There's a great article on The Oil Drum about corn-based ethanol. If you like hearing the facts about energy issues presented clearly and debated intelligently, there's no better place than The Oil Drum. I've written before here about my concerns on ethanol, so I won't reiterate that here, other than to say that it's nice to know lots of smart people on The Oil Drum agree with me.
One interesting piece that I hadn't really considered is the observation Gail makes that the government, by subsidizing corn ethanol instead of potato or soy, has really "selected a winner" in the field of biofuels. There goes the free market.
Friday, June 8, 2007
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7 comments:
Nice blog and nice link. There are a couple of things that entry misses, though. First, there's no such thing as "corn ethanol." Most of the ethanol produced in the U.S. comes from corn because it happens to be the raw material from which the extraction of ethanol is further developed in the U.S. The subsidy applies to all ethanol, which, right now, happens to be corn.
Second, the article doesn't talk about a larger issue, which is our inability to import ethanol from countries like Brazil. That is a double - or triple - whammy. Ethanol from sugar cane contains more energy than ethanol from corn. And ethanol from sugar cane can be produced cheaper than from corn. The reason we cannot import ethanol (or, rather, why importing ethanol doesn't make sense most times) is that the U.S. has a 100% tariff on foreign ethanol.
The future of ethanol is not in corn, but on cellulosic ethanol and stuff like switchgrass. And ethanol is not a long-term solution by any means.
/me looks at Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, the RIAA, the MPAA, and others...
Huh? What free market?
El Loco first says that there's no such thing as corn ethanol, and then declares that ethanol from sugar cane is more energetic than ethanol from corn. Is this a case of sloppy logic or deep irony?
Between conversion from biomass to liquid fuel (of any kind) and liquid fuel to work, there are too many losses for biomass to run the US transportation system. The only way to manage this is to move to electricity, which allows greatly increased efficiency as well as a much wider variety of energy sources.
hey el loco,
Thanks for visiting! I love the title of your blog (Tracy Chapman rocks).
But I think the Oil Drum article does talk about Brazil and sugar cane ethanol. You're absolutely right that it's a better option than corn, although you don't mention the reason I consider most important, which is that sugar cane is fast-growing and needs fewer nutrients than corn to grow, so a lot of sugar cane can be grown fast more sustainably than corn. (I think that's the case, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong as I didn't really research it.) But I'm glad you mention cellulosic ethanol, which is the silver bullet solution everyone's been talking about for a long time now. Is it the future of ethanol? It depends on whether technology can be developed fast enough that will enable cellulosic ethanol to be produced effectively and cheaply at a large scale. We've been on the verge of that technology being developed for a long time now, so I for one am not holding my breath.
I agree with engineer-poet: electricity is the answer for transportation, and it has to be from a wide variety of sources. And, of course, it will have to be mostly mass transit, not personal, because it will require a lot of conservation as well.
Now I'm off to ride my bike to the grocery store, which is still just about the best possible method of personal transportation.
I'm sure you've heard it before, but hopefully you'll enjoy it none-the-less: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL0719802820070611?&src=061107_1833_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters
Let me try that again: link. I need to preview my comments :)
Nice post. Gail wrote a very poignant article with some very strong conclusions: ethanol is not (and cannot) be the short-term solution. And only under very specific circumstances can it be workable as a long-term solution. Of course, at some point we'll have burned all of our switchgrass and crop-based ethanol into the atmosphere and we will once again return to our current crises. Only worse off.
--PeakEngineer
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