A gentle cough for the Washington Post
Posted by Heading Out on May 21, 2006 - 4:34pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: ethanol, iowa [list all tags]
Iowa, the top corn-producing state, is the nation's ethanol leader, generating 25 percent of U.S. ethanol in towns such as Coon Rapids and Steamboat Rock. In addition to 22 ethanol refineries in operation, the state has seven under construction and at least 20 are being planned.The boom here has largely been a grass-roots phenomenon, fueled by clusters of growers, bankers and small-town professionals. Aspiring biofuel plant owners have been barnstorming the state, delivering investment pitches in firehouses, schools and community centers.
Six thousand farmers have bought in.
But consider what else the story says
The state legislature this year passed incentives designed to increase the percentage of ethanol and biodiesel in Iowa fuel sales to 25 percent by the end of 2019. Three of every four gallons of gas sold in the state contain at least 10 percent ethanol, although most of the state's production is shipped elsewhere.In the most productive corn state, ethanol will only, in fifteen years, supply 25% of the fuel needed. Given that this is the case, one wonders whether there is a great deal of sense in building a significant number of vehicles that can drive at the higher levels of ethanol concentration, since there being only a limited space where corn will grow profusely and the statement
unlike that of crude oil, the potential supply is virtually unlimited and close to home.is not really true.
Nevertheless, as I commented some weeks ago, those that are currently investing in plants are seeing a relatively rapid return on their investment
When Horan and his partners sought $20 million for each of three new biodiesel plants, no request took longer than 10 days to fulfill. In one case, the offer was fully subscribed in eight days and the organizers sent $2.5 million back. Horan said banks have been willing to lend large sums with no collateral other than the refinery itself."People will drive all the way across Iowa to come to a meeting," said Horan, who grows soybeans and corn on 4,000 acres in Knierim, about 100 miles northwest of Des Moines, with his brother Joe. "It's the opposite of Big Oil. It's Little Oil. It's our oil."
I can see the sense in investing in ethanol at present, but I don't see the benefit in making vehicles that will drive at the high percentage concentrations (85% and above) since I cannot see how we can expect to see more than perhaps 7 - 10% contribution to the overall supply in the next fifteen years and at those concentrations the current engines will, I believe, function quite well.
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2006/5/17/162954/563/1#1
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2006/5/19/105144/022/2#2
Maybe that's preaching to the crowd over there, and here, but for all the progress we are making on peak oil, I think "E85 everywhere" is the most pernicious of current memes.
I don't know why it took so long for what you are saying to sink in. I had "heard" you before, but I hadn't really HEARD you. It just sunk in. Right now, gas stations nationwide can sell E10. Yet we can't even make enough E10 to saturate all of the gas stations. So, why even put in more expensive E85 pumps? Why demand them everywhere, when there is not hope that they could actually deliver, except in very small numbers?
I think that will be my next essay here. It is time to put some rigorous calculations out there to show just what a pipe dream this push to E85 actually is. Maybe that will provide a reality check for some of the proponents.
RR
While doing my researh I came accross what Ted Trainer from University of New South Wale in Australia has been doing.
Here is a first link :
Can Renewable Energy Sources Sustain Affluent Society?
And a second :
Renewable Energy: What are the Limits?
And I'm sure you know about the Pimentel study on this.
Since this study is allready made, I was thinking it was better to lead people to thoses studies. Trainer has a way to write about this stuff that can be the most anoying possible and there is not much tables.
In the Renewable energy study he use Australian$ or US$ ar a way to compare some kind of renewable energy an a coal plant.
In this study there is a lot regarding the liquid fuels from biomass. Here is the table of content for the hole study :
I read it and it was really knowledgeable.
I didnt had the time to read the other one but here is an excerpt :
I know its old stuff but really worth reading.
LOL! I was thinking the same thing when I read it. The information was very, very good. I will bookmark it and refer to it. But most people's eyes are going to glaze over when they are reading it.
What I am going to write about is E85. I am going to calculate how much we can realistically produce. There is a lot of hype out there that E85 will make us energy independent, so the calculation will be timely.
RR
CSIRO (government research) calculates an ERoEI of about 2, so E10 (90% gasoline, 10% ethanol) only saves 5% of fossil CO2 emissions.
Total area of cane = 441,000 ha
Total molasses = 1,273,000 tonnes/year
Distillery conversion rate = 237.5 litres (ethanol) / tonne
Total ethanol from molasses = 302 MegaLitres / year
Australian gasoline consumption = 19,867 ML/year
Therefore maximum blend possible = E1.5
So talk of mandating E10 is impossible using only sugarcane molasses, even for a country that produces 6 times more sugar than it consumes.
ERoEI for ethanol from spoilt wheat is only about 1.2, but will that stop them ? No, its clean green energy from the sun and don't you dare say different.
Dave
www.peakoil.org.au
there are too many people in first world countrys for alternitives to work?
Yes, there is way too many people for us to continue this easy-motoring, easy feeding Paradigm. Please read and study the hundreds of pages at Dieoff.com, although the first graphics you encounter will reveal 90% of the info you need to know--that is why I barfed within seconds of the first time I clicked there.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
We can only understand the role of the alternatives and renewables against the background of the overall global net energy production - the volumes and the EROEI. Basically, it is not the SUV driving Americans that are important, the world total energy is. If there were abundant, high EROEI energy other than oil available somewhere in the world, the Americans could import it (if it would be abundant and the EROEI high it would also be cheap - so no trade balance problems), make liquid fuels out of it and drive like mad (maybe we should worry for Climate Change, but not energy). But, unfortunately, there is no such energy source available.
Energy imports is no problem per se, most countries import most of their energy as they import many other things. The US never strived for autarchy.
The idea of energy independence and ideas that ethanol or some other alternative fuel could enable the Americans to keep their energy consumption level at present levels or even increase it are dangerous. They are too good to be true. The idea of energy independence or even curbing imports significantly is an old cry. All these programs have failed miserably. The reason is that nobody has not wanted to face the consequences of the very simple measures that could achieve this - tax oil heavily. This is the real test.
All energy indepedence schemes that do not envisage considerably lower consumption are doomed to fail. They only lead to the situation we have now - a try to grab the oil of others. The oil independence can mean also that the US oil companies produce oil in countries occupied by US troops and governed by US-minded puppet governments. This is of course the real "oil independence" program now. Annex Iran and Iraq and Saudi-Arbia and there will enough "domestic oil".
I disagree with this. One can higher living standards.
One can have REALLY good software, very high capacity & speed broadband, great tasting food, live in an interesting and beautiful neighborhood, have 5 places to buy food within 6 blocks, a couple of world class restaurants nearby and more within a streetcar ride (streetcars just a couple of blocks away). Great music easily accessible, interesting people (and architecture) all around.
All for, say, 6 gallons/month and an average of 350 kWh/month in direct consumption. Most goods can be brought by energy efficient rail and water trabsportation.
I live a higher quality of life than my two brothers, for 1/10th the energy consumed.
But I agree that people can live very happily in a quite low-energy environment. Personal happiness is a diffeent question. But, unfortunately, we know that a sudden drop in energy use and the economic and social disruption connected with it do make people quite unhappy. The problem is mostly the change, not the level, as long as your most basic needs are satisfied.
I noted this with my remark that rail (we have six Class I railroads*) and water (ocean and barge) can bring all essentials to us in energy efficient ways. How much and how fast modal shift occurs is still an open question.
Yes, there is the larger question as well for all the "indirect" energy use.
* Union Pacific, CSX, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, Norfolk-Southern, Canadian National, Kansas City Southern
It will be harder to live in the next 10 years mainly because most of the people have been accustomated to low endosomatic enerfy use. Growing a garden will be applied first, then permaculture will probably get on rapidly.
Being a Cisco professional (among many other things) I can tell you that powering the whole internet infrastructure takes lot of energy. Even Google complained about the enery cost of computing last summer. In order to compute all the stuff they do, they need lots of power. For that power, the liquid fossil fuels needs to be up and running.
You will probably be able to live good, but you will have to do more that just surfing on the web in order to do so.
Wolfric, I am sure Alan is very aware of the fossil fuels needed to bring food to the stores. Have you read any of his posts? He is one of the best contributors to TOD...
This is your standard of a quality life. I work three weeks on three off and enjoy traveling all over the place. I would go crazy staying in one place for an extended period of time.
Your examples only apply to a few metro areas. Light rail will not satisfy the transportation demands of the countryside. So with limited transportation someone in a small town will not have the music and architecture etc. Fine restaurants are great but how much will a shrimp dinner cost in Idaho five years after peak?
Everyone can't live in NOLA. (but everyone should visit at least once)
I felt the same way when I lived in Baton Rouge and Houston. However, New Orleans has enough local diversity and distinct flavors to keep me remarkably satisfied for variety.
> Your examples only apply to a few metro areas.
Unfortunately true. When in Phoenix, I sometimes wonder what "could have been". Perhaps a series of medium size towns (~50,000) to large cities (~750,000) arranged in a ring of nodes on the Valley floor with rail connections in between and some "commercial only roads" between. Each community set up on walkable, people orientated basis around each intercity rail node and an urban circulator rail system. Human scale, multistory housing for most with community green space (yes irrigated, but limited). Bicycles quite common, Golf carts more common than automobiles for movement within the local city. Farm land and undeveloped desert outside each city or town, seperating each one. Far less pollution than today. Each city or town could have somewhat different demographics and architecture and resulting individual character.
In Europe, light rail does serve many small towns, but in areas with higher density than some parts of the US. I could see service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that served La Place and Gonzales and West Bank service that services a half dozen cities.
We will be VERY past Peak Oil before the US does something comparable.
> Everyone can't live in NOLA
And many want no one to live here. Destroy the living example of an American alternative.
> (but everyone should visit at least once)
Yes, we need the money ! :-) And one can learn as well "what could be" if one wanders outside Bourbon Street and the Convention Center.
I think of ethanol as above-ground mining -- mining the soil. If this stuff really takes off, it will drastically speed up the disaster brewing in bread basket (dust bowl?)
I really wish everyone in America would read Kentucky farmer-poet Wendell Berry's brilliant essays on the importance of healthy topsoil and what industrial ag is doing to this precious, irreplaceable resource.
One of the great crimes of the millenium.
There are many others, of course -- he's famous.
Problem is, I guess, he just makes too much sense for people to pay much attention to him -- though Berry has a huge following.
But following his program, you can never get "rich", and that lets out the entire Capitalist enterprise.
HO worded it much better above. But we probably all need to repeat it a bit, to see if the mathematics can permiate the general consciousness:
Even if we turned all the corn grown in the US into ethanol (no more corn chips) we would only be able to fuel 17.25%() of our cars on E85 fuel.
The drive to make all cars (and gas stations) E85 ready, is pointless.
(
- My math is based on your statement that if we turned 100% of the corn crop into ethanol, we would produce the equivalent of less than 15% of our annual gasoline consumption. Take 15% ethanol expand it by the gasoline fraction in E85 (100-85)=15% and you only have 15*1.15=17.25)The thing to push back on with cellulosic is that there is one production plant in the world (Iogen in Canada) and if they knew how to expand it, and beat corn ethanol on price they would.
The fact that we keep building corn ethanol plants disproves that we know how to build cellulosic ethanol plants.
It would be interesting, as Robert suggested, to see what would happen if they powered the entire operation, from plowing to final product with ethanol.
In any case, the "significant impact" is true of all energy producing areas, from Midland, Texas to Iowa to Russia.
Increasing economic activity is going to be concentrated in areas with net energy surpluses. Conversely, the farther than one is away from energy sources, the more problems that the local economy will have. IMO, among the worst off in this regard are going to be California and the UK.
Of course, we are just talking about the "Canary in the coal mine effect."
Worldwide, IMO, we are seeing a probable decline in net oil export capacity show up as actual shortages in places such as Thailand. IMO, a shortfall in net exports showed up here as a decline in imports, followed by a price spike, followed by a (temporary) rebound in imports, follwed by reports of actual shortages in less wealthy oil importing countries. Again, just the "Canary in the coal mine."
That's when the reality would set in that they can't run the process on animal feed byproducts, which account for the majority of the portion of EROI that's >1.0. They would realize that they absolutely can't maintain the process without fossil fuels.
Note the irony of the following testimony from a Missouri farmer, lobbying for production of more fossil fuels so ethanol producers can make "cheap" ethanol:
Corn Farmer: We Need More Fossil Fuels to Make Ethanol!
Now that is textbook irony. Why not just start running the process on ethanol, if energy is being created?
RR
"Corn Farmer: We Need More Fossil Fuels to Make Ethanol!"
It is just TOO RICH with irony to pass up!!
Below are a few short excerpts to give you an idea of the convoluted logic implicit in the whole discussion
" Lower natural gas prices in the Middle East, Asia and South America make it difficult for U.S. nitrogen fertilizer producers to compete with these countries with much lower natural gas prices to take their excess natural gas, turn it into fertilizer and undersell U.S. producers, a practice that will only become more common in the future. "
"Higher natural gas prices will also negatively impact this country's growing ethanol industry. The second biggest cost in ethanol production - second to feedstock - is the cost of energy, generally natural gas."
"The corn industry becomes more energy efficient every year, but we still must have adequate, reliable and affordable natural gas to fuel the industry."
Note one or two little items....the mention of South America's natural gas advantage is important because that, combined with the known better energy balance of sugar cane....gee, could that help explain the "success" of Brazil's ethanol industry? If Brazil can produce ethanol from it's own natural gas provided fertilizer, it sure must help...(even then, you have to wonder why they wouldn't just build/buy more CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) cars and trucks and just burn the gas directly and save the horrendous soil and water destruction, and avoid slashing and burning wilderness and rain forest (which will in the end prove to have been a catastrophic mistake for all mankind and all history....there will be no reversing that idiocy)
In the testimony RR quote above, the discussion then moves to the Alaskan North Slope natural gas, reserves that are said to be HUGE by any standard, and argues for the development of that gas. There is a problem here.
The consumers and businesses in Canada and the U.S. are hoping for that gas to help hold down the price of nat gas in North America. But, the tar sand industry is already licking it's chops at the prospect of getting that gas for the tar sands industry. Without it, when the stranded gas runs out, the tar sand industry will die if they can't get it.
Now, amazingly, the ethanol industry is eyeing that same North Slope gas hungrily, and claiming if they cannot get it, they can't compete and survive.
But, if the gas stays cheap, there is no way the extremely costly infrastructure and pipeline work simply can be justified. The importation of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) suffers from the same problem. Cheap natural gas means they are not economically viable. (several gas industry people have testified to exactly this in Congressional hearings, and I can get the links if needed, but most of you here already know this)
Whether we admit it or not, tar sand and ethanol are in many ways a GTL (Gas to Liquids) fuel switching operation, but doing it the long way around in the most inefficient way possible, so that it depletes soil, water and gas all at once.
Not too many days ago, I suggested converting some summer demand for motor fuel over to gas and propane (CNG and LPG).
I was severely dressed down by several TOD posters, is in:
"What!! You want to use priceless valuable natural gas in transportation or recreational motoring, the gas that people need to cook and heat with!"
"Don't you know we are peaked on gas production in North America?"
"We are already going to be importing natural gas by way of LNG, that is not freeing us of imported fossil fuel dependance!"
Of course, all the statements by my critics are correct. But, what they failed to notice is that THROUGH ETHANOL AND TAR SAND OIL, WE ARE ALREADY CONVERTING NATURAL GAS TO TRANSPORTATION FUEL.
We are just doing it in the most expensive, least efficient and most destructive way possible. MY POINT: if we are going to take the long wasteful way around to use natural gas in transportation, would it not reduce the sin against efficiency and the insult to common sense to admit it, and at least do it efficiently and cleanly by direct use of the natural gas and propane?
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImOut
I don't think they even know within an order of magnitude what they steal. They just do it.
There are rare partial exceptions. Maybe Al Gore.
Think of a drunk as a metaphor for a politician. The drunk is only concerned about getting the next drink. He has no idea what his bar tab comes to. He has no plan for how to pay off his bar tab. He does have exquisite perceptions about how he can use which saloonkeeper/bartender/host/hostess/enabler to get the next drink. And when no one will give him a drink he will head for the next town and make new friends before making an accounting with his creditors.
Looking for just one more drink is what ethanol or GTL or CTL is about. It doesn't matter what the EROEI is. Perceptions and another drink matter.
The engineers and the numbers crunchers have gotta convince the drunk he's visited all the bars and all the parties and all the taps are dry. The drunk don't want to hear it.
NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A LIQUID! forget the dad-blamed ethanol witchcraft.
And not to forget that there are people like me starving to death (figuratively) when if you slipped us a few crumbs of megabucks we could be following our DNA driven desires to be making solid biomass-fuelled tractors that would work just dandy.
Here in Phx, many grocery stores do not have doors, but a thirty foot opening with air propelled drafts running ceiling to floor. I talked to one store manager about why they did this, pointing out how much energy this took to operate during a 24 hour period. He replied that it made the store more welcoming to customers and vastly reduced injuries and lawsuits from customers as they and their grocery carts cannot get tangled up in using the old-style automatic doors. Here is a link illustrating the process:
http://www.berner.com/university/air/diag_re.html
But eventually, as energy costs rise, these will become obsolete too.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Excellent point, RR.
What they will do, as natural gas becomes more and more expensive, is switch to coal. So, the environmentalists who embrace ethanol should recognize that CTL, which they fear, will be here before they know it. In fact, it's here now:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/two_coalfueled_.html
RR
Why should all the inputs come only from ethanol?
Do they use oil to manufacture everything needed in oil production?
Have you seen any plastic oil rigs?
Are the metals needed to manufacture windmills mined using battery powered machinery charged using electricity from windmills?
It's really more a thought experiment. If excess energy is being produced, you should be able to close the loop, or almost close the loop and just crank out energy. I suspect in reality that there is next to no energy actually being produced, which is why they will always depend on fossil fuels. And if they always depend on fossil fuels, ethanol is not a sustainable solution.
RR
So the answer to my question is: No, you can't use the ethanol in a paratical way to make the fertilizer for growing more ethanol. It is not a self-sustaining cycle. Assuming the price of methane heads to infinity, the price of ethanol will also converge to infinity ... (a fancy way of saying that once we run out of NG we will also have run out of ethanol).
You want ammonia from corn: pyrolyze the corn stover, use this to produce hydrogen using the water-gas process, use the hydrogen to produce ammonia using the haber-bosch process. May not be very effecient but it's what I came up with based on freshman chemistry at a community college.
Oh, and seeing how we are experimenting with denying ethanol producers fossil fuels, how about we deny oil rig workers alcoholic beverages, off duty too, lets see how much oil is produced before they go on strike.