I always thought that enthanol was a giant boondoggle. Its just a giant subsidy to agribusiness.
Brazil has built an entire auto industry that runs on alchohol-based fuel. But they have cane sugar, which is energy dense. Squeezing energy out of corn is not so easy.
God, how do we slay the giant ethanol monster that we've created?
Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 8, 2008, NY Times
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.
These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.
The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.
Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.
“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”
These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for example.
The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”
The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world has to reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to avert disastrous environment consequences.
In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’s most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies. “We write to call your attention to recent research indicating that many anticipated biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming,” the letter said.
The European Union and a number of European countries have recently tried to address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that imported biofuels cannot come from land that was previously rain forest.
But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study shows, the purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads indirectly to the destruction of natural habitats far afield.
For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.
Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it,” he said.
International environmental groups, including the United Nations, responded cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still be useful. “We don’t want a total public backlash that would prevent us from getting the potential benefits,” said Nicholas Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to study the evidence.
“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver bullet of climate change,” he said. “We fully believe that if biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.”
The European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. To reach these goals, biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents, supporting a burgeoning global industry.
Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its annual profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because of rising demand for biofuels.
Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately attacked the new studies as “simplistic,” failing “to put the issue into context.”
“While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences of differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today, how world demand for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic alternatives are to meet those growing demands,” said Bob Dineen, the group’s director, in a statement following the Science reports’ release.
“Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can begin to address the challenges of energy security and environmental protection,” he said.
The European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel, and has other advantages as well, like providing new income for farmers and energy security for Europe in the face of rising global oil prices and shrinking supply.
But the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once anticipated.
Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments should quickly turn their attention to developing biofuels that did not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products.
“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”
This is not a new discussion, just a different chapter. The scientifically uneducated environmentalists that pushed this on us are fixated on tailpipe emissions, and have always ignored the energy costs and environmental impact of getting ethanol into the automobile.
Now subgroups of environmentalists are fixated on destroying ecosystems by clearing land, but you don't even have to go that far in assessing the ethanol boondoggle. The energy costs in cultivating the crops, hauling corn by truckloads to the ethanol plants and running the ethanol plants are huge. Distribution after production is similar to conventional fuels, but there are no economies of scale such as the crude oil pipelines, supertankers and the like to use for transporting corn.
The biggest advantage of ethanol is that it is a renewable fuel.
It's about the only advantage. A gallon of ethanol doesn't even produce the same MPG as regular gas. I'm no expert in this area, but it seems the best solution is to keep developing cars that can get increasing higher mpg through a hybrid / electric engine. Can't we produce cheaper renewable electric energy? Such as electricity produce by wind mills, solar, and water.Originally Posted by Patler
I think you've got it! Put a windmill on top of every car! The speed of the car going down the road turns the windmill, producing power! The ultimate in perpetual motion transportation!It's about the only advantage. A gallon of ethanol doesn't even produce the same MPG as regular gas. I'm no expert in this area, but it seems the best solution is to keep developing cars that can get increasing higher mpg through a hybrid / electric engine. Can't we produce cheaper renewable electric energy? Such as electricity produce by wind mills, solar, and water.
Seriously, we do need to continually develop the "free" energy sources, such as solar. There seem to be problems with mobile applications (cars) but static applications (buildings) get better and better. Eventually the technology will spill over in a practical application for vehicles.
I've heard rumors that straight gasoline is better than ethanol-mixed gasoline for your car, or car mileage, or something. Anybody know?
HOFer
You get better mileage off of straight gas than you do ethanol so while ethanol, at least for a while was cheaper by the gallon, you got fewer miles on the fuel and it ended up costing you the same in the long run anyway.
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
OK, I've heard that ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. But then what the hell does octane rating meaning?????
I assume, silly me, that an octane rating of 91 must have the same energy density, and therefore mileage, whether the fuel was constructed with gasoline, ethanol, or banana juice.
Help me. Someone help me, please.
HOFer
(of course) from wikipedia--the section on WWII and octane:
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
Well, my dad is a bit of a crazy guy, but he will only fill up with Racine gas. One a week when he goes golfing (not in the winter obviously) he brings 3 five-gallon gas cans with him and fills them all up as well as his Escape. He has tracked his gas mileage and he gets ~2.2 mpg better with pure gasoline versus the ethanol crap here.
If they are going to use ethanol, than they need to start extracting it from Algae. Studies have shown Ethanol extraction from Algae kept the price of corn low as well as extracting ethanol at a rate ~8x as efficient.
HOFer
If sugar is being used in Brazil, why not use sugar? Better in the gas tank than in the kids...
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
Agreed. But we don't have the sugar supplies anywhere other than the tropical territories.
I actually read about a process recently that put out ethanol from corn in the midwest, sugar in the south west, I believe it was grass in the northwest? and some other common product in the south west. It was supposedly equally efficient to producing gasoline at this point.
Oh my God. This is so confusing. This tells me that premium gas is of no use at all unless the car engine is tuned for it. And it has a LOWER energy content!?
In a world this counter-intuitive, I suppose ethanol-mixed gasoline of the same octane rating could give lower mileage.
Global Warming to the rescue! We'll be growing sugar cane in the fields of Kansas at some point. Perhaps this will all be a closed-loop, self-regulating problem.Agreed. But we don't have the sugar supplies anywhere other than the tropical territories.
HOFer
Gasohol, Harlan!!! It's said that if they can make hydrogen just a tad less explosive and find a better way to convey it, it might make a good fuel. It's the explosive part there that has me just a tad worried...
We can grow the sugar in Mexico. (why not? they were talking about growing the corn there.)
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
I saw the program Futurecar awhile back on Discovery channel or another of it's ilk and aside from ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen cars they had a feature on a father son team in France that have already built a car that runs on compressed air. Imagine the same kind of air tanks you might use for scuba but longer, and three to four of them underneath the car. The car itself is built very light and without much inside but the bare necessities. Doesn't look any more silly than some of the hybrids out there. Filling the tanks would be as easy as using the compressed air station for tires at any service station. They envisioned putting an air generator right on the car eventually to make the idea of never having to stop for fuel a reality. They even went so far as to claim selling the vehicle for modest prices.
Here's a couple links, and IMO this is the answer over anything else mentioned thus far, and the direction I wish we would head.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Air_ca..._air_0104.html
and
http://www.theaircar.com/
HOFer
I love innovation!! I love the contests that they have every now and again where you have to use unconventional fuels to make the car go. What fun!
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
Harlan;
I will try to explain the correlation between fuel octane and vehicle engines in simple terms. Gear heads out there will undoubtedly point out that it is much more complex than what I will state, but since this is not a discussion of high performance engines, the following should suffice.
Octane rating in gasoline is simply an indication of the percentage of octane in the fuel. Octane is a hydrocarbon chain that includes eight carbon atoms. (Propane, for example is a three carbon chain, butane a four carbon chain, pentane five, etc.)
Crude oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbons, and in a refinery the different constituents are separated. Since each vaporizes at a different temperature they can be separated initially by fractional distillation, which includes vaporization of the crude oil, condensation of the different components in the crude at different levels in the fractionating column and subsequent collection. A refinery is much more complex than just distilling. It also uses chemical processing to convert one fraction to another to increase the yield of desired products from the crude.
The fuels we use are not "pure", but are mixtures of different hydrocarbons from the refining process. (There are various reasons for blending that I will not go in to.) Hydrocarbon fuels that have smaller chains (fewer carbons in the chain) spontaneously ignite at lower compression. In a gasoline engine you want ignition to occur by spark from the sparkplug, not spontaneously from compression. If compression ignition occurs before the spark ignites the fuel, we have "engine knock". By increasing the percentage of octane in a fuel, higher compressions can be used without spontaneous compression ignition occurring. In simple terms, increased compression generally means increased horsepower for an engine of the same size. Increased compression requires higher octane fuel to avoid compression ignition. Increased compression can be achieved various ways, including basic engine design, the addition of turbochargers, etc. Engine tuning can also impact the fuel octane rating required for the engine to run efficiently.
The long and short of it is that using a higher octane fuel than your engine requires is simply a waste of money. Your engine is designed and tuned to work at a specific compression with a fuel of a specified octane rating. Using a higher octane fuel does not appreciable change the engine performance, and may even decrease performance. Higher octane fuels are more stable, more difficult to ignite. A very high octane fuel in an engine not designed to use it may not burn completely, and might yield a lower mpg than a lower octane fuel.
The greatest economy generally results from using the lowest octane fuel that your engine will run on without appreciable knocking. I should point out that most engine experts will tell you that some engine knock is OK, but "significant" (whatever that means) engine knock can damage an engine.
wow, great explanation, Patler. thanks.
I've been putting premium fuel in my Grand Marquee in cold weather thinking, well, that it would be happier. This has been like giving Perrier water to the dog.
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