What's This About Ethanol?
New York Times car columnist and Sierra Club author, Jim Motovalli, provides some answers to common questions about ethanol, the bio-fuel being bandied about as a replacement for petroleum. The run-down is a good place to start if you've been wondering what the fuss is about.
10 Comments:
Ethanol is not the total solution to America's addiction to foreign oil. It is a good start though. The technology used to make ethanol has vastly improved over the past 30 years. New corn hybrids and growing methods have made each acre more productive and farming techiques are less intense. Also, ethanol has lower greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. Ethanol is a huge boon to smaller producers and is keeping more small farmers on their land.
However, we can't forget that the machinery used to MAKE Ethanol runs on oil. The process of making one gallon of Ethanol uses one gallon of the foreign oil that we're addicted to... Maybe it's just me, but that's not too great a trade-off... It's a start, though.
Yes, good primer, but I'm still confused on several points: First, is there enough cropland to actually grow all our fuel needs? Second, if cellulosic sources are better than grain sources, then why are we betting on corn? Third, has the Brazilian revolution in biofuels really been a good thing for the ecology of the country? Has forest been destroyed to plant sugar cane for fuel. Fourth, what about carbon emissions. Anyone have the answers?
The whole "making power with x, requires us to use oil" argument is starting to drive me a little nuts. I have seen it used against every proposed alternative energy/fuel solution.
1) It ALSO takes oil to also create gasoline, coal power, you name it (construction, extraction, refinement, shipping, distribution)
2) It ignores the fact, that when you have alternate sources of energy in place (not just any one, but a variety), then you are no longer using oil. Or at the very least are using less of it.
We should not be talking of "silver bullets" we need to be talking about ecologies of power & energy.
We are missing one of, if not the, central issues with fossil fuels. Yes getting off foreign oil is good for geopolitical / economic / strategic and human rights reasons, but switching from combusting one hydrocarbon, ocatane (C8H18) to another, ethanol (C2H60) only perpetuates our contribution to global warming and sets us up for another fight in a few years, getting us off corn. (I can already see that as being played up in the media as the coastal elitists vs the heartland)
Ethanol + 02 = CO2 +H2O
We are missing one of, if not the, central issues with fossil fuels. Yes getting off foreign oil is good for geopolitical / economic / strategic and human rights reasons, but switching from combusting one hydrocarbon, ocatane (C8H18) to another, ethanol (C2H60) only perpetuates our contribution to global warming and sets us up for another fight in a few years, getting us off corn. (I can already see that as being played up in the media as the coastal elitists vs the heartland)
Ethanol + 02 = CO2 +H2O
We are missing one of, if not the, central issues with fossil fuels. Yes getting off foreign oil is good for geopolitical / economic / strategic and human rights reasons, but switching from combusting one hydrocarbon, ocatane (C8H18) to another, ethanol (C2H60) only perpetuates our contribution to global warming and sets us up for another fight in a few years, getting us off corn. (I can already see that as being played up in the media as the coastal elitists vs the heartland)
Ethanol + 02 = CO2 +H2O
sorry for the three-peat
my bad
I'm moving quickly from 'optimistic but not yet sold 100%' to 'anti-' on ethanol. I see how it could be a good supplement and stopgap, but living in Detroit I'm watching the Big 3 shift their 'efforts' from hybrids and increasing efficiencies to marketing how great it is that all our big cars can now be "Flexifuel."
Add to that the facts that:
- the U.S. can't produce enough corn to both drive and eat,
- diverting foodstocks to fuel production will greatly affect the prices of food on the world market,
- increased prices for corn or other crops will increase irresponsible agriculture in sensitive areas like Brazil,
and I think we're trading one really bad mess for many pretty bad ones.
Ethanol is not a huge boon to smaller producers!
The primary beneficiaries are large corporations, and the notion that small farmers are gaining from this is misguided.
First of all, do the math: According to USDA-ERS, avg. corn yield was 127 bu/acre and it hasn't changed much since. In the same year the average cost of production/acre was $230 with over $20 of that coming from fuel. At the time, fuel costs were a little over a dollar a gallon, so lets add $30. The ERS production cost estimate does not include storage or marketing costs. Say we add these, adjust for inflation and the fact that average production costs were significantly higher for smaller farmers. A production cost of $300/acre for a small farmer is pretty conservative. Thanks to ethanol, the price of corn has risen to 3.75/bu. Put that all together and a 100 acre farm with our generous figures makes a whopping $17,625 per year before taxes (part of which goes to a $.51/gal. ethanol subsidy
Fact is, most small corn farmers went out of business or switched to a different crop or crops while corn prices hovered around $2/bu for the last 30 years. Most small farmers simply don't grow corn.
For those that don't, if they happen to have animals, their feed prices just increased dramatically thanks to the increased corn price that is supposedly keeping them in business. For those that grow organic food, increasing use of genetically modified crops (which most of our corn is) provide a legitimate threat. In fact 10% of them suffered a direct financial loss from GM crops in 2004.
Also consider that a huge part of the farm budget which might be helping them is going to subsidize ethanol and crops they don't actually grow.
To add to this, land prices have increased 20% in the Midwest in the last year because of ethanol. If they rent land, or want to expand, ouch! What does this mean to potential new farmers?
"Ethanol is a huge boon to smaller producers and is keeping more small farmers on the land" according to 'anonymous'claims. Please, find a more reasonable argument to justify our spending the majority of our alternative energy tax dollars on a technology that even the boosters here only think is a 'start'.
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