Interesting timing, especially when some biomass companies are switching from wood chips to corn, because they couldn’t turn a profit on wood chips. Looks like all the wheels are coming off the bus now.
To Survive, Some Biofuels Companies Give Up on Biofuels – Technology Review
Gevo, a prominent advanced-biofuels company that has received millions in U.S. government funding to develop fuels made from cellulosic sources such as grass and wood chips, is finding that it can’t use these materials if it hopes to survive. Instead, it’s going to use corn, a common source for conventional biofuels. What’s more, most of the product from its first facility will be used for chemicals rather than fuel.
As the difficulty of producing cellulosic biofuels cheaply becomes apparent, a growing number of advanced-biofuels companies are finding it necessary to take creative approaches to their business, even though that means abandoning some of their green credentials, at least temporarily, and focusing on markets that won’t have a major impact on oil imports. This is hardly the outcome the government hoped for when it announced cellulosic-biofuels mandates, R&D funding, and other incentives in recent years.
Here’s the story on the subsidy ending from the Detroit News:
Congress adjourned for the year on Friday, failing to extend the tax break that’s drawn a wide variety of critics on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Critics also have included environmentalists, frozen food producers, ranchers and others.
The policies have helped shift millions of tons of corn from feedlots, dinner tables and other products into gas tanks.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth praised the move.
“The end of this giant subsidy for dirty corn ethanol is a win for taxpayers, the environment and people struggling to put food on their tables,” biofuels policy campaigner Michal Rosenoer said Friday.
Dirty Corn Ethanol? I’m all for ending taxpayer siphoning, but dirty corn ethanol?
Full story h/t to Lawrence Depenbush
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Mascoma Corp has just inked deals with a couple companies to build cellulose to ethanol facilities. Their process is patented and trumps all existing wood/ethanol processes, which is why their competitors are exiting the business.
The “dirty corn” comment is based on the fact that when you make biofuel from crops, you are burning up the nations topsoil in your fuel tank, PLUS it takes a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of bioethanol (fertilizer, transpo, refining energy, etc) and the ethanol has lower energy content, so bioethanol is actually more polluting than oil.
Most civilizations have struggled to feed their populous enough to avoid system breakdown. Let’s fuel up our SUVs.
The subsidy is ending but mandates aren’t. It just mean the price of fuel in areas with ethanol mandates is going up even more. California, for example.
Is Congress coming to its senses? Or would that be too much to ask for?
Got any more bright ideas Al? Do us a favour and keep them under your hat.
Burning up food is the most cynical outcome of the RedGreen agenda. Promoting it and still feel superior is beyond any logic or ethic. They should be ashamed, very ashamed!
And then pretend to wonder why food prices are skyrocketing… Watch out! Malthusians at work.
How poor countries can still support the UN and IPCC is a complete mistery. People suffer there.
Their governments couldn’t care less apparently. It’s contempt to the power of 10.
@mikelorrey: Burning up the nations topsoil indeed! Omg, how could it have come so far.
What is that ?????
I want Peace in world
maybe we should eating wood chips instead of corn ? what are the left wing greenys eating.the answer [grass]
Actually he meant “dirty rotten corn ethanol.” Permissible under the Hays code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
I also like the bit about ‘advanced(?)-biofuels. PR speak?
Maybe food prices will come down again!
Biofuel manufacture from food crop was always the stupid option. Production of methane from waste to produce electricity and heating, as many farms have done in the UK for their greenhouse crops, is profitable and worthwhile. On a very large scale waste to methane may be a route to go. Methane can be used for polymerization to more profitable chemicals as well as power and heat production.
“This is hardly the outcome the government hoped for when it announced cellulosic-biofuels mandates, R&D funding, and other incentives in recent years.”
It’s exactly the outcome those in government wanted. Billions siphoned off the public trough and handed to the favored few. Whether or not it solved a problem was never much of a concern.
In your 1st paragraph, I thought your use of the word biomass, as in “some biomass companies” was a pun. You made me consult an on-line dictionary. I was unaware of the 2nd definition. Thank you for the education.
biomass, noun:
1. Ecology . the amount of living matter in a given habitat, expressed either as the weight of organisms per unit area or as the volume of organisms per unit volume of habitat.
2. Energy . organic matter, especially plant matter, that can be converted to fuel and is therefore regarded as a potential energy source.
at the same time, the U.S. overthrew the tariff barrier to the entry of Brazilian sugar cane ethanol.
I have often wondered how to measure the energy that is expended in producing a litre of biofuel. From my own experience I got the impression that you burn a litre of diesel for every litre of biofuel if all energy is taken into account.
It occurred to me that a useful way of estimating the energy that has gone into producing a product is to just use the cost of the product in the free market.
Since biofuels are subsidised it seems to me that they definitely absorb more energy that they produce.
Any thoughts?
Another bash ethanol thread – goody :rollseyes:
To mikelorrey – you are absolutely and completely incorrect – it does NOT take a gallon of anything to make a gallon of ethanol. Unless of course you are quoting Patzek and Pimentel of Berkely fame (or infamy) who have been soundly debunked by almost every agency and group out there – they are worse the Mann, Jones etc in many ways for how much of an incorrect outlier their fully dis-proven work is.
It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to create appx 1.6 BTU of ethanol energy using corn processes. It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to make 6 to 8 btu using cellulosic processes.
And to say we are burning topsoil is equally false and silly. Just as silly as the claims about putting food in SUV’s gas tanks.
The US met 100% of the corn demand for feed, food and fuel in each of the last several years, PLUS we met the entire export demand AND we still added to the US reserves.
Likewise, using corn for ethanol has NOT caused any widespread shift in plantings to corn and away from other crops – simply read the USDA crop reports.
Ethanol is a far cleaner fuel overall than oil – reducing emissions and GHG’s in virtually all meaningful areas.
Ethanol replaces a useful share of our fossil fuel use, at worst extending significantly our own and world reserves.
Eliminating the Brazil tariff, which was to help American producers (sine Brazil also got the US blenders credit), was almost entirely meaningless. Brazil has not exported virtually any ethanol in several years, having become a net importer to meet their own demands.
Ethanol uses virtually entirely seed corn – not food corn. And the production of ethanol creates high value distillers dried grains animal feed that replaces nearly half of the feed corn used for ethanol.
Ethanol does get lower mileage than gas however it also costs less. E85 blend costs me $2.55 vs $3.35 for E10 blend – almost 25% less. My average fuel economy drops appx 15-18% in a 2003 Tahoe flex fuel vehicle – for a net overall saving in fuel with E85.
Ethanol production does use water – a 150 mgpy (mill gal/year) plant uses equivalent (from memory) of appx 3 full service car washes or a handful of golf courses. That said gas requires similar. And most ethanol plants today recycle majority of their water for repeated re use.
A single frac well uses up to several million gallons of water – all of which is trucked long distances to wells and then back from wells where most is injected untreated deep underground.
Last and most important – ethanol is 100% renewable – we can repeatedly grow more fuel for the 10-15% of fossil fuel we are replacing. Unlike solar and wind etc it is a proven steady resource, whose efficiency continues to grow.
So many falsehoods perpetrated about ethanol its truly sad – especially coming from otherwise usually very intelligent folks here. I wish people would make same effort to get facts with ethanol as they do about warming.
No ethanol is not the magic replacement for fossil fuels – but it does replace a significant part – with clean renewable energy.
And no – I’ll repeat in advance I have zero involvement with the industry – as with my initial AGW believer status I was a disbeliever in ethanol. In both cases I made the effort to learn and educate myself and the facts and science convinced me to disbelieve in AGW and to believe ethanol serves a valuable purpose.
Actually, inasmuch as the import tariff is going away at the same time as the subsidy, and that the import tariff is nine cents/gallon more than the subsidy, and that California gets its ethanol from Brazil (while Brazil imports corn ethanol from the U.S.) California should come out just a tisch ahead of the game.
As for oil inputs, there are about 5 btus of Petroleum inputted into 76 btus of corn ethanol.
This study estimates that the presence of 14 Billion Gallons/Yr of corn ethanol in the fuel market is saving you, at least, $1.00/gal on your gasoline:
http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/synopsis.aspx?id=1160
At the same time we are farming 34 Million fewer acres than we were in 2002, and we are paying landowners NOT to farm 30 Million Acres.
As the difficulty of producing cellulosic biofuels cheaply becomes apparent, a growing number of advanced-biofuels companies are finding it necessary to take creative approaches to their business
JK: Why not switch over to coal or natural gas as a feedstock?
That would make sense!
Thanks
JK
Also worth note: this move (or rather action by default!) happened JUST BEFORE the Iowa caucuses, not JUST AFTER as you’d expect.
The caucuses were always the sole reason for the ethanol project. If Congress is willing to allow the subsidy to go away now, they must finally be sensing the complete turnaround of public attitudes.
Sorry – it has also been repeatedly shown that any impact on food prices is exceedingly minuscule if any – the vast majority of food price increases are the result of speculators/speculation. If you want to see volatility largely disappear and food prices moderate prevent all speculation by anyone who does not take delivery of the product. THAT would be a meaningful impact on food prices.
Again from memory – ethanol currently use appx 30% of the US feed corn crop. Yet, using net nutritional value it replaces about half of that feed corn with high quality Distillers Dried Grains animal feed. It also produces corn meal and corn oil (which can even be made into plastics).
We get renewable fuel and keep a majority of the value of the corn crop use to create it.
We also continue to improve even the corn ethanol process efficiency and net energy yield, but are also moving into higher tech, higher yield cellulosic and similar processes.
The BIGGEST reason IMO we are behind expected on cellulosic is same thing that affected so many corn ethanol plants – the meltdown of economy and disappearance of capital the last 4 years or so. It takes money to research, refine, advance and improve and there was little or no capital avail for that or almost any purpose from 2007/8 to now.
ho ho ho!
A. Scott says:
“Brazil has not exported virtually any ethanol in several years, having become a net importer to meet their own demands.”
Sorry, A. Scott, but Brazil has been exporting billions of liters of ethanol since 1999, as you can see this updated spreadsheet (http://www.mdic.gov.br/arquivos/dwnl_1318342678.xls) by the brazilian Ministry of Industry and Trade. More information on the fate of the exported ethanol, you can find in http://www.mdic.gov.br/sitio/interna/interna.php?area=2&menu=999.
O/T but there is an interesting email from Keith Briffa in which he admits the evidence points to a MWP in the Southern Hemisphere.
I suggest this should be taken together , the sparse evidence of Southern Hemisphere temperatures prior to the period of instrumental records indicates that overall warming has occurred during the last 350 years, but the even fewer longer regional records indicate earlier periods that are as warm, or warmer than, 20th century means.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/briffa-confirms-mwp-in-southern-hemisphere/#comment-285
What a relief! Now we got to stop this madness in Europe as well.