Corned grief: biofuels may increase CO2

Of course. It’s carbon based. What do you get when you burn a carbon based fuel?
How did anyone ever get the idea there would be less CO2?

“..their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.”
Very good!

The IPCC is mandated to find excuses for retarding, or even better, culling human population growth.
They will stop at nothing to achieve this objective. Real scientific methods and reports be damned.

It really is the choice of liberals: don’t go into the country, kill a
bunch of people, and set it right.
Lets starve them to death. But only the poor ones.

Nothing said about the CO2 byproduct released from the fermentation process?

Yellow Dent Corn (maize as you use in the article) is grown for animal feed. Ethanol can be made out the corn using the starch portion, and you still have a high protein highly nutritious feed left in the form of Distiller grain or DDG for short. With ethanol you get your cake and eat it too. I sure wish detractors would get the facts straight.
On my farm I can raise about 180 bushel per Acre of corn (5 tons) I will only use about 6 gals of Diesel fuel to produce that and that acre of corn will produce 500 (Five Hundred) gallons of ethanol and 3,000 lbs of High Protein DDG’s.
Besides the 6 gallons of fuel used there is a small amount of fuel used in mining the fertilizer and some Natural Gas used to produce the Nitrogen fertilizer. And some Natural Gas used in to distill the Ethanol from the starch and dry the Distillers Grain. But all in all the ethanol industry and my farm are very efficient, use much less energy and produce both liquid car fuel and high protein feed, that comes from mostly Solar Energy collected by the corn and some Natural Gas in the production of the corn and the ethanol. But nowhere near the 500 gallons of ethanol that will be produced per acre. Along with a ton and half (3,000 lbs) of High Protein feed. And feed is what my farm produced before ethanol came into favor.
All in All Ethanol gets knocked by the un-informed and groups with a political or financial angle to dis-credit the highly efficient Agricultural Farming and Ethanol production in the Mid-Western USA…….Sincerely John T.

It takes more btu’s to raise grain, brew it and distill it to produce alcohol than the btus put off by the ethanol.
The heat is from natural gas.
The cycle is inneficient. I know where you can buy several new ethanol plants that are rusting in bankruptcy.

Making big efforts to solve a fictive problem is likely to end up in disaster.

There was a CARB study which showed bio-fuels produced 2.5 times as much CO2 as straight gasoline. Makes sense when you considered all the ‘mechanized farming steps’ involved. Then Gov Schwarzenegger forced it to be taken down and re-written to say just ‘more CO2’ than straight gasoline.
Proving that reducing CO2 isn’t the goal.
Shouldn’t we always ask that question when bio-fuels are talked about? And what about the consumer costs … shouldn’t that be the top line of the amazing bio-fuels arguments?
And isn’t all this weird when you find that according to the governments own EIA the USA has more fossil fuel reserves than any other nation on earth. Especially coal, which the NAZIs of WWII were able to turn into liquid transport fuel using 1920s technology. Still works today.

Justa Joe (08:08:30):
In terms of energy density, ethanol is only minutely higher gram CO2/Joule fuel ratio than gasoline, and it’s essentially irrelevent. The difference is the source of CO2. With ethanol, the source is carbon from the atmosphere, so there is no net increase in CO2 emissions. With petroleum, the source is carbon locked underground, thus leading to a net increase in CO2 emissions.
That’s why bioethanol is seen as a renewable fuel. The problems with that assumption are two-fold. First, corn ethanol requires a great deal of processing, requiring a lot of natural gas in the process. Combined with all on-farm fossil fuel use (including the production of excess fertilizers, which doesn’t technically occur on the farm but needs to be included anyway), the CO2 savings from corn ethanol are slight (about 20-40% reduction compared to gasoline). Note that this doesn’t mean corn ethanol is useless: the big saving is in oil consumed (20 barrels of oil are saved for every barrel invested in ethanol).
In any case, the second issue is land use change. If we’re cutting down a forest to grow corn, that’s not good. If we’re taking degraded land that’s doing nothing and growing corn, that’s fine. The question is, what are we doing? That’s what the economic models like this one are attempting to find out. Unfortunately, they’re very complicated models on a topic that isn’t perfectly understood. As we all know from the climate change debate, these models are ripe for abuse.

Its even worse than the article says. If you believe in the greenhouse gas theories, a much more ptent greenhouse gas is NO2. Biofuels produce more N2O than gasoline.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/n/summaries/nitrousoxide.php

Sorry, the relevent equation is probably this in terms of net CO2 uptake:
do nothing > grow corn for fuel
[forest uptake of CO2 – use of gasoline instead of biofuel] > [cornfield uptake CO2 – energy used to raise corn and convert to ethanol – use of biofuel instead of gasoline in terms of CO2 emissions].

>>> Justa Joe (08:08:30) :
Can someone present a chemical equation and the the stoichiometry to demonstrate how the combustion of so called bio-fuels is supposed to produce any less CO2 than gasoline? <<<
It's not about the stoichiometry – the suggestion is that the plant takes the CO2 from the atmosphere and incorporates it in carbohydrates etc via photosynthesis. When the biodiesel combustion occurs, the CO2 that is released thus is merely returned to the atmosphere rather than being released from oil/gas/coal deposits (taken from the atmosphere many aeons ago). The trouble is of course that the land could be sequestering CO2 into food/trees/bushes etc plus it takes energy to produce the biodiesel plus, doubtless, other indirect effects on CO2 release/sequestration.

I can’t say I’m surprised… first wind energy (exotic metals, distribution lines & backup generation re: the Spanish experience), and now corn ethanol. This is normally what happens when the engineers get involved and start throwing a large dose of reality into the mix. There is still some hope for solar technology, but it currently takes an awful lot of carbon to manufacture the plants, there is the storage problem, and, major breakthroughs in that field are few and far between (e.g., SERI threw an awful lot of money at many years ago, and finally gave up).

…..puzzling things in life
Dear Andrew
Zapping Mosquito’s
Your post on the 5 March I wrote ” ………Finally in order to remain on topic my advice to you, for what it is worth, is to follow that other great American and “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”
Geoffrey Lean In the UK Telegraph Saturday 15 March:-
Once, green groups were light on their feet – and scored hits. As in Muhammad Ali’s appropriately verdant boast, they “floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee”, Now they are more often like his world championship opponent, the favoured, but lumbering Sonny Liston, who scarcely landed a punch.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/7431092/Friends-of-the-Earth-finally-cotton-on-to-climate-change-data-row.html
So again to remain on topic “Amaizeing”

kim (08:33:56) :
Is the distinction between fossil CO2 and recently captured CO2 made? That’s an important point.
Ummmmmm — the difference between released CO2 and released CO2 is…?

Take away the discrediting of the whole AGW business and this sort of report is doubtless the sort of drip, drip of tabloid science which would have become the norm over the next few years. It is so like the past 20/30 years of cancer reporting.
In my family we decided long ago that everything causes cancer so when some new report comes out telling us to stop eating, stop drinking and above all stop breathing or we will get cancer, we have a laugh and ignore it.
Now we have the carbon scare industry with its buzz words and phrases: emissions, carbon footprint, greenhouse gas, saving the planet, more CO2. More please, more, much more. Every time a report like this comes out even more people switch off.
The fact is once people get the idea that whatever they do they are doomed then they are in exactly the same camp as those who think nothing they do means they are doomed. It all becomes water off a duck’s back. And so it should.
What about all those cremations then? Don’t they just add to the CO2 in the air? Shouldn’t we immediately commission a fleet (never mind the expense) to drop all dead bodies into the Marianas Trench, suitably weighed down of course. Just
on the precautionary principle you know.

Seems like another case of a business group or entity using ecological concerns to obtain special treatment or change the playing field (patents expiring, no problem, just raise a bunch of ecological concerns about those patented products).

kim (08:33:56) :
“Is the distinction between fossil CO2 and recently captured CO2 made?”
CO2 emissions from Corn get a free ride because whatever CO2 emissions from burning this years corn crop end up being captured in next years crop.
I would note this is a global study. US usage of ethanol as a fuel has an impact on global grain markets. I suspect the real problem comes in when someone who was enjoying cheap imported US corn goes out and cuts down a forest because the cheap US corn is no longer available.

To farmer John T. from MN:
Leaving aside the argument that ethanol adversely affects the CO2 situation, what would happen to ethanol production if the government subsidy were to be dropped to zero dollars per gallon? If you’d still find it economic to continue producing corn for ethanol, then fine, the outputs exceed the inputs.
However, if you would instantly lose that market for your corn, then what you say about the productivity of your farm in regards to ethanol production is bogus and the profit margin is coming from me, the taxpayer, not from your efforts to manage the inputs so that you have a true economic marginal profit on a bushel of corn.
My bet is that your ethanol market would disappear along with the subsidy, but then with the political power of agriculture interests, I doubt we’ll know the answer any time soon. Maybe when the U.S. runs out of money to pay the subsidy, i.e., when they finally bleed the taxpayer dry?

Radio commentator Paul Harvey (now deceased) reported in September 2005 that a Cornell University scientist did a study to see how much it costs (in terms of input energy outlays and human labor) to manufacture one gallon of ethanol from corn. Harvey did not report on the human labor portion, but reported that the scientist found that 1.83 gallons of fossil fuel gasoline was consumed to manufacture 1.0 gallon of ethanol from corn. If this information is correct, it is impossible to realize any environmental benefits from Corn Ethanol.
Checking some online prices (March, 2010) for denatured alcohol (a mixture of 95% ethanol and 5% methanol) yielded pricing from $18 to as high as $40 per gallon (not including shipping). Comparing this to the national (USA) average price of $2.79 for a gallon of gasoline, the price disparity helps to document the high manufacturing costs for ethanol, giving credibility to the report.
Using corn ethanol as a gasoline additive in terms of use as a fuel with the goal of reducing emissions is nothing short of a red herring, even if the land use conversion consequences are completely ignored.

Biofuels do not decrease C02. BioFuel crops eat it. It must be present in order for photosynthesis to occur. Burning biofuels does not increase C02, they only release what they consumed. C02 is a renewable resource for storing energy.
The energy came from the Sun.
Duh.
The only real choice in the matter is the efficiency of the crops selected for the locale.
Biofuel is nothing more than an organic Solar Battery.
Who’s writing these anti-terrestrial articles, anyway? Aliens?

@John Galt (10:35:08) :
“What does this tell us about the fallacy of the USA setting an energy policy? When the government dictates winners and losers, the wrong answer is often chosen. Further, the official policy makes it very difficult for better technologies getting implemented.”
– – – – – – –
How about “The politics of self destruction”?
p.s. Nice screen name, inspired by “Atlas Shrugs”?

rbateman (11:02:22) :
….The energy came from the Sun
It is sad to tell it, but the also Al Gore’s living energy came from the Sun too, though he and all who deny the obvious fact that it is the Sun which warms our earth and gives life to everything say the contrary.

Robustly speaking, as I understand it, it takes more fuel to produce
ethanol than the fuel produced.
Corn-gas is a bad idea as long as people are hungry.
And the concept is patently not “sustainable”.
Can you say “Dust-bowl ” ?

There are some major negatives associated with using any kind of growth for conversion to fuels, whether it’s corn or switchgrass. One of the biggest is harvesting and transporting enough from tens of thousands of acres to the processing facility. Included in that is new roads (even gravel ones), wind and rain erosion due to massive machine harvesting of grass lands, etc., and downstream would be the conversion of “wild” crops (switch grass, trees, etc. ) to cultivated crops to enhance fuel production, with all the subsequent problems of corn and soy in terms of fertilizer, water, biodiversity, etc.. It’s a dead end. You think strip mining is bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Not to mention the fact that you only get one or 2 crops per year.
Biofuel is a bad idea from the get-go for large scale production, which is why it has always been a local emergency substitute for the past 100 years.

Verisun bankruptcy #2 in th industry
Ethanol Inc subisdiary refineries have filed bankruptcy documents in Delaware.
Alex Moglia, president of Moglia Advisors based in the Chicago area, said he knows of at least 16 ethanol companies that are filing for bankruptcy, and there will be at least two to three times that number filing within the next year.
Ethanex Energy Inc. based in Basehor, Kan., an ethanol-development company that never did operate an ethanol plant, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy at the end of March; E3 BioFuels LLC in Mead, Neb., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2007; Central Illinois Energy in Canton, Ill., filed for Chapter 11 in December 2007 and was bought at auction; and California-based Convergence Ethanol Inc. filed for Chapter 7, also in December 2007.
2009 bankruptcies were much higher
Several thousand farmers have been ripped off by bankruptcies because they contracted crops for delivery and did not get paid.
This scam industry is loaded with loan subsidies and product subsidies.
Bush knew better but wanted to appease the farmers and the grreenie weenies.
All the crooks and scams are now jumping into wind turbines and solar.

Manfred (12:05:57) :
in sum the corn studied here
– is grown on spare land and therefore does not affect food prices or availabilty
Nup — it’s grown on farmland. There’s no such thing as “spare land” on a farm.
– replaces oil imports
Nup the second — because we’re using *more* oil in the process of turning it into biofuel and transporting the results than we would have if we’d just used it for food.
– produces jobs in the US.
Seasonal jobs, except for the folks like Mariner.
that is all just right.
Ummmmmmmmmm — *sitting on hands*

RHS (11:57:31) :
One of the biggest and most overlooked problems with ethanol as a fuel source is most combustion engines have not been designed to use the fuel in the most efficient manner.
Back in the ’70s, the stuff was called gasohol, and back in the ’70s, I managed a [insert Brand Name here] retail tire store and garage. We could always tell when a customer who used gasohol came in for service — his engine would be bleeding oil and his spark plugs would be carboned up.
DLS — gasohol rots your engine’s head gasket.

The near-term alternative is simply natural gas, as a recent article in The Economist explains:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15661889
Beyond that, there is a long list of new ideas that could have an impact, from minor to revolutionary:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Congress:Top_100:Complete_List

Rational people, inventors and engineers, came up with oil, water, nuclear, solar, and even wind, but not because of a certain need to be “green”.
The irrational fundamentalist “re-invented” biofuels as the smart way to go. It’s low energy lamps all over again.
I can understand re-using by converting human produced waste into biofuels, I can even understand the so called energy-trees/bush’, or what ever they’re called, as long as they don’t grow it on proper farmland. And I can understand the rationale behind it that it’s gonna take some 10-30 years technological evolution before it makes economic sense and before it becomes say 1:2 process, i.e. 1 unit of energy in and 2 out. But converting food to fuel, that’s as insane as just harvesting the fins from sharks and tossing the remains back into the ocean at the same time around the same continent fish for eating are used to produce fish oil only and nothing else.

@ Bill Tuttle (12:22:51) : I agree completely. The entire business is predicated on a false sense of desperation that has it’s roots in Malthus and is consistently used to stampede the general population into adopting whatever “fixes” best satisfy the fantasies of the paranoid and ( political and/or financial ) power hungry egos that have populated the planet since the first tribal chieftain came on the scene. The only real shortage is sandwich boards.

John in MN
Your post contains two pretty basic misstatements.
Firstly I am pretty sure that people eat corn, and corn based products.
Secondly I am pretty sure that Natural Gas is still fuel.
Then there is “What happens if there is a bad season” ?
Not Sustainable.
Let us do Natural Gas.
Even with my limited intelligence I can see that we are a mere two technical
innovations ( inflatable Space Tanker, Space elevator) away from exploiting Titan and its oceans of the stuff. We could do this long before domestic
supplies run out, if anyone cared to.
Call me crazy if you like.

“In response to the increased demand for maize, farmers convert additional land to crops…”
For an allegedly ‘environmentally friendly’ project, the proponents of this seem to forget about its costs in wildlife habitat and thus biodiversity. This effect is most obvious for so called biofuels harvested fron ‘natural’ sites but it also has the same effects indirectly as more farm land is used making more marginal land economically viable to convert.
The net result is like a plague of locusts.
Of course, they come up with some explanations of why this isn’t so bad. For example, they claim that they will not harvest some biofuels when birds are nesting. Great. Except for all the birds and other wildlife which would use these areas when they are not nesting. Etc., etc.
But now that the farm lobby is on this teat, it will be tough to stop.

This is the outfit that got $500 Million from BP if I’m not mistaken.
It’s total nonsense.
Which is too bad, because I like CO2. It makes the crops grow.

Well just put a fence around your bio-fuels free clean green renewable energy plant, so nobody can come in and steal your product; or worse yet try to poison it, by surrepticiously bringing in Fossil fuels; or the products thereof.
Yep, I can’t wait for the end of fossil fuels, and free clean green renewable energy.
I notice from Radio ads from commercial suppliers of solar PEV electric plants, that now about 50% of the total cost of your roof installation is now paid for by the taxpayers aka your next door neighbors. They made the profits to help you buy your free electric plant using fossil fuels.
So as they say, your electricity is free after you pay for the ploant. Don’t forget to repay what the taxpayers kicked in for your free electric plant.
Better yet; the most practical way for you to repay the cost of your plant so you can get free electricity, is to simply use your free electricity; along with some trucked in sand, to build a duplicate of your electricity plant for your next door neighbor. Then after that everything is free to you; and your neighbor may join you in the free energy club maybe in 40-50 years.
Right now, I can’t make up my mind whether to buy myself a free clean green renewable bio-fuels plant for my house; or a soalr PEV plant, with help from my tax paying neighbors.
I just hope the fossil fuels hold out long enough for us all to have free electricity from sand.

Kum Dollison (14:09:12) :
Ethanol can be shipped by pipeline but it cannot be sent through the same pipes as gasoline.
Where are you buying E10 for 10% less than gasoline? (City & state will suffice.)

I would say that you have to be pretty dumb to think that Biofuel grown on a farm is Carbon Neutral.
First of all, its grown with fertiliser, to produce this you need energy and produce CO2
Second, you need a tractor, it runs on diesel, that also makes CO2
Third, it needs transportation, that makes CO2
And finally, it substitutes land that would otherwise be growing food, which does not spontaneously combust or derelict land, which is of course doing nothing.
I remember the days when Bush was promoting this stuff, ahh, another great idea from the Bush era!

PS remember an acre of land here where I farm will grow 500 gallons of ethanol and 3,000 lbs of animal feed, one year after another, and all I use is about 6 gallons of diesel to plant tend to and harvest it. Now yes their is some Domestic Natural gas used for fertilizer and used in the distilling prosesss. But way less than what I get of just one acre of land in the form of liquid fuels to blend with gas and also feed my animals. Always remember their are peopel out their that don’t want you to know the truth…..John…

It’s recipe for disaster, besides starving poor people with rising food prices, more rain forest in third world countries will be cut down for farm land to grow bio-fuel crops to sell to the rich countries. If there is one single issue where I agree with environmentalists – we need to protect all the rain forest we possibly can.
The bio-fuel mandate MUST END, we are buying food right out of the mouths of starving children. The practice should simply be banned; no person on earth should ever have to compete against machines in rich countries for food – the machines will win every time.

John Galt – Kum and Go – Ankeny, and Mason City, Iowa
Kum and Go are always super-competitive in price wherever I’ve seen them.
http://e85prices.com/iowa.html
The price given is for E0. You have to run your cursor over the little yellow “note” to get the E10 price.
And, yes Kinder Morgan is running ethano, and gasoline through the pipeline from Tampa to Orlando if I’m not mistaken.

John, I just reread your question. I didn’t say ten percent less. I said $1.30 gal.
That’s $0.13 saved buying E10 vs E0.
Hmm, I just realized, that’s 47% less per gallon than gasoline.
Anyway, after figuring 20% loss in mileage, and the $0.45/gal blender’s credit it’s still $0.30 cheaper than gasoline.

A related result. An MIT paper
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/wind-turbines-will-add-up-to-015-c-to.html
just calculated that if you cover 10% of energy needs by wind turbines by 2100, the turbines will reduce the cooling of the surface by decreasing the wind speed etc. As a result, the temperature will jump 1 degrees Celsius locally and 0.15 degrees Celsius globally (global mean temperature) which is actually more than the expected warming caused if the same energy is produced by burning fossil fuels. 😉

Oh, and about that sooper dooper highly effishunt Brazilian “Cane” Ethanol:
It was selling for $3.26/gal at the port in Brazil a couple of weeks ago.
Our poor ol’ inefficient “Corn” ethanol was selling for $1.90/gal at our port. It’s probably about $1.70, now.
Cane can only be stored a couple of weeks after harvesting before it’s processed. Corn can be stored a long time.

But, John from MN, it’s deeper than that. Right now, about 1/3rd of the American corn crop goes into EtOH production. If the entire US crop were turned to fuel, it would only supply about 2% of the world’s yearly automotive fuel needs. Just to put it in perspective, we could save about 5% of our fuel just by keeping out tires properly inflated.
Corn for fuel does not detract from US food demand, but is obtained by decreasing exports. Total demand for US corn has remained the same since the govt regs intervened, so prices only changed in response to world oil prices, not in response to changing demand. You’d still be making your $3.50/bu with or without poorly thought out govt energy programs.

Manfred (12:45:45) :
no, this is about land use change.
The land use doesn’t change, only the use of the *crop* changes.
no, energy output minus energy input is positive. only the co2 difference is in this case zero due to he effect of land use change. additionally, part of the energy input is from non-oil sources such as nuclear or coal.
Taking *all* the energy requirements into account, it still takes the expenditure of more energy to make ethanol than you can extract from it, making it economically unsound.
in sum remains a reduction of fossile fuels and money transfer to the middle east and venzuela.
Well, I’ll disagree that it will reduce the use of fossil fuels, but I’m with you 100% on the need to reduce our dependence on crude from the ME and Chavezistan. Matter of fact, I’m still torqued that we have to ship North Slope crude to Japan to have it refined, and then get charged to import it *back*.

re: Tom Judd (14:52:39) :
The Brazilian experience does not compare to the US. Here we have about one vehicle per person; in Brazil, about 5 to a car, and they drive way less than us.
Indy cars run on methanol. Compression ratios and octane ratings have to do with pre-ignition & knock as well as squeezing out more torque from a gallon. All engineering solutions are compromises among the conflicting factors.
Ethanol is not the solution to our energy problems. It comes from crops, which are grown essentially over two spatial dimensions and detract from the food supply. Bio-deisel from algae is the way to go. It it grown in vats over three dimensions and can use otherwise useless land. We’re running out of good farmland, too, ya know.

There is potential of finding petroleum off the East coast, specifically off the South & North Carolina coast — well beyond the visual horizon (about 13 miles), mostly 25 miles offshore. This geological structure is called appropriately enough the Carolina Trough.
“…it is believed that major accumulations [of petroleum] await discovery in South Carolina’s untested offshore. Present data indicate that the Blake Plateau will be the prime target area although the continental shelf has secondary possibilities. These offshore areas offer the most promise as major petroleum provinces because they have a thick sedimentary section with excellent source beds and trapping possibilities.” (see link below:)
http://search.datapages.com/data/doi/10.1306/C1EA3CAD-16C9-11D7-8645000102C1865D
Of course, there is potential of finding petroleum off the West coast, too, the California offshore has great promise and already pumps oil from multiple underwater fields to one platform (this multiple well to platform set-up is repeated with each platform) . With a safety record in the last 20 years , second to none.
“Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that offshore oil and gas production harms the surrounding environment. This blanket “wisdom” ignores the fact that the largest source of marine hydrocarbon pollution is offshore natural oil seepage. It also ignores the fact that offshore oil production has lowered the amount of oil released into the ocean by reducing natural oil seepage, especially in areas with active offshore oil seeps, such as California’s Santa Barbara coast [natural oil seeps happen in the Gulf of Mexico, too].” (see link below:)
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/11/How%20Offshore%20Oil%20and%20Gas%20Production%20Benefits%20the%20Economy%20and%20the%20Environment
So, what does this all mean?
Well, the potential for offshore oil & gas discovery is excellent and it can be done in an environmentally safe & responsible manner and be over the visual horizon so the production facilities cause no visual “blight”.
Better for the American economy if America produces more oil and sends less money overseas to pay that foreign oil bill and puts Americans to work producing that oil and American profits instead of foreign oil producers getting the profit.
Not to mention it puts downward pressure on oil prices — more oil — and that’s a good thing, competitive energy prices for the American Economy.
Imagine having low energy prices as a goal for American Economy.
(No, makes too much sense for this crew…)
Gee, might even spur economic growth and job creation.
Considering where the U. S. Economy is now — what are we waiting for?

Kum Dollison (14:55:24) :
And, yes Kinder Morgan is running ethano, and gasoline through the pipeline from Tampa to Orlando if I’m not mistaken.
After spending $10 million to upgrade the 85-mile pipeline, Kinder Morgan is indeed running ethanol through it.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/an-ethanol-pipeline-begins-service/
As mentioned in the article, the economics of piping it over longer distances are a bit of a tossup.

Bill Tuttle
It Does NOT take more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it.
There are about 5,000 btus of nat gas in the fertilizer
Depending on the refinery, there are between 16,000 and 25,000 btus of nat gas in process energy at the refinery (some refineries, however, are substituting biomass for nat gas)
There are about 5,000 btus of diesel (farming, harvesting, transporting)
That comes out to between 26,000, and 35,000 btus of fossil fuels in a 76,000 btu gal of ethanol.
Oh, and the Indy 500 runs on ethanol, not methanol

Kum Dollison (14:55:24) :
John Galt – Kum and Go – Ankeny, and Mason City, Iowa
Kum and Go are always super-competitive in price wherever I’ve seen them.
http://e85prices.com/iowa.html
The price given is for E0. You have to run your cursor over the little yellow “note” to get the E10 price.
And, yes Kinder Morgan is running ethano, and gasoline through the pipeline from Tampa to Orlando if I’m not mistaken.
Sounds great! Shape that most cars don’t run on E85, and those that do will end up paying more per mile. Or do you suggest, in this utopian world, that we are all running ethanol cars?
Are you suggesting that we create approximately 10 million+ barrels of ethanol a day? Can the US produce this quantity of ethanol on the land we have? [Insert scratchy head smiley here]
Of course, converting all this land over to a single crop type isn’t going to affect any other part of our economy and environment at all. Is it?
Ethanol is a partial source and always will be. There may be countries which run a higher Ethanol/Gasoline ratio (Brazil) because they simply don’t consume as much (and the simple answer to the “Don’t consume so much” inanity is to reply “You first” and move on to more productive things like reading Garfield in the bathroom).
Show us how *you* can fuel 300 million Americans with Ethanol: one person running their better-than-thou life doesn’t demonstrate that Ethanol is a viable fuel source at all.

1DandyTroll (15:41:58) :
Did some reading on denatured fuel ethanol.
What is the idea of using ethanol fuel derived from food today when the efficiency of the engines doesn’t even give the same 1:1 milage as a proper petrol (i.e. black gold) fueled vehicle? This crap has been around for years now and still apparently it comes up short on the mileage.
And how does the engines really fare in the long run, especially the ones designed for the black fuel/oil to boot.

Some car models actually get better fuel mileage on ethanol/gasoline blends. It is purely a function of how the engine management system makes use of ethanol enhanced fuels. E85 has much wider flammability limits than gasoline at normal operating temperatures, allowing the fuel air mixture to run much leaner than on gasoline with out engine damage. E85 burns cooler due to its higher latent heat of evaporation (exhaust gas temps are typically 100 -200 deg F cooler than on gasoline). E85 engines lose less combustion heat to the cooling system due to their slightly cooler burning, and the fact that they recover heat from the engine during the early part of the intake stroke. E85 produces more moles of combustion products that gasoline for a given fuel air mixture, so average cylinder pressures are higher, and due to the high cooling of the intake charge volumetric efficiency of the engine goes up. Both of these effects result in increased power and low speed torque, in some cars/driving situations this improved engine torque characteristic cuts down need for the engine to shift down to a lower gear while pulling hills, and up shifts to higher gears occur at lower throttle openings. This is how a properly designed engine management system can actually get significantly higher themal fuel efficiency on E85 than on gasoline.
On my first conversion to E85 on my WRX these were the BTU/mile figures on gasoline and E85.

Long term average gasoline mileage Gasoline 125,000 Btu/ gallon / 24 = 5208 BTU/mile
My original conversion setup, @ 92% of gasoline milage or 22 mpg on E85
E85 90,500 BTU/gallon/22 = 4114 BTU/mile

As you can see I used only 78.99% of the fuel energy to go a mile on E85 that I did when driving on straight gasoline. In addition the engine made more power under WOT acceleration on the E85.
Larry

Sorry forgot to mention, E85 fueled gasoline engines are astonishingly clean after converting to E85 fuel. Folks who tear down their engine often (like racers) report that the E85 actually cleans up and removes carbon build up from the former use of gasoline. Many of the engines I have seen torn down looked like new engines after a few thousand miles on E85.
Larry

Consumer Reports:
“The fuel economy of the Tahoe dropped 27 percent when running on E85 compared with gasoline, from an already low 14 mpg overall to 10 mpg (rounded to the nearest mpg). This is the lowest fuel mileage we’ve gotten from any vehicle in recent years. ”
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2006/ethanol/overview/index.htm
So … assuming E85 is 85% gasoline.
7.14 gallons of gasoline to travel 100 miles.
10 gallons of E85 to travel 100 miles …. which means 8.5 gallons of gasoline PLUS 1.5 gallons of ethanol to travel 100 miles.
Conclusion: MORONS buy E85. Crooks and morons make you buy E85.

Those are oats, not corn.
Ethanol is renewable, and cleaner. Far cleaner than MTBE. Ethanol is an energy-storage system. Solar energy is the production in this equation. The C02 released in burning comes from the air in the first place. Since global warming isn’t an issue, and higher C02 levels produce more green plant growth, absorbing more C02, why is that a concern here?
If the land isn’t producing corn for ethanol, it will be producing corn that will end up lying on the ground rotting at the grain terminals. Present ethanol production doesn’t use all of that up as it is. It isn’t burning food. Keep saying that until you get it. Sheesh!
You people who don’t live here believe so many myths about ethanol, corn and agriculture.
John from MN, nice to see a sane, educated person on this topic.
Veronica, the land would still be producing the corn, it would just rot,
that’s all. You see farmers can only sell what is purchased within reasonable hauling distance, and for which they own the equipment to raise and harvest. That happens to be corn and soybeans. Nothing else. Period. And cattle don’t belch the methane. That comes from the other end. Poor rice harvests in the far east have NOTHING to do with ethanol production in the Midwest.
Gary, your source simply lies. In Minnesota, one of the places where the most ethanol is produced from corn, the percentage is 6%, not 25%. As has been noted elsewhere, National Geographic has gotten very political – to the left where they want far fewer people to live.
Rod E. A tax break is not a subsidy paid by you. Read up on American agriculture from WWII to the present so that you don’t look so much like an idiot.
Political power of agricultural interests? You mean like 1-2% of the voter population? Wow, very powerful. . . Believe me real farmers, not the ones in your imagination, feel helpless and have for a long time.
rbateman, and don’t forget the rest of the corn stalk and leaves which still have the C02 sequestered in them.
If you want to argue that regions like Colorado which require tapping the Oglala aquifer shouldn’t be farmed, that is fine, but the arguments made by the ignoramuses here when applied to the Midwest are just lies and propaganda. Every bit as off as Algore’s movie.
It is curious to see the same lies repeated after John from MN cleared them up with actual data from the site. Just like AGW . . .
There is more than enough food produced in this world. The only reason that there is hunger is politics, such as Mugabe’s genocides, same deal in Ethiopia in the past.
JimAsh, John is an actual farmer. He knows what he is talking about. You don’t. You sir, are an ignoramus. You should read what he wrote and learn something. The diesel he needs was invented by Mr. Diesel to be produced by farmers on their own land, from their own soybeans. Natural gas could probably be replaced by the electricity coming from those towers all over farm country, or from solar. Natural gas is just how the equipment is presently designed.

@ JimAsh (13:19:17) :
“Let us do Natural Gas.
Even with my limited intelligence I can see that we are a mere two technical
innovations ( inflatable Space Tanker, Space elevator) away from exploiting Titan and its oceans of the stuff. We could do this long before domestic
supplies run out, if anyone cared to.
Call me crazy if you like.”
Crazy? Not at all. If all the cash spent on CAGW had gone on spaceflight development, we could be doing just that (in a while). Not now though. The West has stopped looking outward. China and/or India will probably get there first.

And for all the warmists who think sceptics are counterproductive or are averse to alternative energy sources may I recommend:

“Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel
Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities of hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far.
The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/business/energy-environment/29biofuel.html

Correction:
Who would have thought 30 years ago that CO2 would be ranked right up their [there] with nuclear energy? :o)

Here is a Cornell University press release from 2005. These claims by John from MN (09:39:53) : and a couple of others claiming that energy output from Corn ethanol exceeds the required energy input for manufacture need to be put to rest.
July 5, 2005
Cornell ecologist’s study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy
By Susan S. Lang
Chris Hallman/University Photography
Ecologist David Pimentel, shown here pumping gas, says that his analysis shows that producing ethanol uses more energy than the resulting fuel generates. Copyright © Cornell University
ITHACA, N.Y. — Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.
“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. “These strategies are not sustainable.”
Pimentel and Tad W. Patzek, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley, conducted a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. Their report is published in Natural Resources Research (Vol. 14:1, 65-76).
In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
Read more: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html

Don Shaw (17:26:58) :
…
Yes you are correct, very old pipe lines are very difficult to clean out, and the companies have to find some place to get rid of the sludge that they clean out of the pipes. The proper solution is to build an ethanol only dedicated pipe line that would handle only fuel ethanol and clean chemicals that will not leave behind crud like fuel oil, etc. I just wish to correct the misinformation that “ethanol cannot be shipped by pipe line”. It can, but it may not be cost effective to clean old neglected lines to a level that will allow ethanol to be shipped in them. There is a real concern that the cleaning action of ethanol will open up lots of pin hole leaks from long standing corrosion that is currently plugged by all that crud in the lines.

Just look at all the problems that arose in fuel supply delivery when ethanol was added at the blending site. We recently had cars breaking down on the parkway right after filling up with ethanol laced fuel that was not handled properly. Virtually every engine carburator had to be rebuilt or replaced for older engines since corrosion and other deposits in fuel tanks clogged the system. Fuel lines degraded. Similar problems occurred when the oil companies first added fuel injector additives.

Denver had the same problem 35 years ago when they introduced ethanol added gasahol and then mandated oxygenated fuels. It is a well known problem and the oil companies are criminally negligent for not handling the issue properly. In Denver right after they shifted to ethanol added gasoline Denver police needed to replace fuel filters on all their cop cars. This was due to the ethanol cleaning out all the varnish and stale gas residue in the fuel system from years of running conventional gasoline.
It is actually very very rare that carburetors really need to be replaced or even cleaned due to this sort of problem. In the vast majority of the cases it is automotive repair guys using a simple plugged fuel filter as an excuse to sell the uneducated car owner a lot of stuff they don’t need. Cars sold for American Distribution have had ethanol compatible fuel lines since 1989 when Denver made oxygenated fuels mandatory.
A handful of old cars (pre 1989 ) do indeed have fuel line problems. Mt 1969 VW square back had a fuel line go south a week after they introduced ethanol added fuel here, when the ethanol cleaned out all the varnish that was sealing the leaks in th 20 year old rubber fuel line. Fuel lines, and fuel pumps die all the time due to old age even on straight gasoline. Only after ethanol is added to the fuel, it becomes the whipping boy and (like the AGW folks) the excuse for lots of unnecessary repairs. I know I worked in auto service in that period when Ethanol first was introduced. Most of the legitimate repairs to fuel lines and fuel pump diaphragms etc. would have happened regardless, but millions of dollars in unnecessary carburetor rebuilds and new fuel pumps were sold when all that was really needed was to replace a clogged fuel filter.

A lot of fiberglass boat tanks started to dissolve when ethanol was added to marine fuels causing engine failures.

True , the boat manufactures designed boats with fiberglass resin that was not compatible with ethanol added gasoline decades after ethanol was widely used in U.S. gasoline. This is an engineering problem. The only boat owners that have a legitimate issue is the ones who had boats built prior to about 1990 when any intelligent boat builder would not have had a reason to use an ethanol compatible resin (and when this issue was unknown). Newer boat owners have a legitimate beef with the boat manufactures that built boats that were not compatible with fuel that was widely available. You have not been able to buy gasoline in Colorado and other areas of the country that was certain to be free of ethanol since 1989 and it first showed up during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970’s when they were trying to stretch gasoline supplies. The boat builders screwed up and there is no excuse for them leaving their boat owners to pay the repair bills for a problem that has been well known for the better part of a lifetime.

Ethanol also absorbes water and causes increased corrrosion rates. Ethanol has a short shelf life. Similarly ethanol can cause degradation of gaskets, valve packings, and rubber hoses, if they are not made of the right materials.

Yes wet ethanol absorbs water, and if left in the fuel system may cause corrosion — but that is a two edged sword, once ethanol added fuel is commonly available, water in the fuel never happens as the ethanol pulls all traces of condensation out of the fuel system as soon as it forms. It is only an issue if the fuel system is already contaminated with large amounts of water when ethanol added fuel is first used. This is usually the case with cars that stall immediately after filling up. They already had lots of water in the gasoline and when the ethanol added gasoline hit the tank it stripped all that water out of the fuel and settled to the bottom of the fuel tank. If the water is greater than the amount the ethanol can dissolve and remain mixed with the gasoline the water ethanol mixture will immediately stratify and settle to the bottom of the tank. All you need to do is drain off that water layer and the rest of the gasoline can be used if it is free of rust etc.
Ethanol does not have a short shelf life. I have stored E85 in 5 gallon Jerry cans for over 2 years and used it with no problems. I have also had E85 left in a gas tank of a car for over a year and it fired and ran like it was last run the day before when I took it out of moth balls. Gasoline goes stale due to oxidation, and forms varnish and shellac in the fuel system. That is why they sell fuel stabilizers like “Stabil” to keep gasoline from going bad over the winter. E85 does not go bad if stored in a sealed container. I have seen no sign of degradation of E85 or ethanol added fuel in cars which had modern sealed fuel systems, or tightly sealed jerry cans.
Wet ethanol is only a problem if it has acid contamination or it is contact with reactive metals like magnesium and zinc. Plain steel is used by ethanol manufactures for their storage tanks and they have no problems with corrosion. Even anodized aluminum has very little problem with ethanol if the fuel blender puts the proper anti-corrosion inhibitors in the fuel. E85 is required to be low acid and have corrosion inhibitors in the U.S.. I know hundreds of folks that have run ethanol added fuel and E85 in conversions for years and have yet to meet anyone that has seen an issue with corrosion in a modern cars fuel system.
In fact the issue is so rare, that the engineering department of Walbro fuel pumps came to one of the forums I moderate on E85 and asked for users who were running their fuel pumps to send them in for forensic analysis.
They were puzzled why in the real world folks were having absolutely no problems with their gasoline only rated fuel pumps but their lab testing was telling them there should be corrosion issues. It turned out the lab testing was giving false positive readings. Something about real world applications was passivateing the pumps and we were seeing very little reduction in service life on their fuel pumps in the real world.
I sent in my fuel pump after some 36,000 miles of use on E85 (this was a gasoline only rated fuel pump) and some 1700 gallons of E85 usage. The trace corrosion they found was not significant enough to change the performance of the pump. The only corrosion I found when I pulled the pump out of the fuel system was the electrical connectors on the fuel pump and lost their plating but otherwise were perfectly serviceable. The only pumps they found that had any significant detectable corrosion were pumps used in humid tropical climates like Florida. Even then, the corrosion issues were trivial and the pumps were giving essentially normal service life.
Corrosion issues on ethanol added fuels are over hyped by about 1000%. Yes it is detectable in some cases. Especially in systems which have incompatible metals such as zinc and magnesium which have largely disappeared from modern fuel systems.
There are some gasket materials that do not like ethanol. The rubber cork composition gaskets used in Holley carburetors 35 years ago did not like ethanol added gasoline, but that gasket material has not been used in modern fuel systems since Jimmy Carter was President.
Modern O-ring materials and fuel lines intended for use in the U.S. have no problems with ethanol added fuels. In my 2002 WRX I intentionally left all the original O-rings and fuel lines in the car for 5 years after I converted to E85. Then when I did a turbocharger upgrade I pulled the fuel injectors out. The O-rings looked like new, were supple and firm like new and showed no sign of degradation or stickiness. I also slit open a section of the OEM fuel line and opened it up. It also looked like new, and was firm and sound. I let it dry for 2 weeks then bent it back 180 degrees to check for checking and cracking after the rubber inner liner had completely dried out. It still had no sign of checks, cracking or gummy surface, it literally looked like new.
From my experience (over 30 years running ethanol added fuels) and 8 years running E85 in 3 different cars which were gasoline only designs manufactured in 1986, 1988, and 2001, I have had ZERO problems with ethanol compatibility since 1979 and that fuel line on my VW. I also moderate an E85 web forum and complaints regarding E85 are essentially zero on hundreds of conversions from all over the world.
Problems with ethanol compatibility are as near zero as you can get with any automotive change. There are however a good number of mechanics and service tech’s who are blaming ethanol for everything you can imagine, and scamming their customers out of millions of dollars in unnecessary repair work that they are illegitimately blaming on ethanol.
As you point out, there are a few real issues but they (with the exception of the boat fuel tanks and cheap utility engines that use zinc and magnesium components) trivial and well within the range of normal wear and tear. In the last 40 years of driving I have had 4 fuel pumps fail. Every single one of them were on cars that ran gasoline only, prior to the introduction of ethanol enhanced gasoline. I have had one fuel line leak issue on a 20 year old VW rubber fuel line shortly after ethanol added fuel came into use. Since 1979 (about 400,000 miles of driving in a half dozen different cars) I have had no fuel system problems of any kind due to ethanol.
Larry

A couple more http://www.ncga.com/files/pdf/LandUseandSustainability4-09.pdf
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/ethanol_myths_facts.html

PS fellows the out of the energy used to produce the Yellow dent corn and ferment the starch to ethanol and dry the distillers grain for animal feed, only 17% of that energy is gasoline and fuel. 73% of that energy is Natural Gas. So with corn ethanol you get fuel, animal feed and get the energy from the sun and from the consumption of the corn plant using CO2 and most of the energy used is not Gasoline or Diesel fuel. So this beats the hell out of T, Boone pickens plan of converting Natural Gas to car fuel. Corn Ethanol does it and you get the animal feed which is what we grow on our farmland anyhow….John..

francisedwardwhite
Everything you stated was false. You need to learn facts or just ignore the subject. But to repeat flase crud when you have not a clue is diservice to me as a hard working farmer or the many employees in the Agriculture, Feed and Ethanol Business…..Way to much crud floats around the Web as you well know……..John…

The Corn Ethanol Solution is just one more example of a ‘green consensus’ solution leading to disastrous unintended consequences: deforestation, water depletion, rising world food prices and destabilized agricultural societies. It fits right in with:
Smokey Bear – a ‘green consensus’ driven century of intensive (and expensive) fire suppression policies by the USFS. Unintended consequences: fuel buildup in America’s forests have resulted in more extreme wildfires, greater property loss and subsequent soil erosion.
Green Revolution – the ‘green consensus’ awarded a Nobel Prize to the Green Revolution theory, advocating intensive use of pesticides and herbicides, and large-scale crop monocultures, to end world famine. Unintended consequences: soil and water pollution, deforestation, more cancer, displacement of small farmers, and enabling of continued world population growth (and no end to famine).
Now a ‘green consensus’ proposes to “stop” climate change (after 4.5 billion years of climate change) by suppressing anthropogenic CO2 emissions by committing the globe to an untested “bioengineering” experiment!

To: Steve Schaper, who said: “Rod E. A tax break is not a subsidy paid by you. Read up on American agriculture from WWII to the present so that you don’t look so much like an idiot.”
Leaving aside the insult, a tax break IS a subsidy. When everyone pays their taxes equally, taxes are fair. When the government favors one group’s tax rate over another they are granting them favored tax treatment, i.e., direct monetary assistance. You ordinarily would owe $1,000,000, but hey, because you’re a favored group doing something in the public interest, just pay us $250,000 this year.
Definition of subsidy: “Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest.” And guess where the government gets it’s money so it can grant all that “monetary assistance”? That’s right, you and me.
The problem with a subsidy, whether in the form of direct payment or a tax break for that favored endeavor, is that we have these endless arguments about the underlying economics. Drop the subsidy (tax break) and see if ethanol can stand on its own. I doubt that it will, but if it does, fine. Because that would mean that the total inputs are sufficiently exceeded by the total outputs to generate a reasonable profit margin.
Sure, there are other considerations, like keeping smog down, but ethanol subsidization has gone way, way past those considerations and are a political con game, pure and simple.
Also, even though the subsidy is directed to the blenders, competition drives down their profit margin as they bid up the price of the ethanol component until everything balances out. And the farmer benefits from that bidding up process, as does the ethanol manufacturer.

Having designed and built 23 “renewable energy power plants”, I can assure all comers that WHATEVER commercial enterprise you may enter into that promises even a slim chance of profit will be resisted vociferously by the “forces for good” in the environmental community. Although the economics of ethanol make no sense on a macro scale, the fact the anyone might find a corner of profit from the concept inevitably brings out the “naysayers”.
I’d be happy to see the concept disappear from the face of the earth, but for the reason that it makes no practical economic sense rather than some trumped up study posturing as “new news”. The negative CO2 balance of ethanol production was long ago established on the back of an envelope.

We had, that’s HAD, a biofuel pump at our local Morrisons (UK supermarket chain) petrol station. Seems that Morrisons had a rethink and came to the conclusion biofuel isn’t commerically viable and dumped it.
Good for them!

They keep making the same mistake: both the industry and the analysts! If you make biofuel you must fuel the tractors and other system on the product, ethanol in this case. That eliminates the so called land use changes and fossil CO2 out put. We also have a large number of non-fossil source fertiliser options. I’m trained in that field.
Yet Government, industry and of cause the IPCC consistently get it wrong. They don’t really want solutions; just an excuse to regulate the world and a big project with a nice skim for those with connections.
Small scale ethanol (and methanol) can be made sustainable and fossil carbon free. Recycling all nutrients back to the farm from the Still near the gate. Recycling the distillers grains via the back end of a cow. Yet all manner of barriers have been put in the way of these working technologies. Licences that bill you by the mega-litre: a small still producing a kilolitre faces the same fee as one producing thousand time as much. Licensing paperwork that dates from prohibition. A dozen food technology regulations that got it wrong. Some of these barriers were removed in the last days of the Bush White House but the damage is done.
After killing what works they create something that’s so centralised that shipping the high protein by product, distillers grains, back to livestock on the cornfields is non-viable. The soil suffers as a consequence.
However if they were really serious about biofuels they would go for mobile ‘small’ 18 wheel truck mounted methanol plants and plastic bag lined ‘self sealing’ methanol fuel tanks. No new technology required its a WW2 technology.

hotrod ( Larry L ) (20:41:21) :
Your argument is purely and simply a macro argument. You insist that the Tahoe gets appauling fuel economy on E85 because it was ‘designed’ as such. Your only argument is that you (one person) got better comparable mileage on a *conversion* on a totally different vehicle, therefore the other vehicle was deliberately sabotaged to get worse fuel economy.
Guess what, a Prius gets better mileage than that, so you are a fool to use the Suburu regardless of ethanol or gasoline usage.
This would be the same as arguing that we don’t need overpriced plumbers because *I* can go my own plumbing work, therefore so can anyone else. Or how about the millions that people earn from buying and selling real estate – people *do* earn that, but it’s not scalable (it’s a pyramid scheme in that case).
It’s not all about you. There are 300 odd million other people in the US. Your solution doesn’t necessarily scale, or even fit the requirements of the population as a whole. It’s this narrow-minded thinking that gets us into these messes in the first place: “what’s good for one is good for all” is, actually, not.
Conclusion: if you know what you are talking about you’ll realize that no-one cares that one car can get marginal economical fuel improvement through tinkering and still end up worse than a significant number of vehicles purchasable today.

um, ‘energy density’, nyah, nyah.
==================

5.0 Mustang and Superfords magazine did a study to determine if a 04′ Mach 1 tuned for E85 could get better efficiency (cost/mile) than on regular gasoline. They were able to realize a little better economy with the E85 specifically tuned car as some have stated here, but they were pretty much able to duplicate that economy with the same car tuned for premium (higher octane gasoline) as well.
http://www.mustang50magazine.com/techarticles/m5lp_0912_2004_mustang_mach_1_e85_mileage_test/index.html
The economy of E85 is dependent on having the significantly lower cost per gallon at the pump. However, I think that this is artificial as the gasoline is being penalized and the E85 is being subsidized to create a favorable cost for E85.

All in All Ethanol gets knocked by the un-informed and groups with a political or financial angle to dis-credit the highly efficient Agricultural Farming and Ethanol production in the Mid-Western USA…….Sincerely John T.
Shouldn’t you add “highly subsidized, wouldn’t make on the open market” to your list of adjectives describing your product.

That’s a Savings of $0.30/gal for Every Gallon of Ethanol used.

OceanTwo (03:23:22) :
Your argument is purely and simply a macro argument. You insist that the Tahoe gets appauling fuel economy on E85 because it was ‘designed’ as such. Your only argument is that you (one person) got better comparable mileage on a *conversion* on a totally different vehicle, therefore the other vehicle was deliberately sabotaged to get worse fuel economy.

No I did not say it was sabatoged, that is your term I said they did an awful job of converting the car to a FFV design because government policy gives them absolutely no reason to spend a single dime to get better fuel mileage on E85 due to the way CAFE standards are set up. They took an engine that already gets poor fuel mileage on gasoline and did the minimum possible to allow it to run on E85. In short it is a low budget cobbled together solution to satisfy an economic need to play the CAFE fleet average fuel mileage regulations, not to give the consumer anything useful.

Guess what, a Prius gets better mileage than that, so you are a fool to use the Suburu regardless of ethanol or gasoline usage.

Who said I had the slightest interest in getting fuel mileage comparable to a Prius?
I bought a performance car to drive like a performance car! E85 gives me better performance and more responsive car than gasoline at a lower total cost per mile. When a Prius can accelerate from 0-60 mph in under 3.5 seconds, accelerate at over 1 G from a standing stop, and hit over 100mph in a quarter mile from a standing stop, and still get comparable fuel mileage to typical road cars, and still qualify as a LEV let me know.

It’s not all about you. There are 300 odd million other people in the US. Your solution doesn’t necessarily scale, or even fit the requirements of the population as a whole. It’s this narrow-minded thinking that gets us into these messes in the first place: “what’s good for one is good for all” is, actually, not.
Conclusion: if you know what you are talking about you’ll realize that no-one cares that one car can get marginal economical fuel improvement through tinkering and still end up worse than a significant number of vehicles purchasable today.

Actually lots of folks care! E85 experimenters have proven conclusively that if the major manufactures spent even a fraction of thei R&D budget they spend on new stereo systems and putting blue tooth accessories into cars they could easily get higher fuel mileage on E85. It is absolutely trivial to get fuel mileage comparable to a well tuned gasoline engine and if they put a premium on optimizing for E85 they could out perform gasoline engines on E85 in the FFV’s.
The solution to improved performance on FFV’s running E85 is very simple, and is proven by thousands of experimenters.
Use a small displacement turbocharged engine that senses E85 content and adjusts both fueling and boost level to get maximum thermal efficiency out of the E85 or the gasoline ethanol mixture in the tank. If hundreds of back yard experimenters can do it there is absolutely no excuse for professional design engineers to not be able to do it other than the fact the governments CAFE standards give them no reason or financial incentive to even try.
The government if it insists on using a CAFE standard system should also change the rules so there is some difference in the CAFE credit received by a car if it gets good fuel mileage on E85 or terrible fuel mileage on E85. Right now it makes no difference at all. The manufactures get exactly the same fuel mileage rating for CAFE purposes whether the engine gets 50% of its gasoline mileage on E85 or 90% of its gasoline fuel mileage on E85, so they take the cheap route and do just enough so the car will start and run on E85 without stalling and call it a day.

Justa Joe (06:07:06) :
The economy of E85 is dependent on having the significantly lower cost per gallon at the pump. However, I think that this is artificial as the gasoline is being penalized and the E85 is being subsidized to create a favorable cost for E85.

The current blenders tax credit has already been reduced from 51 cents a gallon of ethanol blended to its current rate of 45 cents a gallon of ethanol blended. At that rate a gallon of E85 gets a blenders tax credit of (.85 x 45)= 38.25 cents blenders tax credit per gallon.
As noted above in my previous comments the current at the pump costs of E85 vs gasoline in my area is :
E85 =$2.17/gal
Regular = $2.55/gal
You will note that that spread is almost exactly the blenders tax credit. That means that using current technology, E85 is very near to break even with gasoline on a gallon for gallon basis.
The tax credits are doing their intended job, allowing ethanol producers to build out their infrastructure to the point that they can achieve the economies of scale necessary to compete on a heads up basis with conventional petroleum. As in Brazil eventually that tax credit will be phased out once the industry has the infrastructure to compete with the 100 year old petroleum refining and sales industry.
The U.S. national fuel ethanol infrastructure was artificially destroyed by government intervention during the 1930’s during prohibition when the fuel ethanol industry was driven out of business and oil was given a free ride to monopolize the fuel industry. That is an unfair advantage that oil has held for 80 years, not to mention decades of tax breaks the oil industry has benefited from for depreciation allowance and other arcane rules that give them preferential tax treatment.
The current 3rd generation fuel ethanol plants that are now in design and construction phase will be able to compete heads up with oil for fuel, if the auto manufactures give the fuel ethanol engine design a fair chance to compete on fuel mileage which is already proven possible. There are high efficiency fuel ethanol powered engine designs that have shown you can get thermal efficiencies at least as good as gasoline, and in optimized designs comparable to diesel engines on ethanol (near 40% thermal efficiency compared to 25% thermal efficiency for gasoline engines). There is no excuse for FFV designs to get such abysmal fuel mileage on E85 other than a lack of interest or incentive for the manufactures to make relatively trivial engine management design changes to optimize the engines for use on E85 and high ethanol fuel mixtures, rather than optimize them for gasoline and just settle for what ever the get on E85.
Larry

We should require all producers of ethanol; the farmers, the truckers, the distillers, etc., to use ethanol for their energy needs. That way there won’t be much left for the rest of us to have to worry with.

John, the “basic” Corn ethanol industry is in good shape. It doesn’t need subsidies. The “Subsidies” are going to the oil companies, anyway. The Mandates are necessary, though.
Subsidies, probably are needed for awhile longer to build out the E85 structure, though. The subsidies are valuable for attracting financing.
“Cellulosic” will need the subsidies to be in place for another couple of years.
Brazil is not about to drop THEIR Tariff (20%,) so I don’t think we should.
Poet, and Magellan are going to build an 1,800 mi. pipeline from S Dakota to the East Coast. This is the pipeline that makes sense.

Rod E @ 8:09:42
The light goes on, eh?
==========

Naw, Kum, I’m talking about the vast amounts of land needed to produce the corn. Biofuels have the same problem as wind and solar energy, that is, poor energy density. Nyah, nyah.
===============

Kum Dollison (07:34:29) :
When he mentioned gasoline he didn’t say, “brought to you from the Middle East at the cost of 4,000 dead, and $200 Billion/yr.”
A cheap shot, considering that Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria are our three biggest sources of petroleum.

Gotta watch the farmers ( I bought my first farm in the 70’s.)
NYMEX gasolene $2.228 per gallon right now.
CBOT ethanol at 1.66. That is losing a lot of money.
Verisun bankrupt, POET bought some other ethanol plants that are broke at a deep discount. PANDA not only broke, but ran off with money they never used for construction. Panda sought to burn cow manoo for heating and brewing energy. They shut down construction and sued Lurgi. Their scheme was to trade carbon credits on the manure also.
Ethanol Magazine. The claim ethanol is a “low carbon alternative” to gasoline.
Looks like farmers don’t know their chemistry.
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=6346
When the Ethanol industry lobbies and claims their stuff is a low carbon fuel, look out. They have been drinking too much low carbon Vodka.
(ethanol plants mix a little gasoline in their product so people aren’t tempted to drink from the tap)
CH3CH2OH is combined with O2 and gives off CO2 and H2O
Chemistry is a streeeeeetch if you are selling a political product and not an organic one.
I won’t get into it but alcohol is a boat motor killer. Someone mention fibreglass boat fuel tanks? Nope. They are metal. Grey, clear and black water tanks on boats are roto molded poly.

“You will note that that spread is almost exactly the blenders tax credit. That means that using current technology, E85 is very near to break even with gasoline on a gallon for gallon basis.” – larry
Actually you confirmed my point. By your own number E85 sans subsidy would be inferior to gasoline. If they’re evenly priced per gallon Gasoline superior MPG win out.

Justa Joe,
Due to the lack of competition in the marketplace those filling stations/jobbers that are supplying E85 are getting a huge Premium on their product.
With today’s wholesale numbers you could make a nice profit selling E85 for $1.65/gal – $2.10 w/o subsidies.
Today’s wholesale unleaded prices portend $2.97 gasoline. Allow $0.60 for decreased mileage and you have $2.37 vs $2.10.
E85 “Wins.”

“”” Justa Joe (08:08:30) :
Can someone present a chemical equation and the the stoichiometry to demonstrate how the combustion of so called bio-fuels is supposed to produce any less CO2 than gasoline?
Not that buy into the CO2 = bad hoopla “””
Well the theory is that the carbon in the bio-fuel originally was CO2 in the atmospehre’ so the process of making bio-fuels is a process for recycling CO2 from the atmosphere; which of course is a zero sum or losing game. Well they argue that the sun provides the energy to run the process, which I guess is true. But it takes one hell of a lot of land area to get much bio-fuel; not to mention all the precious water consumed in the process. Of course you could process that water by itself using solar energy, to release hydrogen.
But maybe it beats getting CO2 from coal; well that is just old bio-fuel anyway.

The answer to the ethanol dilemma, is very simple. Just put a fence around your sun powered bio-fuels factory, and allow only sunshine to enter the facility; no fossil or other fuels allowed, so the factory runs on its own bio-fuels energy; powered of course by the sun. That is where the free green clean renewable part of the advertising comes from.
Of course if the factory shuts down for lack of energy, then that is just a sign, that your scheme is an energy wasting scheme, and should be shut down immediately.
If you can’t run your process, with your own energy output; you ain’t an energy supplier.

Steve (09:42:20) :
This is way-off topic (more or less), but can anyone here recommend a good book outlining the principles of solar energy and panels, and the subsequent applications and methods?
I’m not afraid of technical writing, either. Seen there are many for sale and there are many websites, but just wondering where to start.

http://www.instructables.com/
Large site with an eclectic mix of inventive DIY types who post their own work, you can learn how to do virtually anything there. They do solar a lot, you can glean nearly everything you need to know between the postings and the comments, and also find recommended conventional info sources like books and magazine articles. You can also go to the Community section, find the right category, and ask directly. Although a site search for say “solar book” would be recommended before asking, as you would be far from the first person looking for such.

Justa Joe (10:53:33) :
“You will note that that spread is almost exactly the blenders tax credit. That means that using current technology, E85 is very near to break even with gasoline on a gallon for gallon basis.” – larry
Actually you confirmed my point. By your own number E85 sans subsidy would be inferior to gasoline. If they’re evenly priced per gallon Gasoline superior MPG win out.

Yes if you take a myopic view of the situation. It proves that fuel ethanol can be sold at price competitive costs right now. A few years ago it was absolutely impossible to sell fuel ethanol without a tax credit to make it competitive. As pointed out above the raw ethanol is selling much cheaper than gasoline at the source. Unfortunately E85 pricing is driven by gasoline pricing right now because it is a direct replacement product for gasoline. It not being properly marketed in most markets. If E85 was sold at the same mark up over the raw wholesale cost of materials it would sell much cheaper than gasoline even without the tax credit by modern high effeciency plants. Unfortunately there are still a substantial number of older fuel ethanol plants that are not able to operate at those cost competitive price points yet .
If there is any sort of upturn in world oil prices the spread will only widen. As I mentioned we are already very close to break even.
Newer high efficiency plants already exceed break even (including fuel mileage considerations). Right now there actual sales infrastructure will not (in most markets) allow aggressive pricing for E85 since there are still too few outlets in most markets.
In April of 2009 there were 1,986 stations selling E85 ethanol fuel across 1,427 cities. When we get to the point that E85 outlets need to compete on price with other neighborhood stations the prices will drop further. In most markets the E85 supply is almost a sole source vendor and there is no reason to compete directly with other E85 outlets. Their only fuel competition is gasoline so they logically price E85 just enough below gasoline to sell the product.
During the period of high fuel prices just prior to the economic down turn E85 was selling in some markets by up to a dollar a gallon cheaper than gasoline, and still being profitable. The most effective price point right now (on total revenue basis) is to price E85 at least 22% below the cost of regular gasoline in the same market. Many retailers have not figured this out yet and they are over charging for the fuel, being penny wise and pound foolish, giving up volume sales for per gallon profit.
At that 22% below regular gasoline price point E85 begins to stimulate significant cross over purchases by FFV users, shifting consumption from gasoline to E85. At the current regular gasoline price in my market of $2.55/gallon, E85 would price out at $2.24, This station is actually beating that 22% spread slightly by selling at $2.17.
If gasoline goes back up to $4.00, E85 could be sold for $3.00 a gallon and still make a profit. With a wholesale cost of about $1.54/gallon for the fuel ethanol the fuel could be sold at a profit for about $1.85/gallon if there was a competitive E85 sales environment. In competitive E85 markets like Minnesota E85 right now is selling for $1.99/gallon, while gasoline sells for $2.49/gallon.
Larry

hotrod ( Larry L ) (15:22:11) :
The mistake you make is that the market of gasolene and ethanol moves together. Ethanol technically moves with feedstock/grain prices. The reason so many ethanol plants went broke is they had high grain contracts and the price of grain dropped much lower. They filed for protection to get out of their grain contracts and shafted the farmers.
As many ethanol plants that are now in recievership that never even started production is a shame. One I drive by on the way to see my farm has over 100 tank cars parked and rusting. The plants for the most part had to buy their own rail cars because of using them for ethanol.
Bad products and bad business plans come together and create failure.
The rule of thumb is for every dollar increase in corn price per bushel plus the increase in crude oil equivalent prices, the production cost of ethanol increases.
Total Subsidies for Ethanol Between $6.3 and $8.7 Billion Per Year ($1.42-$1.87 Per Gallon)
– Total Subsidies for Biodiesel Between $1.7 and $2.3 Billion Per Year ($1.69-$2.15 Per Gallon)
Just a little perspective, Exxon Mobil collects and pays 100 billion dollars a year in taxes. The total ethanol industry gross revenue is maybe 10% of that. A refinery reports in terms of 100’s of thousands of barrels per day. (42 gallons per barrel) The total ethanol industry is approaching `10 billion gallons per year.
I have a problem with subsidizing a niche product that is leaving a trail of bankruptcies.

Henry, current ethanol production is 12,572,400,000 – about 9% of our current gasoline usage. Most of the closed plants are back in production.
A conservative figure is: It takes 1 gallons of petrol to produce, and ship 15 gallons of ethanol.
As I posted above, every gallon of ethanol that’s sold, today, pays for its subsidy
and after allowing for mileage profits us $0.30.

The mistake you make is that the market of gasolene and ethanol moves together.

Right that is what I said ethanol prices are strongly effected by gasoline prices rather then ethanols true costs, since it is a direct replacement for gasoline. If oil (gasoline) goes up in price it drags up the cost of ethanol and indirectly also drags up the cost of the commodities used to produce ethanol.

I have a problem with subsidizing a niche product that is leaving a trail of bankruptcies.

That is what happens when uninformed investors flocked into ethanol when it was a bubble commodity, They promptly lost their shirt because they bought into low efficiency plants or plants which were buying corn on the spot market rather than long term contracts.
There is no industry in the world that is immune to this sort of problem. When fools rush into any hot market folks get burned. It was not bad products and bad business plans it was bad business plans and stupid investors that bought obsolete plants and refused to upgrade them (or could not upgrade them) to current technology and tried to just skim the profits when things were good.
The product is fine, it does exactly what it is supposed to do. It is the most cost effective octane enhancer on the market today, and increases total gasoline production both due to its stretching of gasoline production in refining and due to its direct displacement of gasoline. It is a superior fuel to gasoline for high efficiency internal combustion engines.
The subsidy (blenders tax credit) is not high on my list either because it goes to the wrong people. It should go the brewer who produces the blended ethanol, (and indirectly to the farmer that grows the feed stock) not the entity that blends the ethanol. Right now most of it is going to the oil companies and not the ethanol industry, so we are in the uncomfortable position of trying to encourage growth of an industry by using an incentive that pays money to its primary competitor.
That said, the blenders tax credit was the incentive necessary to get financing flowing for the rapid build out of fuel ethanol operations that allow us to have nearly 12 billion gallons of ethanol production capacity. As you mentioned the low efficiency plants are in many cases moth balled and are being rapidly replaced with new technology plants with higher yields and better cost to production ratios. It was / is a necessary evil to get the industry back into the position it was in the 1930’s where it was a co-equal with gasoline, before the government crushed it and handed the oil producers a defacto monopoly on transportation fuels.
It does not bother me all that much, because the blenders tax credit is zero net cost to the American tax payer. The ethanol industry and related industries pay back far more taxes (than it would receive if fuel ethanol industry did not exist) than the government invests in the blenders tax credit. In addition, thanks to the effects of fuel ethanol on the corn market, For the first time in about 30 years farmers can actually sell their crop at a profit without government payouts.
Even with the price increases in corn seen 2 years ago corn was still cheap in historical terms. In 2008 corn reached about $7.00/bu pricing, in 2008 dollars corn sold for just short of $16.00 in 1974. Assertions that corn prices were at unprecedented levels due to fuel ethanol in recent years, are simply false.
http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Corn/corn_inflation_chart.htm
The Federal Government also saves billions of dollars in price support payments that they would otherwise have paid out due to low corn prices if fuel ethanol did not exist..
I would much rather have a rational incentive program but this is what the Congress saddled us with and it gets the job done.
I am far more concerned about our strategic vulnerability to oil cut off than I am these problems and fuel ethanol (and other bio fuels) provide a buffer it that were to happen again. At the current state of technology if there were a mid-east crisis that drastically reduced our oil imports bio fuels would be absolutely critical to preventing catastrophic damage to our economy. I have no illusions that bio fuels can totally replace oil but 12+ billion gallons of fuel ethanol is a whole lot better than zero, and the industry has enough expertise and well developed technology that in a national crisis it could be built out rapidly if necessary.
Larry

Kum Dollison (17:13:02) :
I will guarantee you that the ethanol producers are making money at $1.54/gal.
The producers that went broke went broke “playing commodities,” not producing ethanol.

Your claim is not honest.
By Gale Rose
The Pratt Tribune
Posted Mar 15, 2010 @ 04:39 PM
Pratt, Kan. — The removal of an Indeck power boiler from the Gateway Ethanol Plant will move the last of the objections to the asset sale close to resolution. Once the objection is resolved the rest of the matters involving the ethanol plant should be easily resolved, said Ted Loomis, chairman of the Gateway Ethanol board of directors.
“I think the bankruptcy court will handle any other items fairly quickly,” Loomis said.
Indeck objected to the asset sale because they wanted a ruling on the validity of the lease of their boiler to the plant. A judge ruled it was a valid lease and Dougherty, the principal lender, rejected the lease so Indeck is removing the boiler.
The plant purchased pair of Victoria Energy boilers on Jan. 22. Those boilers sit covered on the plant site ready for installation once the Indeck boiler is removed. The $110 million ethanol plant began operating and stopped. No “playing commodities” there.
40 banks are involved with the plant.
News on Panda,
Although the ethanol refinery is in the late stages of construction, on December 31, Panda Ethanol was notified by Societe Generale, the administrative agent for the Hereford subsidiary’s lending syndicate, that one of the major syndicate banks had informed Societe Generale that it would not fund its share of further borrowing requests for the project
Never finished 3 plants. No “playing Commodities” there. $200 million dollars for one plant means they really had no chance to make money.

Abengoa folks claim:
The claim “Bioethanol is indirectly increasing GHG emissions” is just one of the many false statements being spread to the general public. We have decided to stand up and contest these falsities with supported evidence. We believe it is the right thing to do.
Abengoa Bioenergy, a business unit of Abengoa, is Europe’s largest bioethanol producer and the only global producer with operations in the US and Brazil as well.”
The claim they make is 100% lie. I give them a quible. It is not indirect. It is direct creation of greenhouse gases when ethanol burns
The exhaust from a car running ethanol is CO2 and H2O vapor. Both are 100% greenhouse gases.
Why do they lie? (they do around 200 million gallons a year in Europa, Brazil and the U.S. They have a higher cost of brewing refining per gallon than do some more efficient operators. )
The greenie weenies goble this up. No indirect increase of GHG emissions. Watts up is a great site. Anyone reading this site knows combustion of ethanol creates GHG’s.
10 billion subsidy. Ethanol plants are high in pollution and water contamination. I know the plant that sold toxic distillers grain and killed a large herd of cattle. Ooops. It wasn’t sterilized.

10 billion subsidy. (Way too high) Ethanol plants are high in pollution and water contamination. (Bull) I know the plant that sold toxic distillers grain and killed a large herd of cattle. Ooops. It wasn’t sterilized (Name it.)
This is getting silly. I’m through.

Kum Dollison (19:34:39) :
Harry,
you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. $200 Million is an average price for a 100 Mgpy Ethanol refinery. The woods are full of them.
There are 200 plants operating, Now. Everybody’s making money.
“Every body is making money now?” I take it you are a CPA and reviewed the financials? Just speculation?
If they are making money, why did a repo plant from Panda Energy go for 15 cents on the dollar? Why can’t some other plants in foreclosure sell at a discount? Looks like ICM is running some re possessed plants because they are broke and waiting for a buyer. It costs too much to mothball and re open later.
If they are making money, why can’t they pay their bills?
Last tough question. Are they making money after 10 billion in fed subsidy?
Looks like bankruptcy hits the industry. Many plants under construction are halted and many closed waiting for buyers. ADM has deep pockets. They will come out OK.
This is an industry which will see more bankruptcies. Smart bankers will not lend on cash flow “projections” but may make loans if enough farmers put up land for collateral.
POET can survive because of size and opportunity to buy out insolvent small operators.

Kum Dollison (10:43:49) :
Actually, Bill, Canada imports 1 million bpd from, primarily, Algeria, I believe, and Mexico, a soon to be non-exporter, is nowhere near our top 3 exporters.
And, of course, Nigeria has its issues, also.
I wasn’t addressing of Canadian imports — I was addressing US imports.
And, we are spending in the neighborhood of $200 Billion/yr in the Middle East. We’re not there for the date palms.
If we were here for the oil, I’d be tripping over people with Texas accents…

Poet didn’t buy any ethanol plants.
E Coli didn’t turn into anything. All manure has E Coli.
Pimental is nutz. You can grow that much ethanol on One acre.

Henry chance (21:30:23) :
…
If they are making money, why can’t they pay their bills?

The same reason industries all over the U.S. are scrambling for capital, you have heard of the recent economic crisis and its impact on operating capital loans to businesses?
When financing tightened up across the board for every business operator in the country, some ethanol operations got caught in the crunch. They lost access to capital that was easy to get when they started the plants. They over extended themselves and could not weather the funds crunch just like 10’s of thousands of other businesses. In some cases the real problem was that their investors got burned so bad by the stock crash that they could not continue to invest in the operation even though it was a viable business opportunity. If you don’t have the money to pay bills you can’t invest in future growth.
In some cases it was due to poor planning investors that did not do due diligence got into fuel ethanol as pure speculation when the stock market was booming, and when things tightened up and their portfolio’s collapsed they were sitting on an older fuel ethanol plant that needed expensive upgrades to compete effectively in a tight market against he new modern plants that are coming on line all the time. In some cases it was a smarter investment to sell the old plant and move the money to invest in a new modern technology plant.
There are lots and lots of successful profitable business that have gone bankrupt in the last two years simply because they could not fine operations capital to get them over the crunch. Anyone who is aware of current financial conditions for business would know that off the top of their head and understand that bankruptcy of healthy businesses can be triggered by changes in the availability of financing that are totally beyond their control, even if they are doing every thing right.
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/plant-list.jsp
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/plantmap/
Current fuel ethanol plant capacity is standing at 13318 Billion gallons a year. You will note that two of the plants are flagged as currently undergoing expansion.
There is currently 1,047 million gallons a year of ethanol plant construction and expansion underway. In spite of plant shutdowns of marginal plants net production capacity is still growing, in spite of current financial conditions.
Larry