This is a surprise from Newsweek. Some recent examples of green subsidy: Fisker Automotive will receive a $529 million subsidy from the US government to build hybrid cars for the US market in California. This follows a previous subsidy award of $465 million to Tesla Motors to build electric cars. Both awards were made on the recommendation of former vice-president Al Gore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an electric car fan, I drive one myself. But such projects should succeed or fail on their own merit and without public funds in my opinion.
By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 24, 2009
Excerpts from the magazine issue dated Nov 2, 2009
Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry.
Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. Witness the 1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emission permits by 2012). Government has often had a hand in jump–starting a new -industry—both the computer chip and the Internet got their start in American defense research. But it’s hard to think of any non-military industry that has been so completely and utterly driven by regulation and subsidies from the start.
It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve. Thanks to effective lobbying by American and European farmers, the more cost–efficient and environmentally effective Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is locked out of U.S. and EU markets. Even within Europe, most countries have their own “technical standard” for biofuels to better keep out competing products—even if they are cheaper or produce a greater cut in emissions. Because the subsidies are tied to feedstocks, there is zero incentive to develop better technology.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have asked Germany to end its ludicrous solar subsidies that will total $115.5 billion by 2013.
Read the article The Dark Side of Green at newsweek.com
Brazil drivers ditch biofuel where prices rising
Reuters, Wednesday October 21 2009 by Peter Murphy
SAO PAULO, Oct 21 (Reuters) – Some Brazilian motorists who fuel their cars solely on cane-based ethanol are switching back to gasoline as high sugar prices now make the biofuel more costly in some states.
Brazil is a pioneer in biofuel with its millions of flex-fuel cars that can run solely on ethanol or gasoline, or any mixture of both. Usually cheaper than gasoline, drivers needed no persuasion to switch when flex-fuel arrived in 2003.
But as mills use cane to produce more sugar in response to a world deficit that pushed prices to near their highest in three decades, prices for ethanol, made using the same cane, have leapt up to 50 percent in places in just a few months.
“(Drivers) have gone back to gasoline,” said Paulo Mizutani, head of the sugar and ethanol division at Cosan, Brazil’s top producer of the products. He said demand for ethanol in the center-south region fell to about 1.6 billion liters a month from 2 billion liters earlier this year.
“It could be like this until March when a new (cane) harvest starts,” he said, speaking to reporters at Brazil’s Sugar Dinner Week, an industry event held every other year in the world’s top sugar grower.
Only in states with higher levels of sales tax, has ethanol become comparatively more expensive. Price data from National Petroleum Agency (ANP) showed that ethanol in southern states Minas Gerais and Santa Catarina were at or above the threshold of 70 percent of gasoline prices above which it is effectively more costly than gasoline.
In Sao Paulo, it was around 60 percent and about 67 percent in neighbouring Rio de Janeiro, meaning it still offered better value for the money. A liter of ethanol in Sao Paulo city costs about 1.50 in Brazilian reais, equivalent to US$3.26 per gallon.
Ethanol’s lower energy concentration means a tank of the biofuel will do around 70 percent of the miles a tank of gasoline would permit, though it gives engines added zip.
Brazil began mass producing ethanol-only cars in the 1970s in response to the oil crisis, but when sugar prices later spiked, motorists were lumbered with higher fuel costs. Flex-fuel gets around this by allowing the driver to choose.
“Ecologically sound is a nice idea but no one will pay for it,” Mizutani said.
He held out little hope that Brazilians, who already pay comparatively high taxes on goods and services, would shell out more for ethanol despite its environmental selling points.
“Your car goes quicker. It is clean and renewable energy and it is Brazilian. I think the consumers should not only look at the economic side but at these aspects too.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8766157
These figures seem to flow pretty authoratatively from your finger tips … got a cite or source for those numbers?
References to ‘some outfit’ in ‘the last decade’ is obdurate and obscurring, like you were hiding something …
.
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Kum Dollison
Yes, some oil refineries use natural gas these days, but not all. And it is ok if you want to learn something today. For many decades, natural gas was flared and not collected and piped to anyone, anywhere. Heating oil was used in homes, industry and power plants. Refineries burned oil along with gas produced from their processing operations.
Some high-conversion refineries produce an excess of gas, so have no need to purchase natural gas. They typically install cogeneration plants to consume the excess gas, and sell electricity.
So yes, oil refineries for many decades were entirely self-sufficient for their energy supplies – fuel, steam, and electric power. If not for burdensome environmental regulations, they could easily be self-sufficient again by not purchasing natural gas.
No, Jim, it was a reputable deal. I’m just tired, and can’t remember the name of the organization, and I didn’t bookmark it. Check back afterwhile. I’ll see if I can remember it up.
Here it is.
http://www.eli.org/pressdetail.cfm?ID=205
It was $70.2 Billion for oil, and coal. Most of it oil, and most of that for foreign production tax credit. (bet you never heard of that one, eh?)
Compared to $16.8 B for ethanol.
It was the environmental law institute.
You are trying to fit me into your preconceived notion of a greenweenie. I am not, I do not want to go back to a stone age existence and never advocated such a position. I am advocating the intelligent use of a high quality fuel, and sensible accounting of its fuel characteristics, rather than a game to sell a propaganda campaign that it is an inferior fuel.
I merely mentioned that it is dishonest accounting to add energy harvested by the plants for free from the sun unless you also include the solar energy that grew the plants that died and became coal deposits, and petroleum.
The oil company did not pay a penny for all that chemical potential energy stored in the oil deposit, and the farmer did not pay for the sun that fell on his field, and the power company did not pay for the gravitational potential energy in the rain that collects in his hydroelectric reservoir.
All any of those three did, was create an infrastructure that allows them to utilize energy stored by processes independent of man.
The fuel alcohol industry was alive and well, and self supporting prior to WWI. Henry Fords Model A was multi-fuel and would run on just about any fuel you could get in the tank except kerosene (there were farm tractors that would run on that however).
The fuel alcohol industry did not fail because it was not viable, it was intentionallly crushed by the effects of government intervention (prohibition/taxation), and market manipulations by the growing oil industry.
In the 1800’s it was viable as a fuel industry with alcohol and blends of alcohol with other fuels. Alcohol and camphor blends cost 1/2 what lard oil did and 1/3 the price of whale oil which were the alternative illumination fuels of the day. In 1861 the government instituted a $2.08/gallon tax on alcohol regardless if was used for fuel or spirit, to help pay for the civil war. As a result this government intervention crushed a fuel alcohol industry that prior to the tax was producing over 25 million gallons a year (in the mid 1800’s) using the technology of the day.
In 1906 Teddy Roosevelt lifted taxes on industrial alcohol, so again farmers could convert their perishable food crop excesses to a product that had market value and would keep in storage. That allowed Ford to produce the early Model A’s as dual fuel vehicles as you could get alcohol in nearly any town or settlement you drove through. In 1906 the recovering alcohol industry was selling about 10 million gallons a year.
At about that time Rockefeller started pushing gasoline as a motor fuel — it was a waste product from his production of fuel oil and kerosene which he was able to sell very cheaply as it had no other commercial use. By WWI the fuel alcohol industry was back to support the energy needs of the war, producing some 50 million gallons of alcohol a year.
Rockefeller then destroyed the alcohol industry by pushing Prohibition, donating some $1.4 – $4 million dollars to the temperance movement (worth something like $50 million in today’s dollars) and buying up the distilleries at bargain basement prices prior to prohibition, eventually these hostile take over tactics destroyed the fuel alcohol industry.
From 1919 when prohibition was passed until 1933 ethanol production stopped.
During that time, gasoline had become the dominant motor fuel with a dedicated delivery structure. Autos were no longer dual fuel designs and the market essentially disappeared for alcohol as a fuel (although the U.S. Navy used high proof ethanol for its torpedoes).
As you can see your hypothetical experiment has already been done and fuel alcohol was economically viable without government intervention.
Today fuel ethanol from state of the art plants is comparable in cost to regular gasoline but has the fuel qualities of a premium high octane (105 octane in E85 blends) fuel. It is a bargain if used to its potential in properly designed engines (ie high compression or turbocharged) It can achieve fuel net energy per mile numbers better than gasoline even in conventional engines.
Yes I agree the EPA sucks and most of its regulations are onerous, but ethanol has the same sort of pollution, vapor pressure and regulation issues to face. They have to meet fuel standards just like the gasoline producers and have to meet local emissions and environmental impact regulations for its plants.
Interestingly enough fuel ethanol blending is one way the oil producers meet low sulfur, and benzene limits as it contains essentially zero sulfur or benzene, if blended with a gasoline that is not quite in spec, it raises the fuel octane, reduces the sulfur content, and lowers combustion emissions.
By the way octane limits have decreased not increased in recent years. In 1967 the pump premium at the gas station I worked at was 103 octane, today you cannot buy over 91 octane at normal commercial outlets in Colorado as a DOT approved fuel unless you pay almost $6-$8 dollars a gallon for racing unleaded. In the early 1960’s and late 1950’s octane requirements increased but it was due to the high compression ratios used in the engines of that period that forced the improvement in the fuel. The fuel of the day was comparable to our current regular gasoline at around 85 octane prior to the advent of the high compression engine.
It was not until the 1970’s and Carter’s efforts to encourage fuel on farms and other domestic production of fuel ethanol due to fuel shortages, that the industry had an opportunity to reform, as higher oil prices made it reasonably close in cost. It was widely used in the 1970’s to extend limited gasoline supplies due to the shortages caused by the oil embargo.
Fuel ethanol is an excellent fuel but has a few limitations, Gasoline is a pretty good fuel but has limitations, high ethanol blends with gasoline is spectacular fuel, allowing performance levels that cannot be achieved on conventional gasoline blends. Pure ethanol when used in optimized engines is capable of thermal efficiencies comparable to modern diesel engines (40% peak thermal efficiency has been achieved by MIT in a direct injection ethanol fueled engine).
We need both fuels to achieve energy independence and idiotic parochial quarrels that say gasoline only or alcohol only are missing the point. We need to use the best fuel blends we can come up with. High ethanol blends with gasoline are the cheapest, lowest emission, and highest octane (and performance) fuels we can economically produce. They allow very small displacement high performance engines to make stupid levels of power while running clean and cool.
They also have significant positive economic impacts on the U.S. Economy.
http://www.swri.edu/4org/d03/engres/spkeng/sprkign/pbeffimp.htm
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/techtalk51-6.pdf
The sooner folks quit playing these silly us or them games the better off we all will be.
In terms of economics, it is much better for our economy to keep a large fraction of our transportation fuel energy production and the money it produces here in the country than sending it overseas. Ethanol producers return more tax revenue to the state and local government than is spent on these so called subsidies (which actually go to big oil not the ethanol producers in most cases).
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=5797
http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/Final2005IRFAeconimpactstudy.pdf
http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/EconomicImpactofEthanolinSD.pdf
http://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/ethanol_and_the_local_community.pdf
Larry
What fuel(s) do the producers of ethanol use to distill the ethanol? Why, coal or natural gas, of course. Diesel for powering their farm equipment mostly.
Those skate boards with any sort of power train are nothing but death and maiming traps. Get a few more of them actually on our highways, and watch your car insurance jump sky-high. Whether you are fool enough to drive one or not.
In order to ascertain the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (measured in kg CO2-eq) saved by ethanol production, we need to compare the life cycle of both ethanol and gasoline.
Step 1. The life cycle of gasoline production emits about 11.4kg CO2-eq per gallon of gasoline.
Step2. We calculate ethanol greenhouse contribution at the refinery stage. This depends on whether electricity is generated by coal or gas:
For gas, 2.88kg of CO2-eq are emitted for each gallon of gasoline displaced.
For coal, 5.12kg of CO2-eq are emitted for each gallon of gasoline displaced. Let’s take the average of 4 kg.
Step 3. We calculate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted at the agricultural stage. Assuming that corn will be planted after corn instead of after soyabean, then the release of nitrous oxide from fertilizer will release 4.8kg of CO2-eq per gallon of gasoline displaced.
So far then, for 11.4kg of CO2-eq emitted per gallon of gasoline we subtract 8.8kg emitted in the ethanol cycle, = 2.6kg of CO2-eq.
In other words, at the moment, we can save 2.64kg or 2.64 * 100/11.4 = 23%.
However!!! I emphasised that this is at the moment. But to increase domestic ethanol production greatly in the future, grasslands will have to be taken over by corn. The Chicago climate exchange assume that farmers who convert cropland to grassland will sequester 750 kg CO2-eq per acre per year.
If we reverse this then we need to factor in a debt of 5.3kg CO2-eq per gallon of gasoline displaced. The saving of 2.64kg becomes -2.66kg.
In other words, under this scenario, ethanol production would actually add more CO2-eq than saved. This needs to be borne in mind by all those who consider ethanol to be a magic bullet solution.
Vincent,
1) Most of us think that if all that were true it would be a feature, not a bug, and
2) Those numbers assume “deep plowing” (which is going away rapidly,) “Corn on Corn, instead of corn on beans, which is the norm, and corn on land that’s been in “Native” grasses for 15 years, or more, which is almost an impossibility. Also, most of these studies have ILUC in them, which basically posits that an acre of corn grown in the U.S. leads to an acre of Rain Forest Deforestation in Brazil which is absurd.
_Jim
The DOE report is on the Pacific Northwest labs site http://www.pnl.gov. But here’s a summary so you don’t have to bother investigating or even reading too much:
http://green.autoblog.com/2006/12/14/electricity-grid-has-capacity-for-plug-in-hybrids/
“A new study for the Department of Energy has identified massive idle “off-peak” electricity production and transmission capacity in the existing electric power system. So much so in fact that it could power 84 percent of the 220 million vehicles in the U.S. if they were plug-in electric vehicles. The study, undertaken by researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is based on driving the 33 mile per day national average commute with drivers charging their vehicles up overnight.”
Regarding Henry Ford and hemp-based methanol, google is your friend. There are so many references it’s difficult to know which might suit you.
Kum,
You can tweak the numbers any way you want, but the question I was posing parenthetically, was, is it worth it? But I could raise another question, is it even possible to achieve E80 blends as have been stated as a goal. Is there enough land available to grow that amount of corn, and what would be the effect on wildlife?
Somehow to me, the cure seems worse than the disease.
i agree completely with Larry and Kum. Ethanol has gotten a bad rap. One might even think some of the funding for the FUD has come from big oil 😉
My opinion matches very, very closely with what Larry described so I won’t repeat it. I also support moving quickly to algae based bio-diesel and byproducts which would also reduce out dependence on foreign oil. Great way to capture and re-use CO2 as well by locating facilities near coal and NG power plants.
This has nothing to do with AGW and everything to do with making the energy market more competitive.
That is an assumption, but not a requirement. In a mature current technology fuel cycle there are other options.
Yes purely as a matter of economics many ethanol production plants get a large fraction of their process energy from electricity (coal @50%) or Natural gas as the infrastructure already exists. Some would say that is a good thing, as it is a convenient way to convert both coal and natural gas to a liquid transportation fuel so that the U.S. uses the fossil fuels it has in abundance for transportation fuels without having to build new industries to go coal to gasoline or natural gas to gasoline or build out a new infrastructure to use natural gas directly in vehicles that can only burn natural gas. (this assumes people are not concerned about CO2 which is the case of many on this blog).
However ! that is not an economic requirement. There is a whole new family of ethanol plants that are using other sources of process energy. There are plants under development that burn crop waste or wood chips and sawdust which otherwise would be a local waste stream, or other local fuels like municipal trash in fluidized bed boilers to generate their own steam and power. There are also plants under development that use methane produced by cow manure from adjacent feed lots to run biodigesters. The also sell the DDGS directly to that same feed lot with out drying, so you have two local industries setting up a symbiotic closed loop system where the waste product of the feed lot (manure) becomes an energy resource for both the ethanol plant and the feed lot, and the waste product of the ethanol plant (DDGS) becomes a food supplement for the cattle feeding operation. Excess DDGS can also be used as a soil ammendment by the growers of the ethanol feed stock. These plant designs can achieve near zero outside energy input, (in some cases they can sell excess electrical energy back into the grid, and use the grid as a fall back power source for peak power or temporary alternate power).
Likewise in a mature complex power system there is no legitimate reason that much of the farm energy now coming from diesel fuel could not be produced from bio-diesel, or ethanol fueled farm equipment.
The primary strength of ethanol production (from a net energy and energy self sufficiency point of view) is that it can be produced locally in almost any community, eliminating thousands of miles of product transport (fuel tankers, third world country oil production). The California report mentioned above includes the energy required to ship ethanol 1400 miles from the mid west in their calculations, when they can produce their own ethanol right in the state within a few miles of the point of use (every hear of Napa valley and the San Joaquin valley? ). This is the sort of dishonest energy accounting that blurs the picture of net energy return for people that do not look closely at the data.
Fuel ethanol is not a magic bullet but it certainly is a fuel as worthy of development as petroleum based transportation fuels. If combined intelligently with conventional petroleum fuels the combination is better than either by themselves.
Larry
“”” Chris C. (12:29:31) :
The transcontinental railroads in the U.S. were indeed built with massive subsidies (free land for the railroad companies). However, the U.S. Government still owned the rest of the land, which was suddenly worth much, much more than before the railroad was built. Up until the end of the 19th century, the single largest source of revenue for the government was the sale of land.
I don’t see that sort of payoff for the taxpayers in the current “green” energy subsidies. “””
Now where on earth did you get the idea that the “government” somehow owned that land that was used by the railroad companies to build their railways. By what Constitutional authority would the US government be able to “sell” land it doesn’t even own. THE USA is a federation of 50 Sovereign States. I don’t see any authority for the feds to seize the land of sovereign states to sell to someone else.
“”” hotrod (16:57:35) :
Climate Heretic (14:59:19) :
Hotrod said
“If all direct and indirect subsidies to oil …”
I would ask what subsidies in particular are being referred to?
There are a host of hidden subsidies to oil, the classic example is the blenders tax credit I mentioned above, that subsidy is usually pointed to as a subsidy to ethanol but in reality it usually goes in the pocket of the oil refinery for the privilege of using a high octane blending agent they did not produce which allows them to blend in lower octane gasoline fractions they normally could not use without further processing because they would not meet minimum gasoline standards.
The other big one is of course the indirect defense costs our Military expends to protect access to off shore suppliers. It is not a simple answer, unfortunately the web page that I found which neatly summarized some of those costs is now a dead link so I will have to dig that info up again. “””
Well the last time I checked on the US Constitution; the Defense of the United States was one of the two or three things that the Congress is authorised to lay and collect taxes to pay for; and providing for that defense is the very first thing the Congress is authorised to do out of a list of 17 things; and defense of the USA also means def3ense of interests of the USA, and its citizens and their interests. It was after all, Western world entrepeneurs who developed the oil resources in the middle east; not the dear folks who were sitting on it.
JamesG (06:01:00) :
_Jim
The DOE report is on the Pacific Northwest labs site http://www.pnl.gov. But here’s a summary so you don’t have to bother investigating or even reading too much:
http://green.autoblog.com/2006/12/14/electricity-grid-has-capacity-for-plug-in-hybrids/
“A new study for the Department of Energy has identified massive idle “off-peak” electricity production and transmission capacity in the existing electric power system. So much so in fact that it could power 84 percent of the 220 million vehicles in the U.S. if they were plug-in electric vehicles. The study, undertaken by researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is based on driving the 33 mile per day national average commute with drivers charging their vehicles up overnight.”
JamesG, this is not what you said; you said it goes to waste! They are only talking about “unused capacity to generate”. When the demand is low (as at night) the power companies back off on produceing the power; fuel rods are adjusted in nuclear plants to produce less heat, less coal and gas is burnt in those plants and in hydro less water is fed to the turbines. What do you think? Do you assume that they produce many megawatts of unneeded power at night and that this unused power just goes into nowhere land? No, to produce this extra power requires an input of some type of energy, you never can get something for nothing as you infer.
“It was $70.2 Billion for oil, and coal. Most of it oil, and most of that for foreign production tax credit. (bet you never heard of that one, eh?)”
So the federal government allow US oil companies to compete internationally for business by NOT burdening them with production taxes on FOREIGN production and YOU call that a subsidy?
Try comparing apples to apples next time.
“”” hotrod (22:23:30) :
George E. Smith (17:21:38) :
So to prove that your free green renewable clean alternative energies are also energy positive; I suggest a pilot program to exploit your favorite candidate; using absolutely no carbon bearing fossil fuel or other polluting energy inputs. That means every single thing and person involved in the enterprise, and their families have to be supported and fuelled, from the OUTPUTs of your favorite clean green free renewable alternative energy; without any subsidies from the system that bootstrapped itself to success.
You are trying to fit me into your preconceived notion of a greenweenie. I am not, I do not want to go back to a stone age existence and never advocated such a position. I am advocating the intelligent use of a high quality fuel, and sensible accounting of its fuel characteristics, rather than a game to sell a propaganda campaign that it is an inferior fuel.
I merely mentioned that it is dishonest accounting to add energy harvested by the plants for free from the sun unless you also include the solar energy that grew the plants that died and became coal deposits, and petroleum. “””
Hotrod, my comment was NOT directed at you personally; it was aimed at anyone who thinks he has an alternative energy solution to fossil fuels.
you had a lot of interesting information in your post; too much for me to address all of it in deatil.
I am interested in some aspect. This MIT high efficiency ethanol engine; does that efficiency figure include the Catalytic converters or whatever means MIT uses to reduce the emission of NOX from that engine to EPA mandated levels.
As for energy content; it is well known that the heat of combustion of any alcohol, is considerablky lower than that of the corresponding Alkyl hydrocarbon. In fact the heat of combustion of Ethanol is lower than that of Ethane, by about the same amount of energy you get from burning two atoms of Hydrogen to get H2O. I’m in total agreement that you can make more efficient IC engines by running the compression ratio up; which in turn raises the bearing loads on the engine; and greatly increases the burning of atmospheric nitrogen to form NOX.
Our California reformulated fuel now containing ethanol instead of MTBE, gives about 15% lower miles per gallon, that regular octane gasolines; as a result of replacing some of that ethane energy with useless water in the ethanol. And you get even less mileage with high octane Cal fuel, than with regular; largely due to the fact that the higher octane fuels are carbon rich; while the lower octane fuels are richer in hydrogen; which gives more combustion energy. Actually, you could (in principle) use a laser to heat the working fluid (air) in an engine; rather than a hydrocarbon fuel; and then you would have no carbon footprint; but that engine would still burn atmospheric nitrogen to make NOX
Major oil executives say the can (and they have) made ordinary gasolines that meet all of the California fuel emission standards; and containing NO mileage wasting water in the from of an oxygenated molecule like an alcohol or ether. Actually, the very old “water injection” technology from the 1940s and 50s, was a much better way to add water to a gasoline powered engine. The injected water, cooled the intake air, raising its density, which in turn raised the power output of the engine.
While very high compression engines do have higher thermal efficiency, than lower compression engines; they make a whole lot more NOX, and the bearing loads go way up compared to what you get with a lower compression supercharged engine (which unfortunately has lower thermal efficiency.
The standard American five bearing V-8 engine doesn’t have enough bearings to withstand the extreme bearing loads of very high compression ratios.
But if alcohol based solar energy is really as efficient as you claim; nothing that I say, will stop people from making their fortunes exploiting it; so more power to them. When fossil fuels are finally banned from the world; then we will find out how sustainable the alternatives are; well those of us that are left will.
http://www.coxrail.com/land-grants.htm
The first large land grants came about with the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862
see also land grant colleges and the township and range survey system. Most of the land in the western U.S. is still owned/administered by the Federal government, not by private owners.
Larry
No, Vincent, we can’t, nor should we even think about, supplying ALL of our transportation energy from “Corn.” It’s a BB, not a Bullet. But, it’s a danged good BB. We are pretty much held to 15 Billion Gallons of “Corn” ethanol/yr. That’s about 10% of our gasoline supply. We could, easily, move that up to 15%.
After that, we’ll be looking at “cellulosic” ethanol, batteries, biodiesel, maybe algal biodiesel, etc. Keep an eye on the Chevy Volt. That Serial battery, plug-in technology might be a true paradigm shift.
Look, we’re not going to “Run Out” of oil tomorrow. However, there are some really smart cookies that say oil is really going to get expensive within a couple of years. If they’re right we’re really, really, going to need a “Plan B.”
At present, the best thing we have going for us is that stuff that comprises 10% of the fuel in your gas tank “Right Now.”
And, your gas mileage has gone down by about 1.2 to 2.0% in California, depending on where you live; Not 15%. And, the ethanol in your tank is 1/2 of 1% water. Which, volume wise, is 1/2 of 1% of .10 or 0.0005.
The Brazilians run many of their cars off of 100% hydrous ethanol. We don’t sell hydrous for transportation fuel in the U.S.
hotrod,
California has a governor’s Executive Order that requires 40 percent of the fuel-ethanol to be produced in California, thus eliminating most of the transportation cost from the Mid-west.
Just one problem. No water. Corn requires LOTS of water.
Just another problem. Even if the water is obtained somehow, growing more corn in California, by necessity, displaces other crops. Thus, some type of food will not be produced as more corn is grown. Therefore, food prices will increase. Poor people will be disproportionally affected.
Natural gas vehicles are a far better solution than ethanol in the USA. No land required, no water required, and we have so much natural gas that the price is very cheap. More is discovered every day, from shale and tight sands. Food prices decrease, which is very good for the lower income segment of society.
They should have thought about that 30 years ago when it was obvious California was using more water than the Colorado river could provide. That is a self inflicted wound easily solved with desalination plants using both solar and nuclear energy.
That said, modern ethanol plants recycle large amounts of their water which is one of the reasons they are so much more efficient than they were just a few years ago.
Second who says the ethanol has to come from corn? The wine industry in Californian has product waste rich with ethanol, Coors beer produces something like 1.5 million gallons a year of fuel ethanol from its waste stream. The same can be done with waste streams from citrus fruit or other sugar and starch rich waste streams like bakery waste.
There are lots of other means to make ethanol, corn to ethanol is only viable in areas where there is already a large corn crop infrastructure like the midwest, and the soils and precipitation to support it. It would be idiotic to not tailor the local ethanol feed stocks to the local resources — like sea weed to ethanol perhaps, or algae to ethanol.
Let’s not put ourselves in a box here. France makes a lot of ethanol with sugar beets (which used to be a major sugar crop here in Colorado). Russian and Idaho will probably favor potatoes and potato waste products from the products they already produce.
Increased ethanol production does not necessarily require replacement of existing food crops.
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23009/
You can make synthetic petroleum and ethanol from trash, or from crop residue like the left over clippings from mowing highway right of way, or as mentioned before using highly prolific plants like kudsu and plants like straw grass that will grow in crap soils that are not suitable for food crops.
Larry
That is just another sole source trap waiting to be sprung. Those vehicles can only run on that single fuel. If that natural gas is however converted to other fuel stocks that have wider application like gasoline or ethanol it can be stored and transported any where in the country very easy and you avoid all the risks associated with large LNG plants and transport like the Cleveland East Ohio Gas Explosion.
http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=EOGCEAF
http://www.borderpowerplants.org/pdf_docs/01-24-04_LNG_SDUT.pdf
When I worked in emergency management LNG accidents were right at the top of the list for disasters that had the potential to level entire cities. A LNG tanker has an energy content similar to a moderate sized strategic missile nuclear warhead. Like BLEVE accidents on rail roads it represents a major hazard to entire communities. That risk will pose major problems for the development of a significant natural gas fueled transportation economy.
You also to produce a viable economy of transportation based on natural gas powered vehicles have to build out yet another fueling infrastructure, and build out a maintenance and production infrastructure for the specialty components that go into those fuel and engine control systems.
Natural gas powered vehicles do how ever make sense in restricted use vehicles like plant forklifts etc.
Larry
Ron de Haan (17:53:32) :
Both car producers, Tesla and Fisker are building very expensive cars.
Not entirely correct because Tesla is also working on a more affordable family car but even at half the price of the Tesla Roadster, still is an expensive set of wheels.
Not many Americans can afford such vehicles.
Those who can afford one, don’t really need a subsidized product because they have sufficient cash! So why this subsidy?”
These are just the first EVs to market. More follow at far lower price points. One can ask why the subsidy for oil? Corn. Rural electrification? Telephone? Beef? The logical reason for taxpayer investment in the development of electric vehicles is simple:
Quit sending $700B annually overseas for foreign oil.
Hotrod makes several good points. Natural gas is an excellent fuel for vertical applications like buses, heavy lifting and electric power plants. It also converts pretty well to other fuel stocks. And it is abundant domestically.
These guys are cracking forward with ethanol aimed at a target price of $1.00/gallon:
http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2009/10/coskata-fires-up-cellulosic-ethanol-demonstration-plant-near-pittsburgh.html