Comments on: The Ethanol Scam

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:10:32 +0000

Brazil makes ethanol with sugar cane, the US. doesn’t have the climate to grow enough sugar cane. The only viable alternative to corn based ethanol(otherwise known as moonshine, yes that is what all the Hill Billies were making and selling during prohibition) is one based on switch grass. Switch grass is a native grass that covered a significant portion of the US. a couple of hundred years ago, it grows in almost any climate, doesn’t require as much water, and produces about twice as much tonnage per acre as corn. The problem is, seed for switch grass is not abundant, the process to distill it to ethanol on an industrial scale hasn’t been perfected yet. I agree the decision to convert corn, soybeans, and other food stocks to bio fuels may not have been good idea. But at the time it seemed to be a good idea, and small farmers are seeing the benefits. In the long run we will switch from fossil fuels to something else, especially for electrical production. The real challenge and solution is increasing efficiency! The internal combustion engine was conceived and designed more than 100 years ago, and we haven’t really improved it. Most engines built today waste 80% of the fuel! You may have a car that gets 40 mpg but it is only using 15-30% of the fuel, the rest is being released out the tail pipe. Engines built in the late 60′s and early 70′s were more efficient, although today’s cars are more efficient, it is mostly due to the use of light weight materials and improvements in wind resistance(drag ratio). The only way to wean us of foreign oil is efficient use of domestic supplies, and mandating higher cafe standards isn’t the answer. We need to start a competition on the order of what Senator McCain suggested for batteries, a $300 million purse to develop and build a working prototype of an engine that surpasses the 50% threshold in efficiency. Eventually with the goal of 80% efficiency, there by reducing our resource consumption by 75% without having to make draconian cuts in our life styles(imagine a motor coach getting 30 mpg, and a sub-compact car getting 150 mpg).

Efficiency solves a lot of problems.

By: Charlie Peters

Charlie Peters — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:46:45 +0000

Does corn fuel ethanol policy increase oil use and oil profit?

Some folks think so

By: Charlie Peters

Charlie Peters — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:42:09 +0000

An ethanol waiver would stop a $1 billion California oil refinery welfare program coming from the federal government @ $0.51 per gallon of ethanol used

By: Charlie Peters

Charlie Peters — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:39:50 +0000

Was Dr. Russell Long/REAP/Pavley 2002 CA tailpipe bill for fuel ethanol, Bill Jones’ Pacific Ethanol business?

By: Charlie Peters

Charlie Peters — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:35:52 +0000

Should a grand jury consider the cause of death of Alexander Farrell, 46, expert on alternative fuels?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/BAOK1087DP.DTL

By: Thomas Mc

Thomas Mc — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:03:51 +0000

The one thing always left out of the equation, is the tremendous amount of CO2 released by the yeast in the production of ethanol, much more than you would release from the gasoline it replaces.

The ethanol craze is about one thing, and one thing only: creating profits for corporate agribusiness.

By: Pete

Pete — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:24:35 +0000

It only takes a small drop in supply to tip the commodity price from low to high. That is what has happened and not that ethanol is consuming corn previously eaten. Most of it was used for cattle feed (which should be eating grass instead) or corn syrup (which is awful for people too). Both of those uses of surplus corn only existed because of cheap corn and will decrease as the corn price stays high.

By: Pete

Pete — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:14:29 +0000

Both sides of this debate propagate myths.

For example, dried distiller grain (DDG) is an awful feed. It causes e-coli levels in those animals to go through the roof, further confounding our food safety issues. Cows weren’t made to eat DDG. But then they weren’t made to eat corn either, which is what we’d been doing with that surplus corn crop until ethanol came along. Cow should be on pasture eating grass.

Michael Kenny hit the nail on the head, the real problem with food isn’t the ethanol, but that globalism destroyed local food production around the world. The ethanol opponents forget that until just last year we had so much corn that there would be mountains of the stuff piled at every grain elevator across the midwest. There was such a surplus that the farmers were forced to find anything and everything to use corn for. The three prominent examples are cattle feed, corn syrup and ethanol. None of these uses were good.

We’re going through a transition, its painful, but its required.

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:12:15 +0000

You should write an article titled, ‘The Global Warming Scam.’

By: Jim M

Jim M — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:31:20 +0000

hs. the answer to your question is NO.The article was about how bad ethanol is , not about my eating habits. I don’t think it’s a bad Idea to make biodiesel, I think there are better choices other then corn, or soybeans. If you look at chart you will see micro algae is the best , but they haven’t come up with a economical way raise it YET.The other four are not food crops.

Gallons of Oil per Acre per Year
Corn . . . . . . . 15
Soybeans . . . .48
Safflower. . . . . 83
Sunflower . . . 102
Rapeseed. . . 127
Oil Palm . . . . 635
Micro Algae . .1850 [based on actual biomass yields]
Micro Algae . .5000-15000 [theoretical laboratory yield]

By: ALMIR

ALMIR — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:06:52 +0000

I will take this opportunity to add some useful words about Brazilian bio-fuels.

As rising food prices continue to threaten food security around the world, Brazilian ethanol is one obvious solution being largely ignored. Brazil set up its efficient fuel alternative program in the 70s, when the first oil crisis hit the world. Now Brazilians drive cars moved by ethanol or gasoline mixed in any proportion. And since long ago gasoline in Brazil is not pure, but blended with 25% ethanol, resulting that internal consumption of ethanol in the country is already superior to gasoline’s. Ethanol in Brazil is already much cheaper than gasoline at current international oil prices.

Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane without any governmental subsidies and the fuel has a very competitive price. Researchers are increasing the productivity (more fuel extracted per sq.km. of crops) by adapting sugar canes species to each type of land and topography. The productivity now is more than 3 times the records of 30 years ago and it keeps on raising, being expected to soar very soon when the technology to extract ethanol from cellulosic materials (crop waste) will be available for large scale production.

Ethanol production in Brazil uses just one percent of total arable land, and the country can expand its sugarcane fields without disturbing sensitive land areas (like Amazon), just by tapping land such as depleted pastures. Just raising intensity of cattle production from the current 0.8 animals per hectare to 1.2 animals (a target already far exceeded in many parts of the country) would release about 80m hectares of land for crops. There remains plenty of room for expansion: the country has 355 million hectares of farmable land, of which 7 million hectares under sugarcane of which the amount used to make ethanol fills 3.4 million hectares (compared to 200m hectares of pasture). Another 105.8 million hectares remained available, which allows Brazil to increase ethanol production without affecting the environment or food. By comparison, the additional terrain for Brazilian crops could surpass all of the land now under cultivation in the European Union.

Meanwhile, Brazilian food production has doubled in the past decade and that’s the most impressive thing about ethanol from sugarcane: in contrast to corn-based American ethanol or biodiesel derived from soybean oil, there is no cost pressure and no competition with food.

Another persuasive fact for incentiving ethanol production in Brazil is the electric energy that is generated as a by-product of ethanol processing: taking into consideration the energetic balance, the electricity generated in sugar cane processing in Brazil is almost as large as its ethanol equivalence. It’s like a two large scale hydroelectric plants generating electricity exactly when it’s more necessary: in the Brazilian dry season! So the producers of ethanol are also having increasing revenues by selling electricity to the country’s national electric system, which has become an strategic and reliable source of electricity. For all these reasons, ethanol in Brazil is a win-win game for the country, the farmers, the consumers and the environment.

Off course Brazilian ethanol does not intend to concur with petroleum, but it could ease up current oil crisis by supplying a small part of the world energy demand. It is only necessary to look at the increasing demand from the non-oil countries like India and China to understand that the very high price of oil is here to stay. With the existing price of oil, the permanent threat of war in the Middle East, the international geopolitics, and the environmental problems, there seems to be no other easy solution for the energy problem away from the liquid ethanol produced out of sugarcane. This is certainly a very important aspect of the Brazilian economy for the next few years and the rest of the world will have to accept the reality of the liquid ethanol from sugarcane as the right and best solution for the oil crisis.

The problem is that much of Brazil’s ethanol exports continues to face prohibitive tariffs and other barriers to developed markets in the US and Europe. The United States currently places a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imported from Brazil. Consumers in the country are being severely affected, particularly in areas such as the Southeast, where corn does not exist and the logistics to bring ethanol from the center of the country is practically impossible. It is difficult to understand the maintenance these tariff levels, except for political reasons. The developed world appears purposely myopic in relation to the opportunities Brazil presents, maybe it’s because that would upset wealthy US and European farmers – a price apparently not worth paying.

Almir R. Américo – Sao Paulo, Brazil (moc.liamgnull@ociremarimla)

By: hp

hp — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:27:38 +0000

“Meat production turns abundance into scarcity. You need an average 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, 3 pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken and 5.3 pounds of fishmeal to produce 1 pound of farmed fish, Doesn’t it make sense to eat the grain and feed more people?

By: Jim M

Jim M — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:17:33 +0000

You people wasted a lot of time writing this article. All you need to say is. It takes one hounded and fourth thousand gallon of ethanol to replace one hundred thousand gallon of gas. So if we are going to use all this food, we should invest it in something that would be one gallon to one gallon. Biodiesel is a much better choose, it is easer to make, it can be mixed with diesel, and it can be transported in existing pipe lines. Also there is about the same amount of energy in one gal of biodiesel as there is in one gallon diesel. In other words if we are going to waste our food lets waste it on something worth while.

By: Alex Mizuki

Alex Mizuki — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:35:00 +0000

It’s absurd to attribute so many sustainability crises to ethanol, the real villains are the outrageous consumption of oil in the United States and the unsustainable growth rates of 10% in the two largest populations on earth. Combine all this with the frightening decline in non-OPEC oil production and there you have the bulk of the villains in the rise of food prices. Corn ethanol is a harmless boondoggle compared to the factors above and is more of a side-effect than a cause. No one knows what the price of gasoline would be without ethanol (if anything, gasoline prices have not gone up as rapidly as crude oil prices, so one could argue the ethanol blends are helping).

Furthermore those arguing that biofuels are causing displacement in Brazil clearly don’t understand that Brazil has terrible land utilization and vast quantities of pastureland that only really exist for owners to protect themselves for land invasions. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, only a minimal fraction of its agricultural potential is being used and its development is an inevitability due to the Neo-Malthusian nightmares we will face — biofuels or no biofuels.

Ethanol is merely one of the many bad energy choices that the world will have to experiment itself as it tries to replace the most incredible material humanity has ever harnessed — petroleum.

By: Michael Guth

Michael Guth — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:10:53 +0000

The article raises some interesting points, but also is both inaccurate and incomplete in significant ways. The corn diverted to ethanol production remains after processing as DDGS, and is excellent animal feed, and thus the ethanol production is only a temporary but not permanent diversion from the corn to feed cycle. Also, the corn used to produce ethanol can, in a different scenario, be used after processing as a fertilizer and pre-emergent herbicide for the next crop, a paradigm where no chemical fertilizer or toxic herbicide is needed at all (and no need for GMO corn). See for background David Blume’s recent patent US 7,183,237. Yes, a renewable, non-toxic corn ethanol cycle.
(Note regardind conflict: I am associated with that project)
Hurray for the suggested other measures in the article; fuel efficiency, etc., but let’s be careful about the negatives of the corn/ethanol cycle, and push for transforming the growing method.

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:00:38 +0000

“The sane and rational creation of biofuels–using, for example, non-food plants and wise land-use–could be one part of working toward solutions to the environmental crisis.”

The above sentence, and the measures outlined in the paragraph following it, are what is being done in Europe, so its not as difficult as Mr Gaspar seems to think. The weakness, of course, of all anti-biofuel arguments is that they postulate consumption at the same levels as today. Regardless of what fuel is used, that will simply not be possible.

Equally, the effect on food prices will only be temporary, since, as the Madre report points out, the problem is globalisation, not biofuels. Under the current system, which is essentailly neo-colonialist, farmers in rich countries effectively dump their surplus production on the world market, driving farmers in the poor countries out of business. With demand for food outstripping supply, the latter will step into the gap, to the benefit of all concerned. It will just take a little while for that to happen.

Thus, all Americans need to worry about is that US agriculture produces enough food to meet Americans’ needs and is using surpluses for something like biofuel rather than strangling food production in poor countries by dumping those surpluses on the world market. Everything else is neo-colonialism.