The journal Science on ethanol - Net Enrgy Balance is positive. Ho-hum

[JohnWxy]

This really is a dead issue, but for those who haven't had a chance to read up on this and ...

ONLY for those interested in a scientific examination of the topic:

This article was published in Science on January 27, 2006 and is available here:

http://rael.berkeley.edu/EBAMM/

here is an excerpt (emphases are my own):

Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy
and Environmental Goals

Alexander E. Farrell,1* Richard J. Plevin,1 Brian T. Turner,1,2 Andrew D. Jones,1 Michael O’Hare,2
Daniel M. Kammen1,2,3

To study the potential effects of increased biofuel use, we evaluated six representative analyses
of fuel ethanol.
~~
~~
Two of the studies stand out from the others
because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and
petroleum inputs (11, 12). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed
that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by INCORRECTLY ASSUMING that ethanol
coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with
solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should
not be credited with any of the input energy....

and

...by including some input data that are old and
unrepresentative of current processes, OR SO POORLY
DOCUMENTED THAT THEIR QUALITY CANNOT BE EVALUATED.
~~
~~
References and Notes
~
11. T. Patzek, Crit. Rev. Plant Sci. 23, 519 (2004).
12. D. Pimentel, T. Patzek, Nat. Resour. Res. 14, 65 (2005).

THis Really is a dead issue. But for those who haven't been reading up on this: No legitimate researcher in this field has concluded that ethanol has negative energy return ratio (vs energy consumed to make the final product).

The Argonne National Laboratory study (1999) determined a net energy gain for ethanol of 1.35 to 1

Michigan State University concluded a net return on energy invested of 1.56 to 1.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture determined a ratio of 1.67 to 1.

The net return values keep going up because farmers and newer ethanol production facilities keep gaining in efficiency.


The efficacy of ethanol as a clean renewable fuel source has been established conclusively. That's why the number of ethanol production facilities under construction represent a 62% increase over the total capacity at the end of 2005. That's why Vinod Khosla, Bill Gates, Craig Virgin among others are investing many millions of dollars in ethanol. By expanding production of corn (or sugar cane, or sugar beets, soy beans - whichever is most suitable for the location) we are going to facilitate the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol as the production infrastructure to achieve economies of scale will already be in place.

Last Sunday "60 Minutes" and Dateline NBC both had reports on Ethanol and how it's merits, not only for GHG reduction but also as a cheaper, more efficient not to mention domestically sourced (read: "less money going to mid-East countries") fuel, are beginning to be more widely recognized.

Vinod Khosla was interviewed for the NBC report on Ethanol:

NBC Report on Ethanol

Vinod Khosla: I looked, did my research and found this was brain dead simple to do.

Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor: Is it going to mean spending less at the pump?

Khosla: Absolutely. The consumer would be paying a dollar a gallon or less.

At age 51, Vinod Khosla is one of the world’s most successful venture capitalists and a self-made multibillionaire.

He came to the U.S. from India in 1976, and over the next 25 years, is said to have created six new jobs for every day he’d been in the country. Though not a household name, Khosla was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and renowned in business circles for his meticulous research and ability to spot the kind of innovative technology that can revolutionize an industry.

Three years ago, he turned his attention to alternative fuels.

Khosla: What could be better than a greener fuel that’s cheaper for consumers, that doesn’t feed Mideast terrorism, yet instead fuels rural America?

For a meticulous dissection of Pimentel's sometimes laughable pronouncements and press releases , none should call his output 'studies' (in one of his articles he referenced his own data as corroboration of his screw-ball ideas-LOL), see:

David Morris's The Carbohydrate Economy, BioFuels and the Net Energy Debate

In his report, MOrris makes a good point that even among the legitimate, unbiased efforts at capturing the actual energy gain for ethanol the researchers tend to use averages which include ethanol plants that were built 20 years ago and which are not nearly as efficient as the latest facilities. He points out it would be more to the point to just look at the most recent production facilities to predict the capabilities of ethanol than including the old less efficient plants in any calculation of the efficiency of ethanol production.

As I said this question of ethanol's net energy balance is really a dead issue. Khosla, Virgin, Gates and others are getting in because they can see that ethanol is going to be greatly expanded as fuels source. Initially using corn, or sugar cane. But in a few years we will transition to cellulosic sources which will be much more productive. In about 10 years or so we will see fuel cells using ethanol as the source of hydrogen and with that technology ethanol should be able to meet 100% of our needs for a transportation fuel, for automobiles( heavy trucks may still require ethanol in Internal Combustion engines).

[hunter]

1. Actually, those numbers are grim.

Our economy as it now exists probably isn't viable at that level.

Your best number, 1.67 to 1, means our present economy will die.

Ethanol fueled cars will largely be playthings of the wealthy.

The rest of us will be more interested in plastic forks and water bottles.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. It really depends on the type of energy input...

I really don't get the hang up we seem to have over EROEI. If It takes 10KWh of wind or solar power to produce 8KWh of liquid fuel, it's still a good idea: You can't get a wind or solar powered truck, but you can use these sources of energy to make something mobile.

For example:
If you had an electric vehicle that covers 50 miles per day from your stationery ZPE collector, that would be a good thing.

If you took that energy to make 40 miles-per-day-worth of whateveranol out of compost and sewage, and had a whateveranol vehicle, that's still a good thing: You've got a EROEI of 0.8, but it works - you have a mobile fuel from you stationary ZPE collector.

It really depends on the type of energy you're investing. Electrical energy is (comparatively) easy, it's the in-your-tank energy we have an addiction for, and if it means forking out extra electrical joules for a food delivery truck, so be it.

So long as we can curb emissions on the initial generation, that is...

[hunter]

6. It's actually about the economics of the entire system.

You examine the relationships between economic activity and energy production.

It's not an exact relationship because there are many other variables, but in general an economy where a dollars worth of energy produces ten dollars worth of energy will be more active than an economy where a dollars worth of energy produces two dollars worth of energy.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Only if the energy is in an equivalent form

Let me try a better example - a thermal electricity plant.

Say I build a 2GWt nuclear reactor. I could sell off my GWs of heat: in the immediate area, it would have some applications for heating, industry, whatever. But steam has isn't that flexible, so instead I build a turbine and convert it into electrical energy, at a loss. My 2GWt becomes 1GWe - the EROEI would be 0.5 for the turbine hall - but it's a different form of energy: easier to transport, easier to use, and of course easier to sell, even if the buyer isn't getting the watts they would have done if they'd brought the steam.

Just take the analogy a step further: Plug the 1GWe turbine into a crude-o-matic to produce 500MWc of chemical power (~285 barrels an hour, all things being equal :)): The EROEI is now down to 0.25 - but you've got power you can carry in a bucket, lock in a cupboard, run your car with, etc.

People are always willing to pay for convenience, and in the case of transport it gets pretty crucial.

If you take an electricity price of 4c/Kwh, the crude-o-matic would be a money spinner once oil hits $70 a barrel...

...sadly, I don't have one. :(

[hunter]

11. But in your example, it all rests on the EROEI of the nuclear plant.

The nuclear plant in your example is the foundation of your energy pyramid.

The foundations of our current energy pyramid are fossil fuels, and these have a very large EROEI.

The production of chemical fuels using electricity is very straightforward, but in current markets the resulting fuels are far more expensive than fuels derived directly from coal, oil, or natural gas. In large part this is because the EROEI of using electricity to make fuels is lower.

In biology an apt comparison to EROEI and economics would be food pyramids. Solar energy is taken in by plants, plants are eaten by herbivores, herbivores are eaten by predators, and so on. At the top of the food pyramid the energy circulating through a creature like a vulture has been derived from a tremendous amount of plant sugars. It reaches the vulture by a very inefficient process. But the overall EROEI of the sun-plant-herbivore-predator-vulture system is not what determines the biological productivity of the entire ecosystem. The biological productivity of the vulture's ecosystem is determined in the first step, by the photosynthesis of sugar in plants. But after that, if you increase the EROEI anywhere along the food pyramid there will generally be more food for creatures like vultures. If you decrease the EROEI there will generally be less food for the vultures.

It's a very safe bet that the the lower EROEIs of things like ethanol production or synthetic fuel from coal will reduce our overall economic productivity unless we significantly reduce the extent to which our economy is based on these fuels. Simply substituting ethanol and synthetic fuels for oil derived fuels cannot support our economy as it is currently structured. Flex-fuel vehicles and such are not solutions to this fundamental problem.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Ah, I think my brain's started working.

Must be the coffee. I need chew this over some, but I think you point has finally reached my cerebrum :D
:think:
Thanks...

Edit - should probably mention I have ethanol down as "limited" anyway, but down to more mundane reasons of availible area, piss-poor soil and loss of biomass. EROEI's just a sideline.

[iconoclastNYC]

14. Gotta challenge you on this.

"It's a very safe bet that the the lower EROEIs of things like ethanol production or synthetic fuel from coal will reduce our overall economic productivity"

Has Brazil experienced a decrease in thier GDP since making the switch to Ethanol for 70% of thier fuel needs? I don't think so.

Fuel that is dug up from the ground or fuel that comes from the fields... I don't how it impacts the economy to use one of the other except that several very large powerful companies loose thier monopoly.

If we replace 33% of oil we use now with Ethanol it should have a significant beneficial impact on our economy by lowering the cost of energy and decreasing the likely imact from an oil crisis.

Big oil right now has a near monopoly on transport fuel.

Ethanol naysayers seem to dismiss it on the notion that we are going to switch overnight...it's going to take us at least two decades. There will not be a huge impact on our economy.

[hunter]

16. I stand by my assertion.

I don't think the situation in Brazil is good.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=53500&mesg_id=53676

[JohnWxy]

17. I hate to confound your 'intrestin' economic analysis with some facts but:

M. Wang - Argonne National Laboratory showed that it takes more energy to produce gasoline than you get in a given volume of gasoline. IN fact gasoline is a net energy loser (.81:1). With ethanol, the figure reported by the USDA in 2004 was 1.67 to 1 for ethanol. A gain of 67%. (Roughly twice as productive an energy investment as gasoline). MIchael Wang has recently reported that corn ethanol production results are exceeding 1.9 to 1 now. (this is partly due to the fact that most of the more recently built ethanol production plants use the 'Dry-mill' process, which is more efficient than the 'Wet-mill' process which predominated in the 1980's. As more of the plants being built are "Dry-mill" plants the efficiencies improve. Also, the efficiency of the newer plants exceeds the efficiency of older plants (even comparing Dry-mill to dry-mill). This is not surprising. As a newer technology (producing ethanol on an industrial scale is relatively new technology) progresses, we learn to design and operate these facilities with greater efficiency. In addition to that, American farmers keep gaining in efficiency in farming techniques. Low-till, No-till farming techniques not only cut down on erosion and evaporative lossses they also enable more efficient use of fertilizers, enabling use of LESS fertilizer. This adds to procuctivity.

Since ethanol is about twice as efficent to produce the gasoline the more we replace gasoline with ethanol the better off we are. (This is with out even considering the enormous benefit of replacing an imported fuel with a domestically produced fuel. Importing fuel is exporting wealth out of the country. Spending that money on a domestically produced fuel actually strengthens the economy. Now this is something Exxon-Mobil would rather you not think about. NOr do the oil shieks of the MId-East.) In 5 or 6 years, cellosic ethnanol will become commercially viable and the fact that we will have expanded ethanol production capacity so much before that development will enable getting production of cellulosic ethanol up to commercial volumes that much quicker. That too is important(cutting the time required to get cellulosic ethanol production up to high volume).

Switching to ethanol (corn now, cellulosic later) will strengthen the ecomnomy, while importing oil continues to weaken it (crude oil is about 35% of our negative balance of payments.

We are going to experience an oil supply disruption of 5% to 10% sometime in the next 3 to 5 years (Iran situation, Venezuela, NIgeria, Russia and then there is the hurricane season of 2006, -07,-08,-09,-n). We need to get ethanol production up to 10% of the gasoline demand as quickly as we can to provide some insurance against an oil supply disruption that is coming.

[hunter]

19. That's the wrong way to analyze this.

Making gasoline out of oil is not the number to look at.

Drilling a hole in the ground and making the oil rise to the surface is the foundation of this energy pyramid. You take that EROEI number, which historically has been very large, you factor in transport costs to the refinery, and then you multiply that by .81 to get your EROEI for gasoline. Even for synthetic gasoline made from coal, that EROEI is around 4. The EROEI numbers for oil are higher than 4, and in some cases are much higher than 4. This is the number you compare to ethanol's rather disappointing "best" of about 2.

I'm not opposed to ethanol as fuel so long as the fuel stock is grown on existing farmland. Since much of our farmland is devoted to crops that are fed to animals in factory farms, we could obtain very significant amounts of ethanol by reducing our consumption of factory farm meat. Farms that are now devoted to growing corn and soybeans for factory farm cattle, pigs, turkeys, and chickens could be adapted to grow much more efficient fuel crops, for both ethanol and biodiesel. We might also eat more fish. Since fish are ectotherms (cold-blooded) they convert grain to meat much more efficiently than warm-blooded animals.

I am very much opposed to the expansion of croplands into sensitive ecosystems to grow fuel crops. In most cases such expansions would not be sustainable.

There are also labor issues. The low EROEI of biofuels suggests a poor standard of living for most people if the use of these fuels becomes a large fraction of our overall economy.

[poopfuel]

20. food for thought

I credit a blogger on the Oil Drum for this comment:

"EROEI assumes that all energy forms have equal utility or work value. With metals it would be like saying that a pound of gold equals a pound of steel equals a pound of lead. After all they are all metals, and it would be foolish to use up say 10 pounds of steel and 20 pounds of lead to produce 1 pound of gold if such a thing could be done. The metal return on investment would be less than one and negative for sure.

In the EROEI case 1 unit of ethanol equals 1 unit of corn equals 1 unit of natural gas energy. All forms of energy are given equal value based on the amount of energy they contain. This is clearly contrary to fact. Liquid forms of energy used in transport have have higher value because of the previous investment in liquid fuel powered vehicles and the technical difficultly and expense of changing this situation. This is where classical economics, dispite it's many faults in not being scientific and unable to deal with a depleting resouce, comes in to play. There is no way to measure the relative value of forms of energy in the true cost model used in EROEI. Thus erroneous conclusions about appropriate actions are reached."

You can't run a car on coal.  Liquid fuels are second only to electricity in value mainly due to their very compact nature.  You can get 18 times the energy in a liquid fuel compared to the electricity in a battery of the same volume.  Shapouri makes this point in his study has well.  So even if alcohol from corn is only about 1.6 EROEI it is a conversion of coal to liquid fuel.  When you use a renewable source for process energy the increase in value is even more dramatic.

We simply can't calculate the numbers for oil and non=renewables without factoring in the results: toxic pollution, oil spills, war. What is the cost of the energy returned to society as a whole?

I don't object to reducing consumption of factory farm anything, The Corn and soybean cycle (soybeans took only a few years to be implemented nationwide some 40 years ago) is not the most productive or helpful to the soil/environment. There are great closed energy systems out there where by products to ethanol using DDGS to grow tilapia- ADM is doing it though I am by no means a big fan of ADM. We should definitely be looking at more efficient fuel crops, and they're out there.

I don't think growing crops like pimelon, Buffalo Gourd and mesquite in arid regions is going to harm them. If anything, handled properly, it can improve sustainability.

I don't necessarily agree with the labor issues you mention. It's possible people will be exploited but maybe more people will go back to rural America for better and more meaningful work, growing organically, etc. Brazil's rural economy has gotten a huge shot in the arm from ethanol. It's all in how it's handled.

[hunter]

21. Yes, you can run a car on coal. And Brazil is not a shining beacon.

I'm not a big fan of EROEI calculations, but they can be useful for quick back-of-the-envelope sorts of analysis.

Your metal comparison is not valid. There are many, many ways of converting one form of useful energy to another, often at very high efficiencies. You can't convert one metal to another.

Saying you can't run a car on coal is just like saying you can't run a car on crude oil. So what? It's a very straightforward process to make gasoline from crude oil or coal. Both processes are mature technologies; it just happens in most situations it's less expensive to make gasoline from crude oil. If it was less expensive to make gasoline from coal, I'm certain that's what we'd be doing, even though making gasoline from coal is more harmful to the environment.

I truly do not understand this fascination with growing things in arid areas. I think it's some kind of religous feeling -- that we can make the desert "fruitful," like the Mormons in Salt Lake City, or Moses and Manna....

I'm more of a Marc Reisner Cadillac Desert kind of guy.

I'm pretty certain that any human benifits we might achieve by "transforming" the desert will be outweighed by the greater environmental damage this increased "productivity" (for want of a better word) does to the planet.

It's my point of view that we should aim to restore marginal croplands to wildnerness, and not the other way around.

[JohnWxy]

22. Your first two paragraphs show you don't understand what you are talking

about and you certainly didn't look at the Argonne National Laboratory Study(link below).

http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf

MIchael Wang is a recognized authority in this field.

IF you won't look at this study, or are unable to understand this rather strait-forward simple report then There isn't anything I can do for you . YOur first two paragraphs are utter nonsense as a quick perusal of the ANL report will make obvious.



Talking jibberish does not an argument make.

BTW: Ethanol is made from the starch content of the crop. The protein is recovered and sold as cattle feed. No loss of protein. Cellulosic ethanol will be several times as productive as starch based ethanol.

[hunter]

23. What is that paper you linked to?

No name, no attribution, it's just a rat's nest of numbers derived from Michael Wang's corporate sponsored and highly suspect research.

http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2005/news050823.html

You dance with them that brought you, I suppose.

In any case we are still talking about two different things.

Another way to look at it is this:

In the early days of U.S. oil exploitation you could go to a place like California or Texas, drill a hole in the ground with a small rig and come up with a huge amount of oil and natural gas. This easy oil and gas fueled the economic expansion of the United States.

The oil companies didn't build huge ocean going oil platforms or drill in Alaska right away because there wasn't any reason to do so.

Nowadays the oil is not so easy.

Making ethanol isn't easy either. It requires very large inputs of land, labor, water, fertilizer etc., when compared to something like a mid twentieth century oil well in California, Texas, or Saudi Arabia.

This easy oil fueled an economic expansion that ethanol couldn't possibly match. If we'd had no oil or coal our world would be a very different place. It is very doubtful we'd be driving around in ethanol powered cars. It's very doubtful we'd even have bicycles or electric utilities. One thing is certain, the human population would be much less, even if medicine had continued to advance. Birth control would be the only alternative to starvation.

I'm certain that energy sources such as ethanol, wind, and solar cannot sustain the economy as it now exists. Nuclear power is probably the only energy resource that can support our current economy in some recognizable way. Economies that do not rely on nuclear power would be radically different than anything we have now, and it's not clear yet that these sorts of economies could support the earth's current human population.

So, all right, ethanol reduces petroleum use and greenhouse gasses to some extent. It might be a profitable thing to do. But it's not a solution to any of the economic problems we are now facing.

Sure, you can replace gasoline with E-85 in one car, or even many of the cars in the midwest. But E-85 cannot replace gasoline as this nation now depends upon it.

[JohnWxy]

24. What kind of idiot are you? "Corporate sponsored?", "no attribution?"

THis is from the report:

"Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
U.S. Department of Energy – Page 1

Argonne National Laboratory Ethanol Study: Key points We believe a recent Argonne National Laboratory study (Michael Wang, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory)

I will try to explain some terms to you:

The Argonne National Laboratory is a part of the United States Department of Energy. IT IS NOT A CORPORATION. Dr. MIchael Wang is thus employed by the Unites States Government.

Ethanol used in ICE's will not meet all the transportation fuel demands. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (this is part of the U.S. government also) has projected ethanol can meet at least 30% of the transportation fuel demands (used in ICEs). The fact that it may not be the entire answer to our energy needs (or GHG problem) is obviously no rationale for not developing it.

Beyond ICEs, ethanol (and ethylene glycol, even hydrocarbons such as gasoline) used as a supplier of hydrogen for Fuel Cell powered automobiles will most likely be the most complete solution to the problems of energy (for transportation needs) and GHG contributions by cars.

I've posted many links to serious treatments of this issue. I'm not about to type these in again for a twit who can't make sense of a simplified report, ....

or who can't seem to comprehend: "Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
     - U.S. Department of Energy "

or : "Michael Wang, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory"


Are you having a good time, pretending? (Hey you got my attention, ..whoopee!)

[hunter]

26. My problem is I DID look at it...

This, that, and in addition to all the crap pharmaceutical industry "research" I look at as a sideline. It makes my head hurt.

I'm not against ethanol, I just don't want to see us ruining a lot of good land for such little gain.

It troubles me very much to see all these papers and brochures trumpeting Wang's "Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce" which is not good news, but very bad news.

The fact that the numbers are not negative, as many ethanol critics claimed, does not make them good.

A "good" number would be that it takes one gallon of ethanol or its energy equivalent to make five gallons of ethanol.

Those are the kinds of numbers we would need to replace oil.

Sadly, if we did have those kinds of numbers, people who drove probably wouldn't pay much attention to the people who were starving.

With Wang's results, we pretty much all go down on the sinking ship, except for the obscenely wealthy and powerful who are able to defend their little lifeboats.

[poopfuel]

27. so you want a good number? Fine

"A "good" number would be that it takes one gallon of ethanol or its energy equivalent to make five gallons of ethanol."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V22-3SYYM6Y-6&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1998&_alid=403954163&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5690&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=716d5bd0c70cb602d40d61da4b242c7c

if it doesn't work, the article is called Greenhouse Gas Emission and Energy Balances in Bio-Ethanol Production and Utilization in Brazil (1996) Author is Isaias de Carvalho Macedo.
It's an abstract. Pay the $10 if you want to find out more. The summary notes output/input energy ratio in ethanol grew to 9.2 on average and 11.2 best values.

Before anyone squawks about sugar, there are plenty of crops we can use, not just corn, not just sugar. And production heals and benefits the land, it doesn't spoil it like fossil fuel production and mining for other non-renewable resources.

And Macedo included equipment in his input. And it was 10 years ago. He does a lot of work in this field.

No land needs to be ruined. Get old idiotic ways of making ethanol out of your head. We do this with smaller scale plants, everything can change, because of the byproducts which provide income. And because of the DDGs which can be fertilizer.

[hunter]

28. Brazilian sugar cane plantations are not good.

I'm very familiar with the sort of agrarian "back to the land" idealism you express. I subscribe to Mother Earth News and other similar publications. I'm an avid organic gardener.

But this agrarian ideal is not what they've got in Brazil or most places sugar cane is grown. Working as a laborer on a sugar cane plantation is not a good job. Many workers are essentially slaves -- they have borrowed money to get the work, but then they are never paid enough to escape these "debts." Chronic malnutrition is a fact of life for many workers, and malnutrition is the root cause of most hospitalizations. Debilitating and fatal accidents are common.

Basically the average sugar plantation worker lives in hell.

Even if Brazil could solve these problems of labor today, the environmental damage caused by the cane industry would still be appalling.

[4dsc]

25. Michael Wang has been debunked

and so has the so called Argonne National Laboratory Study. You've been called out on this junk science john wyx but you don't want to answer your critics.. Why not??

Ethanol is a scam!! Its not helping farmer and its not a renewable source!!

[rfkrfk]

4. there is plenty of coal to run the distilleries

coal costs next to nothing, compared to
the value of ethanol as a partial gasoline substitute.

the stills could be run in other countries,
that have different pollution laws or
different Kyoto treaty obligations.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Congratulations...

...you just won the "dumb idea of the month" prize.

If you really didn't give a fuck for the poor or the enviroment (which would be a requirement for that arsewards plan), you'd do better to just stick the coal through liquifaction.

[iconoclastNYC]

15. With gas at the price it is now

You can use carbon sequestration technology and not release any carbon.

We could have clean burning power plants if the government would just force them to spend the money and pass the cost on to consumers. Consumers have said over and over they are willing to pay more for clean air.

[skids]

3. From the same study, right in the prelude:

To study the potential effects of increased biofuel use, we evaluated six representative analyses of fuel ethanol. Studies that reported negative net energy incorrectly ignored coproducts and used some obsolete data. All studies indicated that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. However, many important environmental effects of biofuel production are poorly understood. New metrics that measure specific resource inputs are developed, but further research into environmental metrics is needed. Nonetheless,
it is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology.

Not that I care what fuel and/or technology "wins out" in the end, as long as it gets damn well done, though
I would dearly like to see a power shift away from the huge companies and to many redundant midsize independent producers, and flexibility (= bargaining power) available to consumers.

I'm just saying we should be evenhanded here: the old ethanol from corn got a bad rap by an idiot, yes. Instead of being a total loser like the idiot said it was, it's a not-so-great solution that might be improved to become part of our energy solution -- or might just as likely be totally eclipsed by algae biodiesel, full EVs or whatnot.

[Viking12]

8. I'll have to read the article, but ethanol is not contributing EXCESS

carbon into the carbon cycle as fossil fuels do. The biomass is taken from and added to the present carbon cycle not dredged up from the sequestered remains of carbon cycle from 200 million YBP.

[poopfuel]

9. yes the study criticizes inputs

of fossil fuel into the agricultural process and manufacturing. This accounts for the greenhouse gas release.

But we don't need either.

Ddgs can supply the fertilizer and negate the need for herbicide.

Using corn stover to fire boilers, or distiller's solubles to
produce methane to power the plant are both viable means to eliminate
all fossil fuel inputs for distillation.

[JohnWxy]

12. Right, the amounts of fossil fuel input to farming and production process

of making ethanol CAN be greatly reduced. THe study says because of the significant fossil fuel inputs to make gasoline this is a big part of how ethanol works out to be better. MUch of the gain made by ethanol is in the lessor inputs of energy to produce the final ethanol fuel.

The Science article seems to pooh-pooh the amount of GHG reduction achieved by ethanol. Well, I will happily take a 16%-23% reduction in GHGs that starch based ethanol achieves over gasoline. But as the farming and production techniques become more efficient that GHG reduction percentage will keep increasing.

I think the Science review of the studies leaves something to be desired in that all it does is average everybody's results (with adjustments to Pimentel's) and report on the result of this calculation. THis is not new research and doesn't even take a look at what the recent data on ethanol production reveals - enter David Morris:

MOrris in The CArbohydrate Economy (SORRY about that link, I screwed up on typing it in. THIS link <below> should work:)) points this out - that even the legitimate studies tend to look at industry wide averages. HE makes a very good point that it would be more meaningful to see what the newer ethanol production facilities and best farming practices can do. When you do that the Energy Balance for ethanol get's even better. Michael Wang (ANL) has noted that the recent data for ethanol production is showing an energy balance EXCEEDING 1.9 to 1. THis reflects the impact of the newer plants coming on line.

The CArbohydrate Economy, Biofuels and the NEt Energy Debate This is a very interesting examination of the state of the technology and brings out things that merely talking about averages does not reveal.

MOrris points out, for example, how earlier plants were predominantly wet-mill process plants. The newer plants being built recently are mostly dry-mill plants. Dry-mill is more efficient than wet-mill.

Newer ethanol plants will be taking advantage (where feasible) of methane (from cattle manure and other agricultural waste products) to provide energy for the ethanol production process. Farmers are learning to use LESS nitrogen on their fields (the NItrogen is one of the biggest contributors of fossil fuel usage to the ethanol process). Iowa farmers have shown they can get better productivity while using 16% LESS nitrogen than farmers in the adjoining farm-belt states.

We are just beginning to get serious about producing biofuels and there is much room for improvement in our techniques both in farming and in the fractionation/distillation process. Of course, we need to develop bio-diesel and as we do and farm equipment is powered by bio-diesel this too will reduce the fossil fuel input to the ethanol process.

And it has been pointed out that cellulosic ethanol will be much more productive than corn or sugar cane and that is great! - BUT until that becomes commercially viable we can improve the situation with starch based ethanol. And as we expand the production capacity of starch based ethanol we will be facilitating the expansion of cellulosic ethanol to commercial scale when cellulosic ethanol becomes viable. We will shorten the time to take cellulosic ethanol to commercial scale because the infrastructure will already be in place (this will take years off the time required to ramp up production of cellulosic ethanol).

Check out MOrris's report - I it's got more in there that I didn't go into here.

[JohnWxy]

18. corn ethanol reduces GHGs over gasoline by 17% to 23% -

depending upon if you are looking at wet-mill processing or dry-mill processing (more efficient than wet).

PErsonally, I do not think 17% or 23% is a trivial difference. I"LL TAKE IT! Actually, these are averages (industry wide averages of ethanol plants). As more dry-mill plants are built the 23% figure will become more representative.

When cellulosic ethanol is producte the GHG reduction will be 65% -85%.

This may not equal a miracle but I'll take any small favors.

[poopfuel]

10. also of interest

http://autos.aol.com/article/hybrid/hub/_a/fueling-up-with-ethanol/20060413185509990001