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
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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.
>>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 hope you realize that when you seek to make a profit out of something that only generates profits via direct taxpayer subsidization (as you yourself acknowledge) you are just trying to get your own piece of the taxpayer's hide. You should expect to find "naysayers" in that sort of enterprise. Maybe it's time to do something productive with your time?
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!
Kum Dollison (16:00:02) :
Bill Tuttle
There are about 5,000 btus of diesel (farming, harvesting, transporting)
Did you include the btus involved in the aviation gasoline and pesticide production for the cropdusters?
I love this site.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have a buddy who makes his own biodiesel and swears buying the kit was the second-smartest purchase he ever made.
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.
Kum Dollison (16:25:51) :
Oceans
Give me 7 miles square in every county (the average county is a little over 1,000 sq miles) and I’ll have us off imported oil in 6 years.
Any other questions?
So if that is all it needs, why isn’t it done yet? Try to answer that without blaming someone else: we are looking for solutions, not excuses.
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.
“OceanTwo (03:23:22) :”
Well, I can do plumbing, sparks (To 415V 3 phase 63A, UK), carpentry, brickwork etc and I do know when I am being rooted with this eco-fuel rubbish(E10 in Australia). I get better “mileage” (We use K’s here in Aus) out of the “better” fuel, ie, 98RON. But I use E10 because it’s A LOT cheaper (Well it was until recent profit gouging by fuel suppliers) and it’s “octane” rating is ~94, bit better than RUL petrol, at ~91RON.
The Subaru WRX is a forced induction engine. The Prius isn’t. It will “do better” mileage than a WRX.
PS, addition to my last post, the Subaru WRX is fulltime 4 wheel drive too. The weight penalty of the Prius against the Subaru will be minimal (Batteries/an extra axle to carry and drive) but the load on the engine is different. Typically, there is a significant loss of power in a fulltine 4×4 transmisstion of upto 50%.
Both Novozyme, and Dupont-Danisco have announced, just recently, that they have made breakthroughs that lower the enzyme cost to $0.50 gallon for “cellulosic” ethanol.
This means you will be seeing $2.00 ethanol from corn cobs, and switchgrass by 2012.
Seven miles square of switchgrass, plus municipal solid waste, plus better engines (on the way) will yield a 60% decrease in the amount of gasoline used in the average county.
It’s the “enzymes.” And, the timing – end of recession, money available – that will tell the tale.
um, ‘energy density’, nyah, nyah.
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“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!”
Oops! I meant to say “geoengineering.” What incredible hubris, to propose “engineering” a planet when we can’t even engineer a safe Toyota!
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.
Nobody mandates E85 (which is always 85% ethanol) wheras many states and cities Mandate a 10% blend of ethanol becuse of it’s high Oygen content. It is 34% Oxygen by weight. It causes a higher combustion rate and makes the Gasoline burn more cleanly. In years past MTBE was added to the gasoline to do the same thing. MTBE was made by the Oil industry from petroleum, but was later found it would not break-down for 100’s of years and do major damage to the ground water if any made it on to the ground or leaked out of storage tanks. So along came a 10% blend of ethanol to add to the gasoline to improve combustion and clean up the city smog. It later became touted as a gasoline extender that is renewable and bio-degradable (think Vodka) and could cut oil and gasoiline imports, becuase very little gasoline or Diesel fuel is used on an acre to produce 500 gallons of ethanol and 3,000 lbs. of DDG’s a high protien feed stock left after the starch in the corn kernal is converted to sugar and then fermented into ethanol……John.
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.
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.”
The “subsidy,” now, is just to pay Exxon, and Shell for using it.
The Subsidy is $0.045/gal, and the savings are $0.13/gal.
If you subtract $0.055 to adjust for mileage you are still saving $0.03/Gallon.
RBOB Up $0.04 to $2.26 this morning.
Ethanol closed at $1.54 yesterday, and
That was Before Any “Subsidies.”
That’s a Savings of $0.30/gal for Every Gallon of Ethanol used.
@Kum Dollison (14:55:24) :
Sorry, I don’t know where I came up with that $1.30 less than gasoline figure. It was the Monday after the start of DST began and my brain was suffering from brain lag.
Do you believe the domestic ethanol industry can survive without subsidies, tax breaks and the repeal of the surtax on imported ethanol? Would the economics really work without these special incentives?
When I wrote ethanol can’t be sent on the same physical pipeline as gasoline, I didn’t mean that literally. The pipeline companies have been reluctant to do that because of problems with water in the ethanol. It’s not physically impossible, just not a good idea. Like many problems, there are surely work-arounds, but they may not be cost effective.
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.
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.
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.
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
To Kim Dollison: You say the average county is 1000 square miles and it would only take an area “7 miles square” of every county devoted to ethanol production to get us off imported oil.
Why not say it more clearly? Since “7 miles square” is a square 7 miles on a side, you’re saying that 49 square miles of every county would have to be devoted to ethanol production, or 5% of it’s land area. Now, that might be reasonable, but why not make the direct comparison?
Alternatively, you could say the average county is 32 miles square and only 7 miles square would have to be devoted to ethanol production. I guess 7 compared to 1000 does sound better though, from your particular point of view.
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.
K Dollison wrote: “Ethanol closed at $1.54 yesterday, and that was Before Any “Subsidies.”
As long as someone is getting a tax break for purchasing ethanol for blending purposes, that tax break is going to be reflected in the market price. Take the tax break away and the price would fall. Of course, if you require that every gallon of gasoline sold in the country has to have a 10% ethanol component then you’ve forced demand higher legislatively and the price will rise accordingly.
The point is that between the regulations and the tax break, it’s pretty tough to tell whether ethanol is economically viable on its own. It’s also impossible to know whether another commercially viable alternative energy source is being blocked by the government’s favorable treatment of the ethanol industry, i.e., farmers.
The poster who made the point a few comments back about the government screwing up local uses by demanding excessive centralization stands a good chance of being correct, but as he implied, we’ll probably never know. Government just keeps getting bigger and bigger, regardless who’s in charge.
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,
The point is, Ethanol is being profitably produced, and shipped to Chicago for $1.54. That Producer hsn’t receied any subsidies.
Rod E @ur momisugly 8:09:42
The light goes on, eh?
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