From the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t department”.
More Maize Ethanol May Boost Greenhouse Gas Emissions
From the American Institute of Biological Sciences
Read the full article (PDF)
In the March 2010 issue of BioScience, researchers present a sophisticated new analysis of the effects of boosting use of maize-derived ethanol on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, conducted by Thomas W. Hertel of Purdue University and five co-authors, focuses on how mandated increases in production of the biofuel in the United States will trigger land-use changes domestically and elsewhere. In response to the increased demand for maize, farmers convert additional land to crops, and this conversion can boost carbon dioxide emissions.
The analysis combines ecological data with a global economic commodity and trade model to project the effects of US maize ethanol production on carbon dioxide emissions resulting from land-use changes in 18 regions across the globe. The researchers’ main conclusion is stark: These indirect, market-mediated effects on greenhouse gas emissions “are enough to cancel out the benefits the corn ethanol has on global warming.”
The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.
Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.
Effects of US Maize Ethanol on Global Land Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimating Market-mediated Responses
Thomas W. Hertel, Alla A. Golub, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O’Hare, Richard J. Plevin, and Daniel M. Kammen
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.
Oil companies are evil, no matter what they sell
This falls firmly in the category of “There is no free lunch”
I’m not arguing for corn ethanol by any means, but with regartd to government subsidies, one could argue that the oil industry is well subsidized, not the least of which is the part of the cost of the military, especially in the Middle East.
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 ” ?
Forests left uncut and untouched by man do not sequester as much carbon as greenies think. When trees are not harvested, they die of old age, disease, beetles, etc., and are broken down where they stand or fall by termites, bacteria, mold, resulting in CO2 emitted to the atmosphere (not that CO2 is a major problem).
However, wood harvested for housing, furniture, and paper (provided the paper is not burned) and replaced with newly planted trees is actually a better sequestration than is leaving the forest intact and natural.
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.
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. The compression ratio’s in everyday vehicles (outside of diesels) ranges from (roughly) 8:5 to 11:1 (higher end sport cars mostly). E85 has an octane rating of 105. and E85 requires a compression ratio of 14:1!
Straight ethanol requires an even higher ratio.
This is the main reason cars which use E85 are not as fuel efficient or as powerful with E85 as they are when burning regular unleaded. This
Any guess on why consumers may never have a gas (again, disregarding diesel) engine with a compression ratio greater than 12:1? Most states (such as Colorado) limit the compression ratio of a street legal vehicle at 12:1.
In short, when designing a solution to a problem, be sure the look at the whole picture and not bits and pieces…
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.
in sum the corn studied here
– is grown on spare land and therefore does not affect food prices or availabilty
– replaces oil imports
– produces jobs in the US.
that is all just right.
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*
My lesson learnt here (again) is that knee jerk reactions to a problem poorly understood creates more problems than the cure.
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.
When you do the math, and look at the actual process of the the Ethanol-as-a-fuel cycle, you can see that, while it is reasonably sustainable in the long term, it doesn’t have the capacity to fill the requirements. That is, a small fraction of the population can take advantage of this. This will put a fractional dent in the fossil fuel requirements.
But this is ‘sold’ to the public as the solution: “if we just use ethanol and wind power we will never need dirty coal or oil again”. The arguments are designed to fuel (sic) the environmentalist thinker (oxymoron?) to infer the solution is at hand but there are some (evil bobble heads) that want it to fail.
Most people severely underestimate how much they consume, multiplied by the fact that they don’t comprehend the number of people who consume at the same rate adds up to a whole bunch of Gigawatts!!
It gets quite interesting when you point out to someone who rings their own bell of superiority because they drive a diesel and (can) use fryer fat to run it: you have to be careful to explain to them that it needs the rest of us to subsist on McDonalds morning noon and night to ensure they are allowed to enjoy this lifestyle choice; as well as ask how many fries must one consume to allow the rest of us mere mortals to ride in style in a fries-powered car.
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
Bill Tuttle (12:22:51) :
“Nup — it’s grown on farmland. There’s no such thing as “spare land” on a farm.”
no, this is about land use change.
“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.”
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. in sum remains a reduction of fossile fuels and money transfer to the middle east and venzuela.
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.
There is no sanity and no mathematics here.
There is a coterie of lobbyists, agribusiness, and politics only.
To grow corn requires diesel fuel (imported). To process corn into ethanol requires diesel (imported). To transport ethanol requires diesel (imported).
So we end up with 1 gallon of ethanol for 1.2 gallons of diesel. This does not reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Meanwhile the cost of food increases.
And the poor people starve.
What a wonderful combination. Saudis get rich, lobbyists get rich, entrenched politicians continue to hold office, and people starve.
If this process involved the conversion of kudzu or virginia creeper into methanol, I would believe that benefits would accrue from the program.
But as the program is currently implemented, it is a SHAM.
@ur momisugly 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.
The ethanol production in the U.S. has increased by 20% over the past year. Production is now running at over 780,000 barrels per day. Sweet sorghum (milo) is the basic input for half of the ethanol produced in Kansas and Texas. Winter barley may become the alternative in Virginia and the southeast.
As increased levels of CO2 don’t seem to be having a significant impact on the global climate, it is unclear what the issue is with developing a domestic alternative to foreign sources of petroleum.
I’ll stick with gasoline – why waste perfectly good corn squeezin’s?
Again it sad that so many people know not what the write. Ethanol derived from corn has nothing to do with food vs fuel. It is grown on the same land and is still used for the same purpose. Animal feed is what corn is grown for. When you make ethanol from corn you get both, animal feed and liquid car fuel. It will never be the total answer because you need only so much anaimal feed and their are only so many acres corn can be grown on. But the fact is that it is eneregy efficient since most of the 500 gallons of ethanol and 3,000 lbs. of animal feed come from the sun. Same for the carbon, except that comes from the air, C02 is plantfood. The bulk of the rest of the energy used to grow it and distill it Comes from domestically supplied Natural Gas, and only about 10 gallons of Diesel fuel is needed to produce 500 gallons of Ethanol and 3,000 lns. per acre. Most stuff floating around is built on lies supported by groups that oppose ethanol production. It is both efficient and cost effective, but is only part of our re-newable and sustainable future fuel. The bulk of the liquid car fuel will need to come from other sources because we are near the capaicty for corn based ethanol, that creates anaimal feed and ethanol and the is a finite number of aniamlas and land…..John….
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.
@ur momisugly John from MN (13:05:44) : ” It is both efficient and cost effective, but is only part of our re-newable and sustainable future fuel.”
If what you say is true, then why did the biodiesel industry basically shut down when the $1/gal subsidy expired last Dec.? And why are so many ethanol operations filing for bankruptcy? And why do both need such huge tax breaks (subsidies) to stay in business? Seems to me that if it’s such a good deal they would be competitive with fossil.
Awful funny lookin’ corn in the picture. Must be genetically modified.
REPLY: It’s a biofuels graphic.