246 comments on DrumBeat: June 1, 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
246 comments on DrumBeat: June 1, 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
- Some predictions on the forthcoming Russian-Ukrainian gas 'crisis'
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
—James Madison, FEDERALIST #57 (1787)
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Efforts underway to cap corn to ethanol production:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080601/OPINIO...
All city "think tankers" should be watching the morning farm reports that are broadcast weekly (usually on Saturday mornings). The excitement is almst palpable as the agriculture industry tries to figure out what to do with all of it's new found wealth and power.
The reporting is that the corn crop will not yield nearly as much corn as is needed to supply the ethanol industry, the animal feed industry and the food industry all at the same time. This means that the prospect of "cheap corn" in the near future is unlikely. Combine that with the staggering cost of natural gas, the fuel that really powers the ethanol industry (ethanol is essentially a gas to liquids industry, using solar power stored in food as the tool of conversion) and the raw materials cost to produce ethanol continues to skyrocket. The U.S. government has essentially subsidized this cost and mandated a market for ethanol, but if the corn cannot be delivered, the mandates become purely theoretical.
Sorghum to ethanol
The "ag industry" is now abuzz with the idea of substitution. Put the words "Sorghum to ethanol" into the google search bar and you will see what they mean. Sorghum or milo is now seen as the next potential source for raw material to produce ethanol. Agriculture departments at almost every major university are toying with programs to use sorghum as a source for bio-fuel. And as you would expect, projections of price increases for sorghum are pouring in. The problem is that sorghum is a major source of feed for animals, and thus we can assume that meat prices will be forced higher. And sorghum does not get us out of the continuing thirst by the ethanol industry for natural gas.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Congress seem to see what is happening, and are now freeing up huge chunks of land held in "conservation trusts" (what used to be called "set aside") and allowing it to be used as pasture. The land that will go to sorghum and corn production is already displacing land recently used for pasture, wheat, soybean, barley, and hops (look out beer prices!)and with sorghmum soon to go into cars, it will reduce the amount that can go into cows.
Note that all of this is happening at the very front end of the ethanol mandates. If we stay to the fully implemented mandates, it will require a 5 fold increase in ethanol production by 2020!
this would still produce only a tiny fraction of the liquid fuel the U.S. consumes. It is almost impossible to project the potential dislocation to food markets, grain markets, and natural gas prices such a program portends.
To all the mathamatical whiz kids at TOD who have written on the subject of EROEI, take heart in your vindication (most of all the dean of the school of ethanol debunkers, Robert Rapier), the marketplace is bearing your theories out.
The farmers, however are having a "field" day (agricultural pun intended) as the wave of increasing farm produce prices from the ethanal plan expand outward in all directions.
At the grocery store and in the food poor nations of the world, however, it is not such a pretty picture.
Soon, the ethanol program will collapse in it's own misguided math (my guess is that ethanol will "peak" long before crude oil does) as more and more people realize there are easier ways to get energy from the sun than using our food and natural gas supply to do it.
RC
Isn't the ethanol subsidy a fixed amount per gallon?
Seems like as the price of natural gas (for fertilizer) and diesel (for tractors and transportation) go up, the relative advantage of a fixed subsidy goes down. And politically, it's going to be hard to increase that subsidy in the face of rising food costs.
Sorry for re-posting this from yesterday's DrumBeat, but it seems appropriate:
The US produces a load of ethanol now -- 550,000 barrels per day (EIA figures)which is up 160,000 barrels per day from a year ago. A five fold increase would result in 2.75 million barrels per day -- in volume terms equal to more than 50% of current domestic US supply, in energy terms worth about 40%. So,if possible, this would be a substantial fraction not the minuscule fraction you posit. Add this volume of ethanol to an ANWAR, an equal volume of biofuels, a traditional US production of around 3 million barrels per day, and massive efficiency increases due to more fuel efficient cars, hybrids and V2G construction and it's possible we could be in a lot better shape dependence-wise come 2020.
Now there are serious problems with ethanol production. But they are not so dark or dire as you paint them. First, not all ethanol production uses natural gas to provide heat for fermentation. So your statement about ethanol essentially being a liquification program is a little off. Sure, you convert some energy into more of another, but the imputs are direct solar, diesel, fertilizer, electric from natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, etc.
The impacts on food are definitely negative and so the industry is now scrambling to diversify even as it tries to grow the ethanol base. We'll probably see less corn and more other things to include sorghum but also a growing base of cellulosic. A number of cellulosic refining operations are springing up this year as well -- enough to total more than 50,000 barrels per day in new production.
So the ethanol picture is more complex and we are likely to continue to see growth -- albeit struggling. I don't know if we'll reach the fivefold increase in ethanol by 2020 or if we can produce that total. Nor do I know if other biofuels will reach parity volumes. But we will likely see increases even as we make a step shift away from corn to diverse sources.
Ethanol was never a panacea. But it will continue to provide mitigation and, perhaps, power the farm equipment when we need it most. In the end, I think V2G with renewable/nuclear power is the preferred option. So let's hope that begins to pick up steam pretty rapidly as well.
If I understand it correctly you are saying:
Ethanol 2.75mbd (allowing for 5 fold increase)
Biofuels 2.75mbd (err! from somewhere)
ANWR 0.75mbd (if it ever happens/if they can achieve that flowrate)
Existing US production 3mbd (assuming no production declines)
Total 9.25mbd by 2020
Don't you think you're being just a little over optimistic?
Actually, 3 mbd is counting in the decline rate. We produce 5.5 mbpd now.
And yes, those figures were overly optimistic. But I'm quoting figures from optimistic sources. The original statement was an 'if even.' So I was covering that statement.
In my opinion, we're more likely to get this by 2020:
Ethanol: 1 mbpd (constrained by land, food and water issues)
Other Biofuels: .5 mbpd (see above statement)
ANWR: .5 mbpd (if opened)
New off shore: .25 mbpd (if opened)
US production after decline rate + enhanced recovery: 3 mbpd (actually, this figure is a bit pessimistic, but we have some really old wells and lots of off-shore sources that don't have a very long lifetime)
Total: 5.25 mbpd by 2020
Net loss -.25 million barrels per day plus loss in efficiency in ethanol.
I received a letter from a govt. official that the United States is expected to produce 7.5 bilion gallons of grain ethanol in 2008. The 2015 grain ethanol cap is for 15 billion gallons/yr. The total requirement for grain & cellulosic ethanol is 36 billion gallons by 2022. Since there is no large scale cellulosic ethanol due for some time, it is likely that the 15 billion gallon limit to corn ethanol production might be mandatory under strictest penalty of the law unless the law is amended.
This year the farmers planted 6% fewer acres of corn as they needed to try to fill a growing demand for soybeans and other crops. The early proponents of grain ethanol had argued that higher prices for corn could only bring more corn acreage planted. This myth is already debunked. The amount of new acreage being cleared is negligible compared to mandatory requirements for biofuels around the world.
An article published in the Boston Herald website today indicates that the ethanol margins after subsidies are currently so poor it is not economical to build new ethanol refineries. If the government had not meddled in the energy markets by requiring mandatory fuel blending the market could correct itself. With mandatory blending the situation might cause a huge blow to motorists who might be required to pay higher costs at the pump for inefficient ethanol and higher food prices at the same time. The United States as the world's largest corn exporter is in serious danger of becoming a corn importer at a time when grain stockpiles are low.
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view/2008_06_01_Ethanol_at_...
Legal remedy is needed and there are people in government working to try to end the ethanol trap.
It's a tough spot. If you kill corn ethanol you lose 550,000+ barrels per day in domestic production so you get a knock-on effect to liquids supply. Then there's the food issue.
I expect this to be a bitter fight for all sides and lose-lose all around. That said, there is significant, though not extraordinary, new supply of cellulosic ethanol coming online.
But those .55Mbpd are somewhat illusory. First you have to subtract the fuel used to grow the additional crops, and transport and process it. Given the poor energy return on energy invested that correction is likely to be substantial. Then if you consider the largest damage to the US is due to the effect on our balance of payments, ethanol has left us with less food for export. If you properly account for all the effects, I don't think you will conclude that the ethanol program has been a net win.
Of course the quality of our political/policy debate within the US is so poor, that we can hardly expect that any honest attempt to access the true impact of a program will be made, or listened to.
Oh brother, here we go again...
1. Though some diesel inputs are used it is not more than a small fraction of the volume of ethanol produced.
2. Though natural gas is used in some inputs as well, it is not all of the net energy involved.
3. You can't run cars on natural gas at the moment so this energy input does not directly compete with transportation fuel.
4. So you still have a net volume and energy gain to transport.
5. Ethanol detractors overstate EROEI loss.
6. Ethanol proponents overstate EROEI gains.
7. Likely EROEI is slightly positive.
8. Increased ethanol production is reducing US oil imports.
Simply put, you can't remove the ethanol and not expect it to have a negative effect to transportation supply. What's most annoying to me is each side of the issue claims to have all the answers. It's either a panacea or it's the end of the world. The debate, in my opinion, has become silly.
You know, there are actual scientists, including Dr. Ted Patzek, doing actual science, making actual measurements and their findings indicate that ethanol is a net energy loser. This is simple to determine actually and Patzek and et al have done so. Please look up their research and quit foisting this science-illiterate nonsense on the gullible here.
For those of you who wish to invest in the ethanol future, I have a perpetual motion machine out in the garage.
Yes, the same 'actual scientist' who found that gasoline was also a net energy loser.
"Calls for the removal of ethanol from the marketplace would do precious little to reduce the price of food, but would send prices at the pump even higher by more than $1 per gallon. Ultimately, this deliberate smear campaign is aimed at destroying the base upon which the next generation of biofuels will be built. If this country were to jettison the starch-based ethanol industry, the development of cellulosic ethanol technologies and other biofuel advancements would be set back by decades, something those in OPEC and the oil industry would clearly welcome."
http://renewablefuelsassociation.cmail2.com/e/418171/ews4dy/
...the development of cellulosic ethanol technologies and other biofuel advancements would be set back by decades...
Oh, please. Really?
From everything I've ever seen on TOD, the cellulosic process, if it is ever made to work in practice on a large scale (and hopefully without releasing a bug that multiplies until it has liquefied all the world's plant life...), is very, very different in numerous respects from the far simpler starch process. Which is, after all, why we only have the starch process so far.
So what is the point of mucking up the world's food supply something fierce, by way of the many adverse primary and higher-order side effects of shifting too much land and too many resources into corn to support the starch process? That process is essentially unrelated to a cellulosic process that doesn't even exist yet. Just because the starch hypesters at your link, with their infinite thirst for taxpayer dollars, assert that it saves a buck on gasoline, that makes it a good idea? Give me a break!
I realize it's a lovely boondoggle for those on the receiving end of quasi-infinite wads of taxpayer cash. I realize as well that farmers deeply love to swim in taxpayer cash - though they have dwindled in numbers, we seem somehow to still have such a vast surplus (because the lifestyle attraction of be-your-own-boss-out-in-the-"country" trumps not only economics but just plain good sense?) that swimming in subsidy cash often seems far and away what many of them do best, and who wouldn't love it? On the other hand, I find government boondoggles to be very tiresome; on a bad day, I can almost get to thinking the whole government to be nothing more than a bunch of corrupt thieving crooks. If we really want to do coal-to-liquids, or we think we have so much natural gas that ought to do gas-to-liquids, there are reasonable and straightforward chemical processes for those operations, leaving absolutely no need to muck up the food supply.
100 million gallon cellulosic plant
http://earth2tech.com/2007/11/06/range-fuels-starts-construction-on-cell...
1.4 million gallon cellulosic plant
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/verenium-commis.html
Three other cellulosic biorefineries
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/doe-to-fund-3-m.html#more
This in addition to a number of other second-gen biofuels projects.
As for starch hypesters, as you call them (what is that, some kind of term the oil industry dreamed up?), I posted their links to match the starch hate burning a big red hole through this forum. If they're going to cite one extreme, it does well enough to hear the other side of the argument. Often, you'll find truth lies somewhere between the two.
If you need 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2022 and you have little more than 101 million gallons planed you fall short of your requirements more than 200 times. The loblolly pine plantations of Georgia were planted as these trees were preferred for pulp and construction timber. Thus you compete for valuable resources. The EROIE for cellulosic ethanol was stated as below 1.
If you have an EROIE of 1, then for every btu of energy you spend you get one back.
If you have an EROIE of 1.3 for grain ethanol, and you spend one gallon of ethanol to grow, harvest, transport, mill, ferment, and put ethanol back in the rack, then you only get 1/3 of a gallon in energy produced from the corn. If you use a bushel of corn to make ethanol you only get a third of the energy out of it as you had to use the other parts of it to get the corn and process it.
You decry hatred, but were sly in dishing it out. Contempt of a theory without investigation is dangerous. Your theories lead to a tripling of the price of grain and millions starving. Your continued dishonesty is irreprehensible. To slander someone by saying the person claimed there was a negative EROIE of gasoline is hype of the worse type. Some oil fields yield EROIE's in excess of ten. You cannot duplicate that in your overpriced cellulosic frauds.
Will try to clarify the situation:
CORN EXPORTS = 2-2.25 BILLION BUSHELS DEPENDING ON HARVEST SIZE
CORN HARVEST ABOUT 12 - 13 BILLION BUSHELS DEPENDING ON HARVEST SIZE
Ethanol yield of corn = 2.7 gallons per bushel
Grain ethanol cap limit (2015 USA) = 15 billion gallons
15 billion gallons of ethanol/2.7 gallons/bu= 5.6 billion bushels of corn required for ethanol production.
That might put you in the red (losses) and wanting over 3 billion bushels of corn for import. The energy policy acts passed in 2005 and 2007 were produced without contingencies to mitigate these problems.
Canada is requiring 10 percent ethanol blending by 2010.
There is biofuels production in Europe and Asia that may require corn and vegetable oil. Some of it is mandatory, thus the markets might not function efficiently, and the impact on grain stocks will be devastating.
WINTER WHEAT HARVEST (2008) FORECAST: 1.78 BILLION BUSHELS.
SPRING WHEAT HARVEST (2008) FORECAST: 2.4 BILLION BUSHELS.
Previously I used out of date harvest data and did not differentiate between winter and spring wheat to arrive at my assumptions.
The EROIE of ethanol is alleged to be in the negative territory. I can neither confirm nor deny those claims, but those who compared ethanol to gasoline did not always realize that ethanol gives you fewer miles per gasoline.
"a 2003 Ford Ranger FFV 2WD was tested running straight gasoline as opposed to running E-85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline). On pure gasoline it got 19 mpg, and on E-85 it got 14 mpg" That is 26% fewer mpg. There are figures to the left and to the right of this all over the internet. Most of them show you lower mpg's with ethanol and/or ethanol blended gasoline.
VonHeltzen: http://www.vonheltzen.com/Information.html
I know about lower efficiencies of pure ethanol/E85. If had you read my post you would have noticed that I mentioned lower pure ethanol net energy.
As for total volumes, it's not quite so simple. Much of the ethanol used also produces distillers grains which are used to feed livestock. So if you use 10% of the corn crop for ethanol, you still get a certain volume back in distillers grains.
As for EROEI, I've seen reliable figures ranging from 1.2 to 2.0. It's certainly not that great on EROEI, but it's not negative.
Cellulosic ethanol is moving apace, so any attempts to kill off ethanol based on corn alone will have to succeed in the next couple of years. Circa 2010, we have a valid diversification.
The dredges of the corn mash were devoid of sugar calories. Most of the corn energy content was from the sugars. If you get 30% of the corn mass leftover after distilling how many cows can you feed compared to whole corn? Cows were fattened quickly on corn sugar that is why it was used as a feed instead of using switch grass that grew very quickly. I read of a debate in Canada that the bioengineered corn for ethanol is not approved for human consumption and they were not certain it was fit for animal consumption either.
David Pimental of Cornell published a study that there is negative EROIE with corn ethanol. He was interviewed and pointed out flaws in the theory that corn ethanol has a modestly positive EROIE.
http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/08/philpott/
The United States 2007 gasoline consumption was 142 billion gallons or about 9.25 million barrels per day.
According to the Clean Air Trust ethanol only gets "34% less gas mileage" when compared to gasoline and diesel. http://www.cleanairtrust.org/E85-Gas-Mileage-Consumption.html This is much worse than earlier reports stating ethanol provided 80% of gasoline delivered energy content.
Thus your 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol that may be required by 2022, capped in 2015, times 34% equals 9.9 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent. Then you might wipe out almost 40% of your corn crop, all your corn exports, and need to line up more than 3 billion bushels of corn in a world full of grain shortages. Then you get less than 7% of your gasoline needs with a process that has a negative EROIE and then you end up with less energy than you started. If you did have as high as a 1.3 EROIE then you might take 30% of the energy from 9.9 million gallons of gasoline and you get 3% of your gasoline energy needs after subtracting energy inputs, Washington running up record deficits, trade imbalances, and a falling dollar. If in fact you have a negative EROIE for the process as an engineer has reported, then you made a worse deal for the United States than the Indians who sold Manhattan for some glass beads, grain alcohol, and smallpox infected blankets. Forty percent of the corn for 3% of our gasoline that could have easily been won by mandating a three perccent improvement in fuel mileage economy per vehicle is bad business.
I should with gladness like to cancel mandatory cellulosic ethanol production as well. It EROIE was reportedly lower that is why other nations did not beat you to it.
And Dr. Pimental includes calories burned by people doing farmwork in his EROEI equations...
"Looking more in-depth into Dr. Pimentel’s response, he is very detailed, maybe even too detailed. He includes in his results the “calories burned by the people doing the farm work. He not only calculates the energy needed to heat the water to ferment the grain, but also the energy needed to build the plant and all its parts – steel girders, concrete, and stainless steel.” Pimentel, when applying this equation to other energy sources, surprisingly considers gasoline to be a net energy loser “If you include the pumping and processing and so forth, it runs a little over 10 percent.” Skeptics of his results say he is not to include the energy cost of making the machinery, neither include the energy cost for feeding the people that work the machinery."
http://gog2g.com/2006/07/27/looking-into-the-eroei-of-ethanol.aspx
It's very clear some people are happy to scream and scream about ethanol. The truth is not nearly so bad as the picture you paint. Given, it is not ideal and I hope we don't have to use it for very long. But here we are with ethanol as one of the viable alternatives available to us.
Hopefully, we'll fast track V2G so that we can have more options as well.
I did not use a paint brush, but the text was a bit off at one point. The EROIE of 1.3 at the high end with 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol production would have provided closer to 2% of our gasoline energy needs while taking about 5.5 billion bushels of corn from a 12-13 billion bushel capacity. That is about 44% of our corn harvcest at 12.5 billion bushels/yr. One researcher was using an EROIE of .8 for corn ethanol and that would definately make for total wasted effort of building those stainless steel distillery drums to make too much alcohol. A scenario of no energy returned and 44% of the corn gone, with not so much as a food coupon in return.
Maybe the ethanol people may not talk so loud. Pride goes before a fall.
good points rainsong ! ethanol is a scam !
This one is for you Robert
... how low would you approve EROEI for ethanol to go, before you Robert would disapprove the very idea ?
Well, currently, we supply 550,000 barrels per day of ethanol by volume. That volume represents almost 5% current gasoline consumption and we do it with around 20-25% of the corn crop. Since the energy for ethanol doesn't come from gasoline your EROEI comparison doesn't make sense.
Now the US isn't going to allocate the entire corn crop to ethanol. It's switching to other feedstocks including those for cellulosic which, according to numerous sources have an EROEI of 2-36 depending on feedstock and method.
You keep quoting Pimentel's figures. Pimentel also found a negative EROEI for gasoline. So, according to your argument, cited researchers, and figures, there's no energy gain in gasoline, either.
Finally, distiller's grains have been used as cattle feed for some time with success. So, since ethanol production doesn't consume the entire product the total volume isn't consumed as fuel.
Oh, and in my experience, idiots spouting propaganda often scream the loudest. Farewell, and good luck with the screaming.
Jezz where do you get them numbers from, you are getting better by the minute :
Is this cellulosic ethanol or cellulosic magic fluids? EROEI of 36 ! It is better than all ready-made-crude-oil in the world today
I have heard enough let's wistle off this energy crisis today !
Just bye-bye Robert
No Paal, there are no magic 'fluids.'
The figures come from a number of places. Wiki references most:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
It's cellulosic magic fluids. Dammit, the process doesn't even exist yet. It's still a science project. (For the uninitiated, in these contexts, I use "science project" as in government-project bureaucratese. There, it denotes a cash cow that might work someday, but doesn't work now, and is almost certain to require lots and lots and lots of research grants before it ever works, preferably enough grants over enough time to carry the research team through to retirement, should it ever work at all. Unfortunately, the primary goal of too many research teams - ITER being a fine example - is to collect research grants and produce not just mountains, but entire mountain ranges, of bumf; getting a result may be a goal too, but a rather secondary one at best.)
100 million gallon cellulosic plant
http://earth2tech.com/2007/11/06/range-fuels-starts-construction-on-cell...
1.4 million gallon cellulosic plant
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/verenium-commis.html
Three other cellulosic biorefineries
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/doe-to-fund-3-m.html#more
These are small and medium scale production facilities. Not researchers in the mountains.
Who are you? The same person who has logged in under five separate names?
Your ethanol gallons have been found by some to be only about 2/3 of the gas mileage equivalent of gasoline, thus you have overstated the value of ethanol repeatidely. Nor do you satisfy complaints about damage done by associated rising food costs due to large scale destruction of foodstocks and grain inventory.
Well ethanol production hasn't stopped US food exports from making a banner year:
RECORD $108.5 BILLION AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS FORECAST FOR 2008
"May 30, 2008 – U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer today announced an updated quarterly forecast for U.S. agricultural exports – expected to reach a record $108.5 billion for fiscal year 2008. Today's upward revision is a $7.5 billion increase from February's previous record forecast and $26.5 billion above the final 2007 exports. Grains and animal products account for two-thirds of the export gains."
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2008/05/0141.xml
was that an attempt at answering my question ?
BTW the US imported oil in the vicinity of 665 BILLION DOLLARS OVER THE SAME PERIOD !
That is 6 imported oil monies per 1 exported food money. Or 6 monies out per 1 in , if you like.
Look at this when you are bored Robert
You had mentioned an impact on net food exports. It hasn't materialized.
As for oil, absolutely. It's obvious we import far too much at a dear cost.
sorry , my bad I thought you had an attemt at this one (from upthread), I cross eyed.
Since the very low figures are mostly manufactured, I don't have to approve of them.
A new book, called “Energy Victory”, debunks a number of ethanol myths and makes a strong scientific case in favor of ethanol. I suggest you look at it. It's written by scientist/engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin, who's a NASA consultant and researcher in Colorado. The book analyzes the energy input myth, citing the most recent and authoritative study, in Science Vol. 311 in January 2006: ethanol production requires one-tenth the amount of energy inputs as does gasoline production. (Sugar cane is a more efficient feedstock than corn used in North America, but corn is still dramatically more beneficial than crude-oil fuels.)
Sorghum, on the other hand, debunked in a number of posts above, has an energy density that's much closer to sugar cane. And if you produce ethanol directly from sorghum, without producing the sugar first, then you don't run into the ridiculous obstacle of artificially high sugar prices.
With regards to fuel imports, I think it's also worthwhile to add that the current US ethanol production reduces our import cost by approx $35 billion per year. Certainly not chump change.
Is that a tough spot ? At an eroei of 1,3 (ethanol : input energy) you only remove
Let's see (550 000 / 1.3 = 423 076 =>> 550 000 - 423 076 = 126 942 b/day
You remove the equal to 126 842 b/ day, but these very barrels drive the food prices through the roof .... with dire consequences Mr Marston . Just wait till TSHTF
If all the energy you plug into this equation were oil, then your comparison would have some intellectual value. As it stands, since most of the inputs come from things other than oil, it's pretty worthless.
You may also want to wipe that drool off your chin. I think you slavered when you typed 'TSHTF.'
Anyone else here get the impression some people want terrible things to happen?
oh yeah ?
Well I guess it is all about which foot you stand on and which side of your mouth you are talking with (IMO)
The lessons we've learned already is : The internal combustion engine must go , the sooner the better. B/c eventually IT WILL disappear.... for obvious reasons.
Use whatever energy put into the bio-stunts to produce electrisity - and get almost an order of magnitude more milage ..... and all this can be done with running standards of technology. What a win-win situation and what are "we" waiting for ? !
you say :
I say; What is so bad in using a small electric car and go 5-10 times as far for the same energy/effort/money ?
You seem paralyzed by the ICE Robert, there are other ways available
Actually, I couldn't agree with you more when it comes to electric cars. Will you please show me where I can buy one within my current budget of around $15,000 at a stretch?
From where I'm standing, it's use the ICE, my electric scooter, walk, bike or take public transport. The scooter is great for around town and groceries -- I use it out to about 10 miles. It's not a tough scooter and can make about 15 mph. But it doesn't use gas or ethanol. The bike is great for exercise and I use it out to about 5 miles. Sometimes when I'm feeling energetic and adventurous I'll take it further. And I really enjoy metro or rail services when I can access them. But if I want to sell books or get paid for presentations, I often need to use my car to drive to most events. Or worse, sometimes I need to fly.
So as a concept, I love the electric car. I want one. I hope to God we get them soon and I do think V2G is the way to go. But being an aware person, I understand that right now there are no viable plug in electric vehicles in the US market, that we're 1-5 years away from the first set of models, and that a full conversion will take between 10 years (crash conversion) and 35 years (slow market adoption). In the meantime, we must preserve infrastructure, and that may mean doing things imperfectly to keep things functioning.
Ethanol is an imperfect and obviously flawed mitigation. But right now, it's buying us a little time and pushing back the liquids decline curve. I hope that come 2020, we have a lot more in the way of electric vehicles to choose from so that we don't have to use corn for ethanol. I hope that well before 2040 we don't have to use liquids for fuel at all. And I hope that TS doesn't HTF so hard that everything comes flying to pieces.
A lot, I know, but as long as I'm breathing there's still reason to hope.
man , is this the same Robert? :-)
You seem to have done your part and further more now you come across to me as a resonable man with regards to what should be done -asap. That said - IMO - ethanol is not part of any mitigation necessities ..... it is skewing and blurring the obvious ; electric Now!
IMO the markets(industry/buyers) and/or the governments will grasp this value point much faster, if ethanol wasn't making up their entire field of view.
We'll just have to sit still and wait- and I'm breathing with you..
Well, just because I support both near-term ethanol and sustained development of EVs doesn't mean I'm not the same person. I can after all, support two or more potential mitigations to the same eminent problem. And while one may be more or less ideal than the other, the merit of mitigation is based on the diversity of your options. If you have only one mitigation to a life threatening disaster, if that one doesn't work or you can't use it fast enough, then you're dead.
Or to put it another way, if a storm surge sweeps in and you're caught in it and find yourself clutching a chunk of wood (ethanol) that keeps your head above water while you paddle over to that life-raft (V2G), then you'd be a fool to let go of the wood while you were still scores of feet away from the life-raft.
As many contributors here have noted, there will be no one solution that is likely to handle all of the peak oil problem. For my part, I support most of the mitigations, so long as the aim is not to exclude the others.
If we don't have enough time to manufacture them and if most don't have enough purchasing power to afford new electric cars, then perhaps some could attempt kit conversions of existing lightweight subcompacts already out there: VW beetles and Mini's converted to electric, would that use up less energy?
Of course that's assuming we'd still have power grid to manufacture and recharge the battery, still have the tires intact, the passable asphalt and the road security to operate them. And any decent place to drive to.
Well it would be nice if some kind of infrastructure to do this were put in place.
It costs $1.29 to make one $1 of ethanol.-Pimentel
Cornell U.
Yes, the same Pimentel who counts how much food machine operators eat as a part of EROEI. The same Pimentel who found gasoline to have a negative EROEI.
Just because you have a Cornell and a U at the end of your name doesn't mean you're infallible and that, suddenly, all other research is invalid.
"The Coalition finds much recent work, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture study by Hosein Shapouri (indicating that corn ethanol has an energy output/input ratio of 1.67) supports a positive energy yield conclusion. The Coalition furthermore finds that the main work arguing that ethanol has a negative net energy yield, produced by Cornell University’s David Pimentel, relies heavily on flawed and out-of-date data (from the 1970’s through early 1990s) and does not take into account energy costs associated with other co-products such as dried distillers grains (DDGs). At a basic level, critics of corn ethanol seem unaware that the production of ethanol from corn starch leaves essentially all the proteins and various other elements available for livestock feed and other purposes, and they are content to base their criticism on data that is so old that it is entirely unrelated to current farm practices."
http://www.ethanol-gec.org/netenergy/net-energy-yield.htm
The same Pimentel who found gasoline to have a negative EROEI.
As I scroll down, I saw you make this claim 3 times. I have read lots of Pimentel, and frankly have never seen this claim. Please reference.
The Coalition finds much recent work, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture study by Hosein Shapouri (indicating that corn ethanol has an energy output/input ratio of 1.67
Are you familiar with Shapouri's work? Do you know how he got 1.67? He took some of the energy inputs, and assigned a disproportionate amount to the DDGS. For instance, if it takes 2 BTUs to make 2 BTUs of ethanol and 0.5 BTUs of DDGS, I could assume 1 of my input BTU goes entirely to DDGS. Instant EROEI of 2.0 for ethanol (but then let's ignore the 0.5 EROEI for DDGS). You get the picture. You can make the EROEI anything you want by doing it this way. But you can't actually separate the two, so it is not an honest way to do it. You have to include all energy inputs and all energy outputs, and Shapouri did not do this. His actions are not those of an impartial scientist; they are the actions of a politically-driven agency.
Further, he admittedly didn't count all of the energy inputs (saying that there were not good numbers for some of them).
The two basic concepts to keep in mind here are 'price arbitrage' and 'energy fungibility'.
Farm commodity prices went up after most of the 2007 crop was sold right after harvest, the price increase reflects world grain supplies. The cost of production, especially for input intensive crops like corn have farmers planting more wheat and soybeans this year which take far less fertilizer. Farming is a bigger gamble today than ever before, a real crapshoot.
Can you reccomend a site for these farm reports?
I'm not a farmer and I don't even live in the US so I don't have the foggiest clue where to start here.
Delta Farm Press.
Progressive Farmer
Thanks