will lost in the last 6 years?
About 30% of the natural gas produced for lng is consumed to generate the energy to liquify it, trasnport it, and then gasify it. The co2 released during this process is not always considered in the overall co2 calculation.
I too had heard that much ng is released - in the worst way, that is, unburnt - in the production process. Not routinely, I suppose, but when plugged wells leak, etc. In addition, some gas associated with oil production is still flared, and this co2 release is probably not charged against the oil that is later burnt.
Ah - now that's somethings completely different - energy consumption in LNG production and gas flaring - u seen the pictures of gas flaring in Siberia in Gore's book?
But all this is still irrelavnt to my central theme, which is that temperate latitude ethanol seems to be a total waste of time. Our society runs on large surpluss production of energy.
Hat tip to Roel who sent me this a few weeks back:
Which do you think is the right answer if the USA wants to regain some of the substantial amounts of international good will lost in the last 6 years?
Wrong question. I doubt many care that much about international good will.
FWIW, my employer recently took delivery of a bunch of natural gas powered cars. And promptly returned them as unacceptable. Too small. They said there wasn't enough room for passengers and equipment, especially since there's no trunk on such vehicles. (The gas tank takes up the whole trunk.) They asked for minivans instead, but apparently, nobody makes natural gas powered minivans.
The French are also more effective in providing aid to New Orleans than those incompentent Americans in Washington DC.
Just talked with firefighter in line in grocery store. The only reason that we have ANY fire protection in the 80% of the city that flooded is because of our good friends the French. They sat down with the NOFD and selected which stations to rebuild and they "just did it". The other fire stations are still years away from any FEMA funding and the city is broke. Good ole French "Can Do" spirit !!
Fire risks, and fires, are up dramatically as people rebuild their homes and live in tents inside their gutted homes.
Reminds me of "what we lost" articles during bicentenial "celebrations" of Louisiana Purchase.
Universal health care, vacation all August, several nuclear power plants to get us off of natural gas for electricity. Cultural culinary exchange (we have done things with roux that the French never dreamed of :-) High speed trains and more streetcars (will we have to call them trams ?). A more melodic and expressive language. Tariff free access to the EU AND, most important, freedom from the stulifying, uncaring bureaucracy of Washington DC and getting a responsive gov't instead.
Best Hopes,
Alan
PS: I especially liked that part about immediately spending the French payment to buy back Louisiana on rebuilding Iraq. Bush certainly has his priorities straight !
The US cares about international goodwill when it needs the cooperation of other powers to achieve its ends.
For example:
- to hunt down international terrorist groups like Al Quaida
- to form a united front against Iranian nuclear ambitions
- to help extract itself from the mess that it is in in Iraq
- to help secure Afghanistan
- to maintain a united front against a crazed and nuclear armed North Korea
- to work out what to do about global warming
Now it turns out French intelligence is particularly good on the Islamic terrorist issue (having crushed Islamic terrorists in the early 90s, and being spectacularly well connected in the Middle East).
And before the invasion of Iraq, Syrian intelligence was very helpful in tracking down Al Quaida people (and Syria was part of the CIA Extraordinary Rendition aka torture network).
So GWB's bluster notwithstanding, the US needs the world, just as the world needs the US.
The US, and the EU, have applied immense pressure to open other, mainly developing world, markets to their exports. The subsidized industrial exports are in many cases cheaper than the local produce.
However, the industrialized countries do not open their markets to exports in the same way, and they subsidize their food producers, in part to have a measure of food security. ¿What is this food security for? Well, now you see.
The US did not promise cheap food to anyone, the same way as your local supermarket did not promise cheap food to you. ¿What would happen if suddenly no one sold food around you? The problem is, Moroccans cannot complain to anyone.
The subsidized industrial exports are in many cases cheaper than the local produce.
However, the industrialized countries do not open their markets to exports in the same way,
I don't think it is accurate to say that industrialized countries are less open to industrial imports than developing countries. I have seen considerable research that shows tariffs and other barriers are much higher in developing countries than in industrialized countries.
I suggest you try running your household on wild berries that only you pick - all your food, clothing, heat and shelter. You are allowed to trade your berries. If you can't find enough berries then you are permitted to pick mongo nuts.
Get back to me in a year and let me know how you got on.
I suggest you try running your household on wild berries that only you pick
Useless non sequitur.
The EROEI of ethanol does not matter as long as its positive.
Suppose the EROEI of ethanol is 1.0000000001, with all of the energy inputs being oil. Then turning the entire US corn crop (10 billion bushels) into ethanol will result in 25 billion gallons of ethanol, or the equivalent of 362 million barrels of oil. The net energy gain would be (1.0000000001 - 1)*362M = 1.5 gallons of oil.
A net gain of 1.5 gallons of oil, for the consumption of the largest corn crop in the world. Functionally useless in energy terms, and a horrendous waste of agricultural and human resources.
There are, I hope you'll agree, more considerations than simply "is it positive?" How positive, and where the input energy comes from, are both important questions when deciding how useful the product is. There's a limited amount of corn ethanol that can be made each year, and too low of an EROEI means the amount we can create won't be enough to make a substantial difference.
The conversion of coal or ng directly into liquid fuels must, by definition, be eroei negative. Nevertheless, there has been much discussion on TOD regarding when and how much of this might occur, eg it has already begun, I think, in China. I don't remember anybody worrying that the process would be negative, while there has been much concern that ethanol is, or is not, negative.
Ethanol and tar sands are both a conversion of ng + diesel into liquid crude that, apparently, is more valuable to the world. Why look at either of these in any different light than direct conversion? From this perspective it does not matter whether EROEI is positive or negative, naturally positive is better. One important issue is the relative amount of co2 released/unit liquid fuels... maybe ethanol is best? After all, a little of the energy does come from the sun.
And, raising corn prices - which, of course, means all grains - benefits farmers just as high oil/gas prices benefits the oil patch. And, these higher prices presumably mean that US farm grain price supports, which I think are price dependent, will decline even as the total paid for ethanol subsidies increase. Have no idea if the current ethanol vs grain subsidy environment is saving or costing the gov money...
A side benefiti of all this is that the public is becoming aware that fossil fuels are food, and vice versa. Perhaps a negative of both ethanol and tar sands is that increasing amounts of ng are consumed for these conversion at a time when NA ng production is declining, a point that the public will become aware of during the next cold winter.
All of us at TOD agree that Peak Oil is imminent, ergo a crisis of some magnitude vis-a-vis mankind's petroleum dependency rests on the horizon +- 'x' number of years given the data sets one chooses to adhere to.
Furthermore, the members here have pointed out that no combination of alternatives will satiate this oil dependency, therefore demand destruction (likely through hyper-inflated price increases) will be forced upon us irrespective of how prepared we are.
Now human nature posits that although some of us will cry and moan about TEOTWAWKI, others will set about implementing mitigation strategies although as Hirsch has adroitly pointed out, any mitigation strategies considered must be deployed at least 15 years prior of Peak.
The problem is compounded further, however, in that due to the geologic nature of Peak Oil, the true market signals needed to foster commercial alternatives -outside of a national impetus- will likely be too late to be effective, while a national impetus in its own right, means admitting that Peak Oil is real.
Catch-22.
But I digress.
When analyzing all the Peak mitigation strategies available, conservation stands above the rest - something I have always maintained. Why? Because conservation directly and expeditiously reduces the amount of petroleum consumed.
And therein lies the context of my assertion about ethanol and why ethanol EROEI is not important.
In my opinion, the only Peak mitigation strategies worth considering, are those with the lowest petroleum input ratios [PIRs] and whether one likes it or not, ethanol (even corn ethanol) has a very low PIR.
So conversion to liquid fuel is the goal 1:1 + change is not an energy loser. OK I follow you,interesting point, valid in context. Makes me want to buy an EV. I like your conservation comments and agree 100%.
I do think that EROEI "has importance". But it is not everything.
Return on Investment (ROI) is a stricter criteria, with a few clear exceptions, than EROEI. So if a company is investing in a project, it is fairly safe to conclude that it is EROEI positive with a few discrete exceptions:
1) Subsidies
2) Product quality improvements
3) Externalities
4) Sales margin or evaluating part of a process (i.e. a gasoline station is EROEI negative)
If the type of energy that are input are the same as those that are produced, it is impossible to have a project that is EROEI negative and ROI positive. Unless the input or output pricing is distorted
If the the quality of the output is better than a negative EROEI project can be ROI positive and useful. GTL, GTL and ethanol all fit into this category.
If an input is not counted, it can skew ROI. Corn ethanol production may not account for water, land and environmnetal destruction.
OK - I'll also permit you to catch Wildebeast - either using you bare hands or a bow and arrow - but not a gun cos it was made using the surplus energy from mining coal or drilling for oil. From now on you're not allowed to use anything in your life that was made using the stored solar energy contained in fossil fuel. If EROEI doesn't matter then this should not be a problem for you. Just go pick berries for an hour, gather some wood and mongo nuts, kill the odd widlebeast - then sit with your feet up for the rest of the day.
And so here's how it's done - team working helps, and so long as you are a lean mean running macine that can reach 70mph - you might just about survive. If you don't get in enough energy from the kill (and all those berries) to feed you and your family and all your mates then your stuffed.
Got to admit I don't understand why folks argue about EROEI - when I read about this first in Heinberg's book (a great read) it seemed like a no-brainer to me. In the finance world you can borrow or print money but in the energy world you can't - all you can do is steal it from a neighbour. But no one would ever dream of doing that - would they?
PS - the wildebast is an energy upgrading machine - producing concentrated proteins from grass.
In the finance world you can borrow or print money but in the energy world you can't - all you can do is steal it from a neighbour.
This is so true... What you can do (and is being done) is to arbitrage different energy forms based unequal BOE prices. Ethanol is a prime example, the Shell Shale Oil proposal to use cheap coal to turn "Tatar Tots" into oil is another. A few people can make a lot of money before the bottom falls out. This is also being played out in Alberta, at least the Tar Sands has a somewhat positive EROEI (for now)
You've managed to build a staw man argument built on false suppositions and make believe facts. How does this prove anything?
You misunderstand what I've done; let's look at the context:
The EROEI of ethanol does not matter as long as its positive.
Here you state that ANY positive EROEI for ethanol is okay.
I explained how there could exist a circumstance where ethanol had a positive EROEI yet would be considered useless by virtually everyone.
Ergo, more matters regarding ethanol other than it merely has a positive EROEI. It's a simplistic and unrealistic example, of course, but it's still sufficient for busting your universal quantifier ("for all positive EROEI, the EROEI for ethanol is okay"). That's one of the reasons universal quantifiers are usually a poor thing to use in a discussion.
Perhaps the low net energy of ethanol is why the oil friendly White House so strongly backs ethanol. If best practices were used there would be no need for fossil fuels to be used in ethanol production. Farmers could use totally organic methods with minimal irrigation while burning only only B100 in their equipment. Distilleries could use corn stover, solar, and wind power. At this point in time it is cheaper to use fossil fuels on the farm and distillery though this may change in the near future.
There is more to it, I think. The average person who hears this thinks that all they need to do is buy a flex-fuel car for their next car, and life will go on as usual, and that they won't need to make any sort of changes in their lives. It is a very seductive and comforting line of reasoning - I suppose if the EROEI were a lot higher, and we had the ability to grow enough fuel to replace 100% of the gasoline that we use, it might actually work, and we would be able to continue on - at least for a while.
You've inadvertently supported the "non sequitur" reference. You can "cherry pick" statistics, but the point remains that ultimate energy efficiency will be a function of the berries you can pick. The 10 billion bushels of corn you sited happens to be the high range of statistics kept since at least 1866. 70,944 thousand acres in 2003? 142.2 bushel per acre in 2003? You should see the 2004 statistics. 1917 seems to be the high range of acres used (110,893 thousand acres).
Let's remember what allows us to get 160.4 bushels per acre (2004). We have hybridized corn beyond it's already hybridized form to maximize corn "production". We till soil to maximize remaining nutrient availability and restore tithe destroyed by previous tilling. The hybrids aren't selected for resistance to disease (not what it was hybridized for), so we have pesticides. The pests acclimate to the pesticides, so we further genetically modified the hybrid to be resistant to ever more powerful pesticides. With lower soil quality and vulnerability to disease, we must add fertilizers (corn is a very heavy Nitrogen user). As the fertilizers become increasingly applied with yet more hybridizing to respond to them, we become increasingly plagued by weeds (pigweed is popular these days; quite nutritious to people, though, and fetch a high price at the organic grocery store under the name amaranth).
Yes, we have record yields, never before seen in agricultural history. However, this comes at the expense of one giant hydroponics exercise in the name of growing ever more food for humanity. As it becomes even more difficult to keep up with pests adapting to genetic modification and pesticides, we add increasing energy requirements to maintain this growth. USA didn't consistently grow more than 30 bushels of corn per acre until the 1940s, just sixty years ago. The rest of the 10
With EROEI of around 1±0.4, alcohol is surely the road to Hell.
Food is one area where the USA has a significant energy surplus, and while this policy may aid rural economies in the USA it is likely to do untold harm to other areas of the world and to US image abroad.
... it is likely to do untold harm to other areas of the world and to US image abroad.
Is it really the US taxpayers duty to deliver highly subsidized cheap food to the rest of the world? I don't think so. People all over the world must learn to plant their food, where it is used. To ship food from one continent to the other does not make sense at all.
Also to remember: The EU is currently expanding ethanol and Biodiesel production on a unprecedented scale. And nobody here in Europe cares about its image "abroad".
No of course its not - but back in the good ol' days when the Americans were the goodies, they did. This has bred a dependenecy and several hundred million people - so I guess I feel that if you provide the food that allows a population to survive / explode, then is there not a moral obligation to sustain it, or at least to manage its decline.
We're in a mess, and I don't see using a major part of the world's food supply to sustain a 50 mile round trip commute in a tank is a wise approach to the solution.
Hey - I've just had an idea - put LNG in the tank (that technology has been around for decades) and keep growing food. I'm not sure how wide spread bio-fuels are here in Europe, but with EROEI close to 1 you are as well paying farmers to paint stones white.
While nat gas does release as much CO2 when burned as other fossil fuels considerable amounts of CO2 are released at or near the wellhead. Measured on this basis nat gas isn't any better than gasoline.
That's a new one for me. Whilst I know of nat gas reserves that contain significant CO2 that are not being produced because of this, I never heard of considerable amounts being released at the well head on a routine basis - refs please.
At any rate this misses the point. Using nat gas to make corn ethanol is a way of upgrading the energy quality from a gas (nat gas) to a liquid (ethanol) - with the bonus that it keeps farmers and Wall Mart happy. Nat gas can be upgraded to a liquid much more effectively by freezing and compressing it - you just cut out all the labour growing corn etc. - so long as you are happy sacrificing some space in your trunk for an LNG tank. In fact, USA is importing increasing amounts of LNG - why not stick this straight in your tank? Cut out all this regassification crap as well.
So thats the choice - sacrifice some space in your trunk or let thousands starve to death. Which do you think is the right answer if the USA wants to regain some of the substantial amounts of international good will lost in the last 6 years?
About 30% of the natural gas produced for lng is consumed to generate the energy to liquify it, trasnport it, and then gasify it. The co2 released during this process is not always considered in the overall co2 calculation.
I too had heard that much ng is released - in the worst way, that is, unburnt - in the production process. Not routinely, I suppose, but when plugged wells leak, etc. In addition, some gas associated with oil production is still flared, and this co2 release is probably not charged against the oil that is later burnt.
Ah - now that's somethings completely different - energy consumption in LNG production and gas flaring - u seen the pictures of gas flaring in Siberia in Gore's book?
But all this is still irrelavnt to my central theme, which is that temperate latitude ethanol seems to be a total waste of time. Our society runs on large surpluss production of energy.
Hat tip to Roel who sent me this a few weeks back:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiofuelsBiodevastationHunger.php
(Chris - you still got to write a post on this one)
Wrong question. I doubt many care that much about international good will.
FWIW, my employer recently took delivery of a bunch of natural gas powered cars. And promptly returned them as unacceptable. Too small. They said there wasn't enough room for passengers and equipment, especially since there's no trunk on such vehicles. (The gas tank takes up the whole trunk.) They asked for minivans instead, but apparently, nobody makes natural gas powered minivans.
Well they should.
They'd rather boycott French fries.
The French were right!
The French are also more effective in providing aid to New Orleans than those incompentent Americans in Washington DC.
Just talked with firefighter in line in grocery store. The only reason that we have ANY fire protection in the 80% of the city that flooded is because of our good friends the French. They sat down with the NOFD and selected which stations to rebuild and they "just did it". The other fire stations are still years away from any FEMA funding and the city is broke. Good ole French "Can Do" spirit !!
Fire risks, and fires, are up dramatically as people rebuild their homes and live in tents inside their gutted homes.
Viva La France !
Alan
Well, this is no surprise since the French now own Louisiana.
We could only hope and pray.
Reminds me of "what we lost" articles during bicentenial "celebrations" of Louisiana Purchase.
Universal health care, vacation all August, several nuclear power plants to get us off of natural gas for electricity. Cultural culinary exchange (we have done things with roux that the French never dreamed of :-) High speed trains and more streetcars (will we have to call them trams ?). A more melodic and expressive language. Tariff free access to the EU AND, most important, freedom from the stulifying, uncaring bureaucracy of Washington DC and getting a responsive gov't instead.
Best Hopes,
Alan
PS: I especially liked that part about immediately spending the French payment to buy back Louisiana on rebuilding Iraq. Bush certainly has his priorities straight !
.
That's Freedom Fries.
The US cares about international goodwill when it needs the cooperation of other powers to achieve its ends.
For example:
- to hunt down international terrorist groups like Al Quaida
- to form a united front against Iranian nuclear ambitions
- to help extract itself from the mess that it is in in Iraq
- to help secure Afghanistan
- to maintain a united front against a crazed and nuclear armed North Korea
- to work out what to do about global warming
Now it turns out French intelligence is particularly good on the Islamic terrorist issue (having crushed Islamic terrorists in the early 90s, and being spectacularly well connected in the Middle East).
And before the invasion of Iraq, Syrian intelligence was very helpful in tracking down Al Quaida people (and Syria was part of the CIA Extraordinary Rendition aka torture network).
So GWB's bluster notwithstanding, the US needs the world, just as the world needs the US.
But not enough to actually drive a car without trunk space.
You guys need bigger cars with bigger trunks.
Americans, on the whole, have more than enough 'junk in the trunk'.
"- with the bonus that it keeps farmers and Wall Mart happy."
Euan - your off hand comment is probably very close to the real reason. As the Pres says - Go shopping!
The US, and the EU, have applied immense pressure to open other, mainly developing world, markets to their exports. The subsidized industrial exports are in many cases cheaper than the local produce.
However, the industrialized countries do not open their markets to exports in the same way, and they subsidize their food producers, in part to have a measure of food security. ¿What is this food security for? Well, now you see.
The US did not promise cheap food to anyone, the same way as your local supermarket did not promise cheap food to you. ¿What would happen if suddenly no one sold food around you? The problem is, Moroccans cannot complain to anyone.
I don't think it is accurate to say that industrialized countries are less open to industrial imports than developing countries. I have seen considerable research that shows tariffs and other barriers are much higher in developing countries than in industrialized countries.
*not* in the case of agriculture. Nor particularly in services (banking etc.)-- I'd have to check that though.
In manufactured goods, yes, generally I think.
The EROEI of ethanol does not matter as long as its positive.
Weren't you trying to say that the EROEI of ethanol does not matter at all as long as it puts money into the pockets of trolls like yourself?
Prove me wrong.
I suggest you try running your household on wild berries that only you pick - all your food, clothing, heat and shelter. You are allowed to trade your berries. If you can't find enough berries then you are permitted to pick mongo nuts.
Get back to me in a year and let me know how you got on.
Useless non sequitur.
Suppose the EROEI of ethanol is 1.0000000001, with all of the energy inputs being oil. Then turning the entire US corn crop (10 billion bushels) into ethanol will result in 25 billion gallons of ethanol, or the equivalent of 362 million barrels of oil. The net energy gain would be (1.0000000001 - 1)*362M = 1.5 gallons of oil.
A net gain of 1.5 gallons of oil, for the consumption of the largest corn crop in the world. Functionally useless in energy terms, and a horrendous waste of agricultural and human resources.
There are, I hope you'll agree, more considerations than simply "is it positive?" How positive, and where the input energy comes from, are both important questions when deciding how useful the product is. There's a limited amount of corn ethanol that can be made each year, and too low of an EROEI means the amount we can create won't be enough to make a substantial difference.
Yeah I'm hoping Euan will outline how that berry metaphor was supposed to work.
As for the remainder of your post...
You've managed to build a staw man argument built on false suppositions and make believe facts. How does this prove anything?
That said, you did highlight the single most important factor when considering any Peak mitiagation strategy - nice work.
Syntec, I'm interested in reading your arguments. Please, can you elaborate a little bit more? Why EROI has no importance in your opinion?
The conversion of coal or ng directly into liquid fuels must, by definition, be eroei negative. Nevertheless, there has been much discussion on TOD regarding when and how much of this might occur, eg it has already begun, I think, in China. I don't remember anybody worrying that the process would be negative, while there has been much concern that ethanol is, or is not, negative.
Ethanol and tar sands are both a conversion of ng + diesel into liquid crude that, apparently, is more valuable to the world. Why look at either of these in any different light than direct conversion? From this perspective it does not matter whether EROEI is positive or negative, naturally positive is better. One important issue is the relative amount of co2 released/unit liquid fuels... maybe ethanol is best? After all, a little of the energy does come from the sun.
And, raising corn prices - which, of course, means all grains - benefits farmers just as high oil/gas prices benefits the oil patch. And, these higher prices presumably mean that US farm grain price supports, which I think are price dependent, will decline even as the total paid for ethanol subsidies increase. Have no idea if the current ethanol vs grain subsidy environment is saving or costing the gov money...
A side benefiti of all this is that the public is becoming aware that fossil fuels are food, and vice versa. Perhaps a negative of both ethanol and tar sands is that increasing amounts of ng are consumed for these conversion at a time when NA ng production is declining, a point that the public will become aware of during the next cold winter.
this, I think will change
And higher food and energy prices leading to higher interest rates benefit the debt laden consumer?
Absolutely.
All of us at TOD agree that Peak Oil is imminent, ergo a crisis of some magnitude vis-a-vis mankind's petroleum dependency rests on the horizon +- 'x' number of years given the data sets one chooses to adhere to.
Furthermore, the members here have pointed out that no combination of alternatives will satiate this oil dependency, therefore demand destruction (likely through hyper-inflated price increases) will be forced upon us irrespective of how prepared we are.
Now human nature posits that although some of us will cry and moan about TEOTWAWKI, others will set about implementing mitigation strategies although as Hirsch has adroitly pointed out, any mitigation strategies considered must be deployed at least 15 years prior of Peak.
The problem is compounded further, however, in that due to the geologic nature of Peak Oil, the true market signals needed to foster commercial alternatives -outside of a national impetus- will likely be too late to be effective, while a national impetus in its own right, means admitting that Peak Oil is real.
Catch-22.
But I digress.
When analyzing all the Peak mitigation strategies available, conservation stands above the rest - something I have always maintained. Why? Because conservation directly and expeditiously reduces the amount of petroleum consumed.
And therein lies the context of my assertion about ethanol and why ethanol EROEI is not important.
In my opinion, the only Peak mitigation strategies worth considering, are those with the lowest petroleum input ratios [PIRs] and whether one likes it or not, ethanol (even corn ethanol) has a very low PIR.
So conversion to liquid fuel is the goal 1:1 + change is not an energy loser. OK I follow you,interesting point, valid in context. Makes me want to buy an EV. I like your conservation comments and agree 100%.
I do think that EROEI "has importance". But it is not everything.
Return on Investment (ROI) is a stricter criteria, with a few clear exceptions, than EROEI. So if a company is investing in a project, it is fairly safe to conclude that it is EROEI positive with a few discrete exceptions:
1) Subsidies
2) Product quality improvements
3) Externalities
4) Sales margin or evaluating part of a process (i.e. a gasoline station is EROEI negative)
If the type of energy that are input are the same as those that are produced, it is impossible to have a project that is EROEI negative and ROI positive. Unless the input or output pricing is distorted
If the the quality of the output is better than a negative EROEI project can be ROI positive and useful. GTL, GTL and ethanol all fit into this category.
If an input is not counted, it can skew ROI. Corn ethanol production may not account for water, land and environmnetal destruction.
OK - I'll also permit you to catch Wildebeast - either using you bare hands or a bow and arrow - but not a gun cos it was made using the surplus energy from mining coal or drilling for oil. From now on you're not allowed to use anything in your life that was made using the stored solar energy contained in fossil fuel. If EROEI doesn't matter then this should not be a problem for you. Just go pick berries for an hour, gather some wood and mongo nuts, kill the odd widlebeast - then sit with your feet up for the rest of the day.
And so here's how it's done - team working helps, and so long as you are a lean mean running macine that can reach 70mph - you might just about survive. If you don't get in enough energy from the kill (and all those berries) to feed you and your family and all your mates then your stuffed.
Got to admit I don't understand why folks argue about EROEI - when I read about this first in Heinberg's book (a great read) it seemed like a no-brainer to me. In the finance world you can borrow or print money but in the energy world you can't - all you can do is steal it from a neighbour. But no one would ever dream of doing that - would they?
PS - the wildebast is an energy upgrading machine - producing concentrated proteins from grass.
This is so true... What you can do (and is being done) is to arbitrage different energy forms based unequal BOE prices. Ethanol is a prime example, the Shell Shale Oil proposal to use cheap coal to turn "Tatar Tots" into oil is another. A few people can make a lot of money before the bottom falls out. This is also being played out in Alberta, at least the Tar Sands has a somewhat positive EROEI (for now)
You misunderstand what I've done; let's look at the context:
Here you state that ANY positive EROEI for ethanol is okay.
I explained how there could exist a circumstance where ethanol had a positive EROEI yet would be considered useless by virtually everyone.
Ergo, more matters regarding ethanol other than it merely has a positive EROEI. It's a simplistic and unrealistic example, of course, but it's still sufficient for busting your universal quantifier ("for all positive EROEI, the EROEI for ethanol is okay"). That's one of the reasons universal quantifiers are usually a poor thing to use in a discussion.
Perhaps the low net energy of ethanol is why the oil friendly White House so strongly backs ethanol. If best practices were used there would be no need for fossil fuels to be used in ethanol production. Farmers could use totally organic methods with minimal irrigation while burning only only B100 in their equipment. Distilleries could use corn stover, solar, and wind power. At this point in time it is cheaper to use fossil fuels on the farm and distillery though this may change in the near future.
There is more to it, I think. The average person who hears this thinks that all they need to do is buy a flex-fuel car for their next car, and life will go on as usual, and that they won't need to make any sort of changes in their lives. It is a very seductive and comforting line of reasoning - I suppose if the EROEI were a lot higher, and we had the ability to grow enough fuel to replace 100% of the gasoline that we use, it might actually work, and we would be able to continue on - at least for a while.
Pitt,
You've inadvertently supported the "non sequitur" reference. You can "cherry pick" statistics, but the point remains that ultimate energy efficiency will be a function of the berries you can pick. The 10 billion bushels of corn you sited happens to be the high range of statistics kept since at least 1866. 70,944 thousand acres in 2003? 142.2 bushel per acre in 2003? You should see the 2004 statistics. 1917 seems to be the high range of acres used (110,893 thousand acres).
Let's remember what allows us to get 160.4 bushels per acre (2004). We have hybridized corn beyond it's already hybridized form to maximize corn "production". We till soil to maximize remaining nutrient availability and restore tithe destroyed by previous tilling. The hybrids aren't selected for resistance to disease (not what it was hybridized for), so we have pesticides. The pests acclimate to the pesticides, so we further genetically modified the hybrid to be resistant to ever more powerful pesticides. With lower soil quality and vulnerability to disease, we must add fertilizers (corn is a very heavy Nitrogen user). As the fertilizers become increasingly applied with yet more hybridizing to respond to them, we become increasingly plagued by weeds (pigweed is popular these days; quite nutritious to people, though, and fetch a high price at the organic grocery store under the name amaranth).
Yes, we have record yields, never before seen in agricultural history. However, this comes at the expense of one giant hydroponics exercise in the name of growing ever more food for humanity. As it becomes even more difficult to keep up with pests adapting to genetic modification and pesticides, we add increasing energy requirements to maintain this growth. USA didn't consistently grow more than 30 bushels of corn per acre until the 1940s, just sixty years ago. The rest of the 10