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75 comments on It's no longer 'oil', it's 'liquids'
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75 comments on It's no longer 'oil', it's 'liquids'
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So what are you going to put in your gas tank when gasoline becomes prohibitively expensive? You are welcome to walk, but some of us would rather use ethanol. Corn is not generally used as human food; it is animal food mostly. Animals are very inefficient at converting corn to human food. The "couple of billion people" will starve to death with or without ethanol as they have no money to by any food of any kind. What do you propose? That farmers should give away their corn to the starving? How are they to remain in business? Ethanol is not going away; so get use to it. The anti ethanol crowd at TOD are out of touch with what is going on. As gasoline rises in price with the increase in crude's price, ethanol will become more and more attractive. The only hope those opposing ethanol have is that corn's price rises to such a level (above $5.00/bu.) that ethanol becomes uneconomic. That would mean very high food prices indeed. The fundamental problem is that the market refuses to price corn appropriately in light of its energy content.
As I have been lurking and researching since mid 2005 I figure its about time I start to contribute here as well as lurk.
Practical,
I'm not sure that you are seeing all the sides to the problem with Ethanol. No, its not going to go away, but neither should it be touted as a 'solution' to the problem of peak oil /liquids. Its hardly even a "silver b.b." as I have seen it referred to here. The mono cropping that ethanol creates is inherently dangerous:
Currently in Brazil some of the plantations are the size of "European states, these vast monocultures have replaced important eco-systems,"
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0305-05.htm
"Financially, once an economy comes dependent on a single crop, it has the distinct potential of being devastate[sic] should pest or disease destroy that crop for even a single season. Environmentally, mono-cropping depletes the soil of various nutrients, permitting scant opportunity for it to replenish itself"
http://www.american.edu/ted/projects/tedcross/xagric3.htm
Add to that the lack of clear proof regarding a positive energy return on most corn based ethanols (sugar cane being an exception and to some degree cellulosic)
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2006/40/i06/abs/es052024...
and now include that ICE only have an efficiency of 15% on average.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml
Keep in mind that current crop yields are dependent on the FF fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and without them you are looking at a reduction of crop yields. So you plant more crops. Agriculture in the US currently uses 85% of the available water.
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/eating.htm
If we increase the crop size we will quickly hit peak water.
Also, mining the soil for fuel will simply exacerbate the rate of soil depletion. It takes 500 years to create 1" of topsoil, in prairie lands the soil is being depleted 30x faster than it can be replenished.
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/eating.htm
Add all these together and you have a reasonable argument to keep the land being as a source of food and not of fuel.
So it will still come down to the question, do you want fuel in your tank or food in your stomach?
MS in Ontario Canada
In the coming battle between the 'rightness' of our economic model, and the geological limits to growth, I have a strong suspicion that the geologic limits may win.
Currently in Brazil some of the plantations are the size of "European states, these vast monocultures have replaced important eco-systems,"
True enough and I won't even mention soy farming, but so do a lot of things we take for granted in our modern American world such as cities, roads, industry shopping malls, fast food restaurants, agriculture, raising chickens, pigs and cows to name a few. You don't seem to be interested in advocating a reduction of the eco-system impacts of all of these other things. Sounds like you are the pot that is calling the kettle black.
It doesn't have to be the way you describe it.
http://www.biofuelsnow.com/Ethanol%20From%20Sugar%20Cane.pdf
•Why is sugar cane ethanol so efficient?
•First, because of the sugar cane plant itself
•Sugar cane fixes nitrogen from the air
•The farming process
•No irrigation needed
•All energy for industrial process comes from burning bagasse
•Industrial process produces surplus electricity, sold to the grid
•Nutrients from bagasse ashes are recycled
•Nutrients from vinasse are recycled
Great presentation. Repeat after me: There is no sugar cane grown in the Amazon (slde 3). Organic sugar cane has an EROEI of of 12:1. Much better for environment and climate than oil.
It's not going to save the world, but sugar cane-based ethanol does work.
WOW what a welcome to TOD....
"You don't seem to be interested in advocating a reduction of the eco-system impacts of all of these other things. Sounds like you are the pot that is calling the kettle black."
Instantly reducing yourself to an ad hominem attack is hardly the way to engender a positive response. If you had started your response at "it doesn't have to be the way you described it" your whole response would have a different feel to it. As it stands, I have a sour taste in my mouth wrt your response and am less likely to pay attention to any science you have to back up your statements. But I will move past that and do my best.
I did concede that Ethanol will play a part (I even stated that sugar cane was an exception did have a positive energy return!!). As will all forms of renewable energy play their part. But blindly worshiping at the foot of one technology is how we became addicted to oil.
And how, by questioning the applicability of ethanol to ease world peak oil am I not "interested in advocating a reduction of the eco-system impacts of [lot of things we take for granted in our modern American world such as cities, roads, industry shopping malls, fast food restaurants, agriculture, raising chickens, pigs and cows to name a few]"?
How you could infer such a stance from one singe post (my very first here) that I am such a anti-enviro minded person?
May I pose other ethanol related questions? (or will I get attacked personally again for daring to question the role of ethanol?)
So then how do we grow sugar cane in other parts of the world then?
How much sugar cane would need to be grown organically to slip in place for oil?
How are the problems of monoculture farming avoided?
How are the problems of P&K addressed?
Wasn't I talking about corn based ethanol anyways???
MS in Ontario Canada
In the coming battle between the 'rightness' of our economic model, and the geological limits to growth, I have a strong suspicion that the geologic limits may win.
Upon second read I admit my response to you was a bit off base. It's just that as someone who lived the ethanol experience in Brazil I reacted a bit from the gut in defense of that reality. To be honest what I got from your critique was something that upsets me quite a bit, namely what I consider to be a sort of arrogance of those who have created quite a mess both ecologically and economically in their own countries to criticize others who are trying other systems.
That does not in any way mean that I advocate the use of sugarcane based ethanol as a panacea to our energy needs. Nor by the way am I a great fan of monocultures for all the reasons you mentioned and I consider myself to be an environmentalist as well. So my apologies for the bad taste in your mouth due to my response. Having said that I still would like to import the excess ethanol that Brazil has already produced and have access to that technology here in the USA. BTW I'm not stuck on the "the 'rightness' of our economic model," Quite the contrary I believe it needs serious reexamination and some of has to be discarded or at least modified. Cheers.
Enviro Tech,
Welcome to The Oil Drum! I thought your comment was well thought out and summarised the arguments against sugar cane. You missed only one other I'd mention-that sugar cane requires either peonage/slavery to keep the EROEI positive. Its subsidised in South Louisiana and Florida as part of . the hate Cuba embargo, but, only there are the returns high enough to farm sugar cane in any modern society.
Sorry you had a rude introduction. Most of the folks posting here are very decent people who evaluate your arguments and respond politely. But like almost everwhere, we attract some jerks, so it helps if you are insensitive and a bit boorish. Please don't let this dissuade you from posting again!
Bob Ebersole
Bob, You might be describing me and that's ok because I have a pretty thick skin to begin with and sometimes I have a tendency to shoot from the hip. BTW you may also have noticed that after cooling off a bit I apologized to Enviro Tech. However despite what you say about peonage/slavery being the only way to keep EROEI positive I don't believe that is true.
I have lived both in Florida and Brazil among other places and certainly am aware of the perverse social conditions that exist in some parts. They can be addressed and changed if there is political will to do so. Just for the record this is being addressed in Brazil, ironically not so much in the Land of The Free. Though I'm sure it will also happen here eventually.
I've been wondering if sweet sorghum wouldn't prove to be a better ethanol feedstock for the temperate US than corn (maize). It won't compare with tropical sugar cane, but that can't be grown in temperate zones, whereas sorghum can. In fact, sorghum can be grown everywhere that maize can, and farmers can use the same equipment to plant it. (They may need to at least modify their harvesting equipment, as what they want to harvest is the cane and not ears. This should not present an insurmountable obstacle.) My understanding is that processing of sweet sorghum would not be all that different from the processing of sugar cane.
I wouldn't expect an EROI of as high as 12:1, but even an EROI of only 4:1 (which, as best as I can determine, is getting close to what might be expected for sweet sorghum) looks a whole lot better than the <2:1 obtained from maize ethanol.
Strange that no one at all seems to be talking about this.
Yep, it is a problem. But as far as monocultures go, sugar cane is one of the best to have. There are little problems with pests and very little (if any) soild deletion. Also, an european state is normaly quite small.
Yees, that happens if an economy is dependent on a single crop, and you have an agricole economy. Nedless to say that Brazil is far from both. (Do I need to say again that an european state is normaly quite small?)
Yes, sugar cane is an exception.
Not a lot for sugar cane. Sugar cane is mostly planted on bad terrains (but not as bad as Amazon), where nothing else would grow, uses very little fertilizers and pesticides. Also, it doesn't use herbicides at all (unless you are trying to get rid of the cane, but cows are better for that task anyway).
I don't know if there are exceptions, but people don't irrigate cane.
Ethanol from sugar cane works. Get over it. The only problem you can point is that it is not enough.
I believe I DID say sugar cane works... The post before mine referred to CORN ethanol - I intended to respond primarily to THAT. I aplogize if I made that unclear
My post was written in mostly in response to CORN ethanol (plant in switchgrass and whatever else you want for corn that can be grown in temparate climates)
and for a point of reference, one of the smallest EU states is Luxemburg with a size of 999 sq miles. I know, there are other farms out there with crop fields ranging in this magnatude, but "just because others do something, doesn't make it right".
MS in Ontario Canada
In the coming battle between the 'rightness' of our economic model, and the geological limits to growth, I have a strong suspicion that the geologic limits may win.
Despite sugarcane having a higher energy return, people I know who lived in Brazil when it was started have not painted it as a giant rosy picture at the time. Also their production of sugarcane, and more soy to replace supplies from the US going to biodiesel are pushing other crops deeper into the rain forest for arable land.
Also they have a hell of a lot fewer cars which means they DRIVE a lot less than we do; we already outproduce them in ethanol (with no end in sight to our biofuels thirst, oh, unless a nice recession pushes the price of oil way back down for awhile).
http://www.sfbayoil.org/sfoa/myths/index.html
The market may not price corn "appropriately" but it also does not price petroleum with any intelligence at all.
The market has no clue about the value of corn.
The market has no clue about the value of petroleum.
The market is a rigged casino game.
Ultimately no one wins -- not even the House.
The so-called free market is all about war.
Eventually everyone is sucked up into the war as the House self-destructs.
How can we know or express tha value of anything without degrading it into a "commodity?" This label destroys the thing we supposedly value so much.
Only when things are understood as gifts can they truly be valued and used wisely.
We're not doing so well on the wisdom thing.
I am with Practical on the ethanol debate. A lot of anti ethanol from people that don't live in the corn belt.
The U.S. corn belt was a near mono culture of corn and soybeans long before ethanol came along. In Iowa we are working on 70+ years of hybrid corn production.
The fear that a huge ethanol boom would cause farmers to plant corn year after year with no bean rotation has not come to pass, at least in 2007 in Iowa. The reason is biodiesel demand for bean oil has kept bean prices high as well. There is a slight reduction in bean acres but many farmers will make good money on beans this year because input costs are less, corn prices are low, and altering the ratio of corn to bean acres just a bit influences the pricing which never gets discussed much in projections.
What farmers know (and knew years ago) is that as energy prices rise the cost of farming and food rises. It always does, it just takes a few years for increased costs to work through the system. All prices are rising, not just food, so don't single farming and ethanol out as the driver for costs.
This time around the farming community (world wide IMHO) is buffering itself from those prices by converting some of the output into high value energy products.
I agree that currently they are not totally competitive with Petroleum but give them a few years to optimize the system and get off petroleum as much as possible. Farmers are looking for ways to cut input costs which is the fastest way to make the EROEI of biofuels more positive. No till farming, chicken manure, ladybugs, etc. are all being employed on multi thousand acre farms.
The hunt is on for driving costs down and each person has a different approach. What works will be kept, what doesn't will be abandoned, but it will take years of high energy prices to prove what method is best. A return to low prices would penalize the unconventional approaches.
Ultimately the farming community will be producing much of its own liquid fuel as well as feedstock for fine chemicals. It has already started with Dupont and others converting glycerine (from biodiesel) into base chemicals.
The readers of TOD want change, well it is happening right before our eyes. Unfortunately the reality of change is not as painless as our vision to reduce oil, but it is change. It took the world 100+ years to become an oil culture. We can't just change everything in a decade or so.
It will take a long time to find a new way. It will be painful and hard work for many of us. We will make lots of mistakes along the way. There is NO easy answer or solution to peak oil. So we can complain that others are doing the wrong thing(s), or we can roll up our sleeves and get to work finding solutions.
It is your choice, but you might find that implementing your solution (ask Alan Drake) is damn hard work with little gain for years. So before disparaging others attempts remember they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.
What have you (the posters on TOD) built and marketed that gets us off oil?
I'd rather walk, or bicycle. I can't wait until we run out, or at least low. My town is entirely accessible by foot or bike, but everyone drives. My neighbor drives her fat kids 1800 feet to school. One day I took out my 7 iron and bounced the ball into the parking lot.
As for food, I can probably live off the flesh of all the pigeons who now call my solar panels home. Damn things!!!
Long live the Interstate Bicycle System. You don't need electrified railroads, you need a bike and no cars. If it rains, wear a jacket.