Letters to the Editor
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Deceptive Statistics
I'm glad to see this argument debunked, however, it never held much water in the first place.
Allow me to summarize the argument as I first heard it: Ethanol takes more gasoline to produce than it replaces. Since it requires more energy to create than it provides, it can never be created in a self-sustaining fashion, since creating one gallon can only fuel creating less than a gallon. Additionally, more carbon dioxide is released by creating ethanol than is saved by using it.
The first interesting caveat is that the second sentence doesn't actually follow from the first, even though it sounds reasonable. According to the studies I've read, we've long since already reached this situation with gasoline itself: the amount of gas required to bring a gallon of gas to the pump is apparently more than one gallon. And yet, the gas still flows. If they have to pump 3 gallons of gas to get 1 into your car, as long as you're still paying the pump price, they'll still provide it. This is because they don't have to pump 9 gallons of gas to get that 3 gallons of gas - which would shut the system down.
The second, closely related caveat is that the ethanol doesn't just replace the gas on a one-to-one basis: it also replaces any gas used to power the pumping, refining, and, in the case of more distant sources, extra transportation required to get that gas out of the ground and to the pump. That's a very large factor.
You can't be too careful nowadays; there are a very large number of "studies" which are little more than thinly disguised propaganda pieces underwritten by "think tanks" which are, in turn, little more than engines of bribery (a partisan gets a job at the tank, the tank is supported by money from those the partisan helped or will help when back in office through the revolving door).
Biofuel has a large number of technical hurdles in front of it, but if solved, it could easily be the magic bullet which hydrogen never can. Since biofuel exists entirely within a short carbon cycle, it is fundamentally sustainable on a human time scale (fossil fuels could be fundamentally sustainable on a time scale involving eons - they're part of the vulcanism carbon cycle - but that's not helpful in the next few centuries).
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Markets for other products
"Such co-products include corn gluten feed, corn oil and other materials for which there are preexisting markets".
Question: how much of the co-products could be produced if a sizable amount of ethanol was produced? I suppose new uses could be invented for co-products, but that would result in an energy use increase.
How many more acres need to be brought under cultivation to make a significant impact on fuel consumption? Are we going to give ethanol production a "pass" on pollution during production, runoff damage, habitat loss, and other environmental costs? Why are we going to adopt another fuel source that does little about the amount of CO2 produced? Is a locally grown fuel going to cause people to increase consumption?
When a pestilence severely damages the food crop, as could happen at any time, is everyone going to stop driving for the next year?
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Some Basic Answers for djt
As is, ethanol simply cannot keep up with demand. For biofuels to really work, new refining technology will have to be worked out - something capable of converting plant matter in its bulk, with only fertilizing by-products, which would then be returned to the system. We're unlikely to reach such a clean solution in the short term, however, there's no theoretical reason why it can't be reached eventually, and several rather sound reasons to think that it can.
Such processes will require a great deal of research to develop and refine. There's no reason to accept excessive pollution in their name, either; such by-products must of course be rigorously controlled. In the end, a more direct type of mass-solar-energy collection may still prove a better solution.
" Why are we going to adopt another fuel source that does little about the amount of CO2 produced?"
This question stopped me in my tracks - do you have any clue what the point of developing bio-fuels is in the first place? By nature they remove as much or more CO2 from the atmosphere than they deliver back to it.
" Is a locally grown fuel going to cause people to increase consumption?"
That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. A locally grown fuel will cut the massive consumption of fuel used for transportation of fuel.
" When a pestilence severely damages the food crop, as could happen at any time, is everyone going to stop driving for the next year?"
Stockpiles and reserves would be emptied, and prices would go up. This happens in the fuel market - and indeed EVERY OTHER market - all the time as is.
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Another source of bio fuel
Why is Hemp always such an orphan in this debate?
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No need to justify?
"Such co-products include corn gluten feed, corn oil and other materials for which there are preexisting markets. If you include the energy value of those co-products in the overall system of ethanol production, you end up with a net-positive energy efficiency."
My concern with this article is that these so-called co-products, which seem to be the primary justification for ethanol efficiency, would not be otherwise produced if ethanol production wasn't the goal. When the economic justification for a product has little to nothing to do with the product in question, you have to wonder why you're producing whatever it is in the first place.
The argument is similar to stating that the loss-leader product in a suite of offerings from any particular company is somehow not "really" being sold at a loss. Loss leaders are often used to attract later purchases of higher-margin products by the same person from the same company. Maybe ethanol should be considered a loss leader.
However, as a fuel, shouldn't it be a bit easier to justify the economics?
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" Bio-coal" for power companies
When thinking about bio-fuels, should we also think about crops
grown to burn in power plants for electricity? I remember reading years ago about how smuggled bales of marijuana seized in
Florida were given to local waste-disposal authorities to burn in
their incinerators. The marijuana burned so hot as to damage the
incinerators. So the Florida authorities started giving seized
bales to the South Florida power company (I forget its name).
That power company reported that they got as much steam-making
energy out of one 500-lb bale of marijuana as they got out of
one 43-gallon barrel of fuel oil. The resin on marijuana burns
at a very high temperature, you see. Hemp could offer serious
competition to oil and coal, and that is why hemp is deliberately
orphanized in all these discussions.
A thought for California: don't your brushfires burn awfully
hot? I remember reading somewhere...the chapparal brush in mid
and south California is coated on all its stems and leaves with
natural drought-resistance-conferring resins. When it burns, it
burns as if sprayed with fuel oil, at 1500 degrees at least.
(Or am I wrong about that?) So what if, California established
some energy plantations based on some of the most resinous
chapparal species, harvested them on rotation, pelletized the
harvest, and burned the pellets in power plants? What if California's mighty Land Grant Research Community bred and selected chapparal species for highest hottest-burning resin
production? How much food-land would California need to convert
to chapparal energy-farm land to wipe the coal/oil/natural gas
completely out of its powerplant combustible feedstock portfolio?