Ethanol Subsidies and Food Production

[SH3RL0CK]

We need to begin to incorporate into our collective understanding the acceptance of the of the fact that cost is more than a mere monetary concept, and that corn, while likely to play a part in the overall solution, does not even begin to knock on the door of the true change which we all need in the global energy infrastructure.

 

Sure, there are ways to generate energy which are conceivably better than corn to ethanol. But every solution to our thirst for energy, green or not, has problems. I do not believe that we will ever be burning ethanol for the production of electricity, but for use in automobiles it makes great sense to me for the short-to medium term. Long-term, nuclear fusion to generate electricity and hydrogen fuel for travel would be perfect, but isn't possible yet. Since I think it will be another 50+ years before we have the technology for nuclear fusion power conversion to electricity we do need to be creatively thinking about how to generate the energy necessary until then.

 

We haven't solved (and probably won't) the nuclear waste issue with fission. Solar cells consume awesome amounts of pollution to create and is dependant on abundant sunshine anyway, windmills kill birds and Ted Kennedy's view while sailing , hydroelectric is pretty much tapped out in the lower 48 states of the US, ocean driven energy is still being developed...

 

True change may be necessary, but it is going to take a while to get there.

[scalbers]

Perhaps in addition to the ethanol considerations, why do we need so much corn syrup and such? If these aren't really very good nutritionally, then we could be more efficient in our use of corn to do without all of these corn sweeteners in processed foods...

[Rev Blair]

Yeah, but the corn sweetener issue is a direct result of the USA's bizarre hatred of Fidel Castro, so it might solve itself.

[Norman Albers]

How so, Rev Blair? (Rev. Norm)

[scalbers]

I am still convinced we should be converting as much corn into ethanol as we can. It would greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, reduce other pollution effects, and keep money in the US (and away from the dictators in the middle east), along with other beneficial side effects.

 

The irony is that present widely used technology for corn to ethanol production doesn't yet save much in the way of greenhouse gases. This appears to be a transitional technology instead.

[Norman Albers]

Yah, scalbers, haven't I heard a term like secondary biofuels, or second generation or somesuch? This speaks of breakdown of cellulosic stuff. Just so we don't go stripping forest floors as is actually mentioned as not a good idea in the current Science News article, "Down With Carbon".

[scalbers]

Lots of balances to consider here. Something like the unused corn stalks would make good fuel for cellulosic ethanol. Slightly OT, though possibly there are some climate and soil fertility benefits of making biochar (the particular method of making biofuels that also returns carbon to the soil) as a better biofuel option.

[Norman Albers]

Personally I don't care if we drift but there is excellent discussion offered by SH3RLOCK et. al. on ethanol. At one point I mentioned switchgrass and also jatropha as plants which could be grown on marginal land perhaps. I imagine freeways lined with producing rows. I live on marginal farmland good for grape vineyards and it seems this land would serve well. Maybe I am mixing modes here: one distinguishes between biofuel oil and hydrocarbons, and bacterial breakdown of simple or complex sugars to alcohol.

[SH3RL0CK]

The irony is that present widely used technology for corn to ethanol production doesn't yet save much in the way of greenhouse gases. This appears to be a transitional technology instead.

 

Hmm...I seem to recall a study indicating that there was a savings of greenhouse gas since the CO2 in the plant and therefore the ethanol was originally from the air and not from underground. And while it does consume energy to convert corn to ethanol, it likewise costs energy to crack crude oil into gasoline. With the small but certainly positive energy balance of ethanol, I would think this has to reduce the CO2 somewhat. But I'll try to look into this more when I get some time.

[coreview2]

Sure, there are ways to generate energy which are conceivably better than corn to ethanol. But every solution to our thirst for energy, green or not, has problems. I do not believe that we will ever be burning ethanol for the production of electricity, but for use in automobiles it makes great sense to me for the short-to medium term. Long-term, nuclear fusion to generate electricity and hydrogen fuel for travel would be perfect, but isn't possible yet. Since I think it will be another 50+ years before we have the technology for nuclear fusion power conversion to electricity we do need to be creatively thinking about how to generate the energy necessary until then.

there.

 

Actually, since we are talking about fuel for cars, the coming generation of hybrids are going to be primarily electric with a gas powered generator. The GM volt and its competitors will initially deliver 40 miles on battery alone (about 160 hp worth) and a full range of 400 or so miles using the gas powered generator. Between 60 and 70% of American driving is done in trips of less than 40 miles per day which translates into average gas use requiring only about one gallon per 150 miles.

 

The advent of nano-tech batteries is the next step which is projected to greatly increase the battery range. Electric power to charge costs about one cent per mile as fuel (depending on the cost of electricity).

 

The good news for power generating capacity is that most of the normal charging should take place as night during non-peak power generation hours which will ease the need for new power plants.

[Norman Albers]

Thanks, coreview2. I wonder if this is why Honda is not continuing the Insight production. I am ready to go purchase something soon; what advice can folks offer? SH3RLOCK, it takes fuel to farm the corn.

[Reaper]

While corn reduces greenhouse gas emissions when compared relative to petrol,

 

Not really: http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13289-biofuels-emissions-may-be-worse-than-petrol.html

 

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/03/05/want-to-increase-your-greenhouse-gas-emissions-use-biofuels/

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5867/1238

 

And here's a quote:

 

By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change' date=' we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.

[/quote']

 

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. I hate to break it to you, but you are actually contributing less to global warming by using petrol than biofuels.

 

So, it seems that not only are food prices rising, but they are even worse than fossil fuels .

 

 

 

Needless to say, my money and hopes is totally on solar, nuclear, and geothermal .

[iNow]

Yes, and thank you for making that clear. I was already aware of that when I posted, but was limiting my comments to "what comes out the tail pipe" instead of the more accurate view of "from seed planting to caring for to harvesting to processing to engine to exhaust" calculations. Thanks for keeping me honest.

 

My bigger point was to begin incorporating into our calculations and awareness costs which extend beyond money and account for other factors like health, drinking water, cancers, and the like.

[SH3RL0CK]

Not really: I hate to break it to you, but you are actually contributing less to global warming by using petrol than biofuels.

 

So, it seems that not only are food prices rising, but they are even worse than fossil fuels .

 

 

 

Needless to say, my money and hopes is totally on solar, nuclear, and geothermal .

 

While I am certainly all for solar, nuclear, geothermal, et. al., I believe your statement to be incorrect despite your sources cited. The efficacy of production of ethanol is very much disputed today by many reputable scientists. Unfortunately, also by many who have a particular political conclusion (on both sides of the debate) they want their "research" to "prove." See for starters:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance

 

from the article:

 

Figures compiled in a 2007 National Geographic Magazine article [1] point to modest results for corn ethanol produced in the US: 1 unit of current energy equals 1.3 energy units of corn ethanol energy. The energy balance for sugarcane ethanol produced in Brazil is more favorable, 1:8. Over the years, however, many reports have been produced with contradicting energy balance estimates.

 

For more indepth:

 

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer721/

 

this one was generated in 1995 (showing 1:1.3 positive energy balance) and it is my understanding that the production of ethanol has become much more efficient since then. See for example:

 

http://www.ethanol-gec.org/netenergy/NEYShapouri.htm

 

generated from data published in 2001 indicating a positive energy balance of 1:1.7.

 

Clearly this reduces the CO2 released as the fossil-fuel CO2 is, at a maximum 60% (or less when you consider the energy to crack crude oil and otherwise refine petrol to gasoline) that of that of the CO2 released by gasoline. This can be further reduced by using solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, or even burning ethanol, etc. energy to process the grain to ethanol.

 

Regarding the food prices...well my previous links demonstrate that the current ethanol production has reduced the food supply by about 2% (25% of corn used for ethanol * 9% dietary equivalent lost doing so = 2.25%). I do not believe this is the main cause of the large spike in food prices. It seems more likely to me that the causes of the food price increases are more due to increased transportation (fuel) costs, droughts in Australia and elsewhere, and the rise of China (and increased demand for grain-fed beef, pork, etc.). It may also have something to do with the fact that for generations (not decades), grain prices paid to the farmer were quite flat in real (not adjusted for inflation ) dollars. In fact, todays price of corn, when adjusted for inflation, is very much less than it was in 1974!

 

 

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Corn/corn_inflation_chart.htm

 

Thanks, coreview2. I wonder if this is why Honda is not continuing the Insight production. I am ready to go purchase something soon; what advice can folks offer? SH3RLOCK, it takes fuel to farm the corn.

 

 

But since we will be farming the corn anyway, I say lets get the ethanol out of it. Thus, there is no more gasoline used to generate the ethanol than that which would have been used anyway to generate the corn for food.

[Reaper]

Clearly this reduces the CO2 released as the fossil-fuel CO2 is, at a maximum 60% (or less when you consider the energy to crack crude oil and otherwise refine petrol to gasoline) that of that of the CO2 released by gasoline. This can be further reduced by using solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, or even burning ethanol, etc. energy to process the grain to ethanol.

 

That doesn't really follow though. A net positive energy from a source doesn't necessarily guarantee that there will be less emissions, as the most recent studies I posted clearly show. And it isn't enough that the source has a positive net energy increase, but it must also reliable, in that it minimizes environmental impact and provides at a good enough price (and NOT just money is important when I'm talking about price). Your sources, and indeed as recent studies point out, did not take into account of this. And second, regarding sugar ethanol, corn ethanol is not quite as good as sugar ethanol, as ethanol from sugar has a larger energy ratio AND as a result doesn't take up as much land. But alas, we cannot grow sugar up in the North, and on top of that, to provide for hundreds of millions of people, even that will inevitably take up more land as the demand for ethanol goes up. More land means that you have to cut down forests or destroy other ecological areas that would otherwise help keep the carbon emissions under control.

 

I do not believe this is the main cause of the large spike in food prices. It seems more likely to me that the causes of the food price increases are more due to increased transportation (fuel) costs, droughts in Australia and elsewhere, and the rise of China (and increased demand for grain-fed beef, pork, etc.).

 

Do you mind providing a source for this, or data? Because all of mine show a positive correlation with ethanol subsidies and rising food prices. It is, however, not surprising that the costs would carry over to other food industries and the like (e.g. less feedstock for animals, etc.)

 

It may also have something to do with the fact that for generations (not decades), grain prices paid to the farmer were quite flat in real (not adjusted for inflation ) dollars. In fact, todays price of corn, when adjusted for inflation, is very much less than it was in 1974!

 

True, but that doesn't appear to be the case right now.

 

 

 

But since we will be farming the corn anyway, I say lets get the ethanol out of it. Thus, there is no more gasoline used to generate the ethanol than that which would have been used anyway to generate the corn for food.

 

It's really not that simple though, because corn has a bunch of other uses too, and all of them compete with each other on the market. Corn is not only used as food for humans, but also as a sweetener, feedstock, and even non-food products such as packaging and cellulose. As a result, the demand for ethanol will inevitably use up more land. And, using up more land means that you may have to cut down forests, displace indigenous species (and put them at risk), more fertilizer runoff, more pesticides, etc. Or even, using up land that could otherwise be used for food. You can see this already taking a toll on the Amazon, for example.

[Rev Blair]

How efficient ethanol is in comparison to fossil oil is kind of hard to figure. Sources high in sugar produce ethanol more efficiently. Some sources of oil...like what you in the US buy from the Canadian tarsands...take an incredible amount of energy to produce.

 

So what are you comparing? Gasoline from light sweet crude is cleaner than ethanol from corn. Corn is about the least efficient ethanol crop though, and light sweet crude is the cleanest oil.

 

Then there are some crops...switchgrass and hemp...that can help sequester carbon in marginal soils, at least according to some sources. How effective that is will change with soil type and farming methods though. How do you calculate that into the equation?

[SH3RL0CK]

That doesn't really follow though. A net positive energy from a source doesn't necessarily guarantee that there will be less emissions, as the most recent studies I posted clearly show.

But if the CO2 in the plants comes from the air instead of from underground, then they aren't releasing any CO2 that isn't already in the air.

And it isn't enough that the source has a positive net energy increase, but it must also reliable, in that it minimizes environmental impact and provides at a good enough price (and NOT just money is important when I'm talking about price).Your sources, and indeed as recent studies point out, did not take into account of this.

I've already shown it is very cost competitive and very reliable. Would you rather discuss what we are spending in Iraq because there is oil there? Perhaps this cost helps your pro-petrol equation? The studies DID take this into account as the environmental impact of ethanol is actually very very small, certainly much less than what you have in the petrol industry.

And second, regarding sugar ethanol, corn ethanol is not quite as good as sugar ethanol, as ethanol from sugar has a larger energy ratio AND as a result doesn't take up as much land. But alas, we cannot grow sugar up in the North, and on top of that, to provide for hundreds of millions of people, even that will inevitably take up more land as the demand for ethanol goes up. More land means that you have to cut down forests or destroy other ecological areas that would otherwise help keep the carbon emissions under control.

Irrelevant. I have already demonstrated we can take the ethanol out of the corn without a significant loss of food, so why not go get it, at least from what we are currently producing?

 

 

Do you mind providing a source for this, or data? Because all of mine show a positive correlation with ethanol subsidies and rising food prices. It is, however, not surprising that the costs would carry over to other food industries and the like (e.g. less feedstock for animals, etc.)

 

Correlation does not equal causation, your studies did not provide me with compelling reasons WHY ethanol production results in rising food prices. Especially since my studies show a negligible effect on the actual food production. Perhaps the correlation should be due to the rising crude oil prices which will drive both food prices (since transportation is a more significant cost than the raw corn) and the production of ethanol (since it becomes even more cost competitive).

 

 

True, but that doesn't appear to be the case right now.

 

 

 

 

 

It's really not that simple though, because corn has a bunch of other uses too, and all of them compete with each other on the market. Corn is not only used as food for humans, but also as a sweetener, feedstock, and even non-food products such as packaging and cellulose. As a result, the demand for ethanol will inevitably use up more land. And, using up more land means that you may have to cut down forests, displace indigenous species (and put them at risk), more fertilizer runoff, more pesticides, etc. Or even, using up land that could otherwise be used for food. You can see this already taking a toll on the Amazon, for example.

 

Again, see the points above. Why not get the ethanol out of the corn since there isn't a loss of food quality? I always like buy one, get one free sales at the grocery store.

 

As far as your argument of demand using up more land, since there isn't a significant loss of food value, this argument is not valid. As far as more fertilizer runoff, pesticides, etc, perhaps you would prefer the occasional oil spill? Or Chernobyl? No energy source is perfect, we certainly can't continue drilling forever. The alternative to developing renewable energy sources is an eventual return to the stone age (new urbanism design being, IMO, simply delaying the inevitable without renewable energy), which for some strange reason I do not find appealing .

 

How efficient ethanol is in comparison to fossil oil is kind of hard to figure. Sources high in sugar produce ethanol more efficiently. Some sources of oil...like what you in the US buy from the Canadian tarsands...take an incredible amount of energy to produce.

 

I agree. But in the end, I think the price can be used as a proxy for the efficiency since this will take into account to total effort to produce. And price wise, ethanol is cost-effective without a subsidy. Now the costs associated with pollution, government subsidies and Gulf wars, etc. which cannot be directly passed onto the consumer muddy up the numbers, but I do not believe that ethanol production has indirect costs more than global warming, wars in Iraq, etc.

 

So what are you comparing? Gasoline from light sweet crude is cleaner than ethanol from corn. Corn is about the least efficient ethanol crop though, and light sweet crude is the cleanest oil.

 

Agreed, but since we get the ethanol from the corn at a positive energy balance and without significant food loss corns efficiency seems quite good to me.

 

Then there are some crops...switchgrass and hemp...that can help sequester carbon in marginal soils, at least according to some sources. How effective that is will change with soil type and farming methods though. How do you calculate that into the equation?

 

Since there isn't significant production of ethanol from switchgrass, etc., perhaps this data doesn't exist. At any rate I have not found data for this.

[Reaper]

But if the CO2 in the plants comes from the air instead of from underground, then they aren't releasing any CO2 that isn't already in the air.

 

That's not how it works. Forests and similar ecological habitats are a huge carbon sinks. If you cut them all down, then you release all that carbon into the atmosphere. The carbon that is being released was not in the air previously (or at least for a long time anyways). And this is only cutting down the forest, not counting the process of refining and burning, other damages, etc.

 

I've already shown it is very cost competitive and very reliable.

 

But the studies provided already shown that wrong. It is cost competitive but not reliable.

 

Would you rather discuss what we are spending in Iraq because there is oil there? Perhaps this cost helps your pro-petrol equation?

 

And that is a strawman.

 

The studies DID take this into account as the environmental impact of ethanol is actually very very small, certainly much less than what you have in the petrol industry.

 

No they did not. They really only talked about the net energy increase ratio. And, all recent sources and data shows this claim not to be true, unless you are talking about sugarcane and not corn or switch grass. But then, not a whole lot of ethanol is coming from sugarcane in the first place. You have to go with more recent data, not the outdated ones.

 

Irrelevant. I have already demonstrated we can take the ethanol out of the corn without a significant loss of food, so why not go get it, at least from what we are currently producing?

Correlation does not equal causation, your studies did not provide me with compelling reasons WHY ethanol production results in rising food prices.

 

Sure they do. It goes without saying that since you divert more resources to ethanol rather then food, there will be less corn available for food, and especially since the demand for food is already still high. Also, farmers are diverting more resources to produce ethanol rather than food, so that takes into account. And the last thing is, is that the other products that are made with corn do factor in too, because they use the same resource.

 

Especially since my studies show a negligible effect on the actual food production. Perhaps the correlation should be due to the rising crude oil prices which will drive both food prices (since transportation is a more significant cost than the raw corn) and the production of ethanol (since it becomes even more cost competitive).

 

But my studies contradict yours and show that this simply isn't the case, and these are much more recent. You have to go with the more up to date ones. Besides which you haven't shown any data for your assumptions yet.

 

Again, see the points above. Why not get the ethanol out of the corn since there isn't a loss of food quality? I always like buy one, get one free sales at the grocery store.

 

Read the above.

 

As far as your argument of demand using up more land, since there isn't a significant loss of food value, this argument is not valid.

 

Actually yes it is. All you have made was a hand wave and an evasion.

 

As far as more fertilizer runoff, pesticides, etc, perhaps you would prefer the occasional oil spill? Or Chernobyl? No energy source is perfect, we certainly can't continue drilling forever. The alternative to developing renewable energy sources is an eventual return to the stone age (new urbanism design being, IMO, simply delaying the inevitable without renewable energy), which for some strange reason I do not find appealing .

 

Well, to be blunt, the occasional oil spill would probably be preferable as that only happens once in a while and can be cleaned up much more easily then having to deal with the ecological damage that the large farms do, and it would take far less than 160+ years to fix, rather then the carbon emissions that will be released from ethanol production. And, nuclear power is quite safe, Chernobyl only happened because of incompetence with the Soviet engineers and bureaucracy.

[Norman Albers]

Good discussions, folks. After shopping online for Honda Insights I actually pulled up next to one at the grocery market and had a great talk with its owner. He said he sometimes gets more than 70 mpg. I am looking! I have also walked the walk: I am blessedly child-free, have step-dadded for twelve or so years. I figure we must deal both with our supply and our demand. What is coming of Canada's hemp farming? I grow a few smokable plants, and was impressed when an experienced friend described loosening a circle of two foot radius and mixing in sawdust. My, my, I thought nitrogen and intensive fertilization was needed, but more the humus of friable soil.

[foodchain]

There happen to many problems with ethanol which basically have come about from change in an interconnected environment in which no one was awake. Here is one thing, what is the average efficiency of ethanol in a modern car? If you get ten percent less power production vs. a gallon of gas how much more ethanol does that mean gets burnt in say fifty years? How much does it cost to change over automobiles to a ethanol efficient model, being you already have some of those? Does this put more strain on an auto market to produce a reliable alternative to pure fossil fuel hydrocarbon production vehicles? Plus its hard to find just pure ethanol everywhere even if you were to somehow get a vehicle made just to run on it, what the cost to change all modern infrastructure(gas stations) to just pure ethanol, what would really prompt this? Can America afford to completely change its automobile inventory? How soon?

 

To me instead of a gas electric what about an ethanol electric hybrid? IS that next?

 

Last time I checked the lowest grade of gas in the U.S goes for almost four dollars a gallon. The average efficiency of small trucks and cars, or suvs is around 20 mpg or less. So having a ethanol blend that lowers that mpg by say 2 mpg along with clogging your fuel filter(anyone notice this?) by in far is not a good thing. The other idea is to truly switch to having just ethanol would require what in production back in the states to actually reach that demand? I mean the regular production of fields just for that with regular harvesting alone I am sure is enough to mildly impact the global environment. For instance tomorrow if you woke up and there happened to be no more oil, and ethanol was the only option. How would you produce enough for everyone in America for the modern lifestyle and requirements. All ethanol points at is how much real change needs to be made by just about everyone.

 

A serious shift in thinking or a paradigm shift needs to occur. Even with modern stress current infrastructure is still practically a ESS, which is sad considering the ramifications. Last time I checked that ppm of CO2 is only rising along with the prolonged change to global communities and overall ecology. I mean the soil of the rainforest overall can hardly support any agriculture and this does not matter as its still all being cut down and burnt away. It will as dark as it sounds take something terrifically horrible to happen before the people that can change things decide to do such, and currently the environment is not even mentioned politically past a few remarks here and there because the real real reality of it is hardly anything anyone wants to deal with, and currently they really don’t have face it.

[SH3RL0CK]

Well, I agree with you Reaper that this discussion has drifted off topic. Somewhere along the line we switched from direct costs to indirect costs for both corn-based ethanol and petro-based gasoline. This was really my point with the Iraq comments (would we be there if there wasn't any oil in Iraq? If you believe not, then the Iraq war is an indirect cost associated with gasoline.), it was not to create a strawman.

 

Nevertheless, I am not willing to debate indirect costs such as foreign wars, soil depletion rates, carbon sinks vs. reduction of CO2 emissions, etc...there isn't sufficient actual scientific knowledge about such to really debate and there will always be a "yeah, but...".

 

I do think that ethanol has recently been very unfairly portrayed..dare I say targeted in a smear campaign?...by the media, as much of what I see in the media (corn-based ethanol production causing mass starvation) are clearly incorrect, sensationalist journalism. I would expect better from professional journalists.

 

So my final comment is that I do not believe ethanol to be the final solution to our energy problems. Ethanol certainly has problems of its own and I don't mean to make light of them. It certainly cannot replace fossil fuels (at least by itself) in our current energy hungry society, nor would I expect western (or Chinese) society to demand significantly less energy if it means a lower standard of living (and who can blame them, I certainly want a warm house, about 18 to 20C, in the winter).

 

I do not believe there will be a single solution in my lifetime, but perhaps many approaches will work for the short to medium term? I think until nuclear fusion is solved we will need conservation, wind, solar, nuclear fission, geothermal, bio, etc. as well as traditional fossil fuels to supply the lifestyle society demands.

 

My belief, based on the links I have provided, is that ethanol is an important part of our current and future energy supply. Corn-based, Sugar-based, and in theory cellulosic-based (I don't think this is commercially available yet) ethanol can reduce (though not eliminate) the need for petroleum-based fuels at costs which are very competitive and without reducing the food supply or raising the costs for food significantly. It is also very clean (compared to petroleum), both in terms of greenhouse gas and in terms of other types of pollution (I'm thinking of oil-slicked beaches here).

 

Simply put, despite its problems, corn-based ethanol has much, much more positive aspects than negative. As such, we should take advantage of this and at least reduce our dependence on petrol-based gasoline in as much as is feasible by corn ethanol.

[Rev Blair]

Good discussions, folks. After shopping online for Honda Insights I actually pulled up next to one at the grocery market and had a great talk with its owner. He said he sometimes gets more than 70 mpg. I am looking! I have also walked the walk: I am blessedly child-free, have step-dadded for twelve or so years. I figure we must deal both with our supply and our demand. What is coming of Canada's hemp farming? I grow a few smokable plants, and was impressed when an experienced friend described loosening a circle of two foot radius and mixing in sawdust. My, my, I thought nitrogen and intensive fertilization was needed, but more the humus of friable soil.

 

I'm going to start a thread to respond to that in because it took me so far off topic that I was afraid Amtrak was going to be pointing at me as the king of derailments.

 

I agree. But in the end, I think the price can be used as a proxy for the efficiency since this will take into account to total effort to produce. And price wise, ethanol is cost-effective without a subsidy. Now the costs associated with pollution, government subsidies and Gulf wars, etc. which cannot be directly passed onto the consumer muddy up the numbers, but I do not believe that ethanol production has indirect costs more than global warming, wars in Iraq, etc.

 

How can price be used as a proxy when we really don't know the real price? What subsidies? There are ag subsidies going back to before anybody thought about ethanol as a fuel source, ethanol subsidies, oil company subsidies, and such a twisted web of corporate subsidies, pork barreling and bizarre hegemony that chaos theory couldn't even begin to consider it.

 

You want to bring Iraq into the equation for oil, but what about Paul Bremer's edict, back when he was the de facto viceroy, that Iraqi farmers would buy GM seeds (mostly of the terminator variety) from US ag companies? What about decades old WTO policy that has encouraged developing nations to grow export crops instead of food, undermining the only thing they were self-sufficient in? What about the aid and trade deals, many of them ag-heavy, that George Bush used to build the Coaltion of the Bribed and Bullied?

 

 

I have no doubt that the Attack on Iraq is a major cause of rising oil prices (not to mention Venezuela, Nigeria, the 'stans etc.) and I have no doubt that the US will be paying for that little misadventure for generations to come, but don't over simplify the agricultural crisis either.

 

Agreed, but since we get the ethanol from the corn at a positive energy balance and without significant food loss corns efficiency seems quite good to me.

 

Humans don't eat that food though. It goes for animal feed. Our food consumption have already twisted that (er...look up where mad cow came from), and now we're adding another bit into the mix. Meanwhile we're getting sick from eating too much meat and not enough veggies.

 

Also, our meat consumption patterns are bizarre. We only eat the best cuts now. The rest we grind up as fodder for Mickey D's or feed to the cats. That's a big shift over maybe the last 20 years.

 

Since there isn't significant production of ethanol from switchgrass, etc., perhaps this data doesn't exist. At any rate I have not found data for this.

 

You have to plant corn and wheat every crop. Switchgrass, you just cut and bale...more or less like mowing your lawn...and wait for it to grow long again.

 

Hemp is even better. You combine it to separate the seeds from the leaves. The seeds are an oilseed and go to bio-diesel, the leaves are a good source of cellulosic ethanol. Two crops (if you look at it as only a fuel crop) for the input costs of one, and it will grow back too.

 

There isn't significant data because the cellulosic processes haven't hit the big time yet, but they are beginning to come on-line.

 

One major stumbling block is the USA's (and now Canada's, since we elected Steve Harper) war on drugs. They hate Hemp because it looks like pot, and haven't got the intellectual capacity to understand that it isn't pot.

 

Bush did endorse switchgrass though. Maybe a couple aluminum baseball bats and a quick bribe to the secret service would buy us some hope?

[kcuk]

1st post - can't believe I'd not found this forum earlier.

I've been reading this thread after just joining and thought I'd post a link to a press release made May 14th - I know this technology was there but it looks like the will and money is being put behind it to make bio ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks.

 

http://www.genencor.com/cms/connect/genencor/media_relations/news/frontpage/investor_257_en.htm

[Norman Albers]

kcuk, YES, YES, YES!!!