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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Kim,
You can’t consider “energy density” without considering “Octane.”
Ethanol is 113 Octane.
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.
===============
Upthread, I mentioned; “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 seems that’s already happening, at least in Europe:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=ethanol&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc268be2db012767d703bc0ad7&showCommentsOverride=false
Europe’s GM Poplars Popular for Ethanol
The first crop of genetically modified poplar trees are expected to be used to produce ethanol at a Flemish-Dutch pilot plant owned by Bio Base Europe, according to Biofuels International.
The poplars planted in Ghent, Belgium in May 2009 have been harvested.
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.
[insert] …sources of *imported* 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.
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.
And, we are spending in the neighborhood of $200 Billion/yr in the Middle East. We’re not there for the date palms.
And, we have kazillions of “pine” trees in the South. What would be wrong with some poplar trees.
“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.
Ethanol is selling for $1.54/gal on the CBOT at present.
http://news.ncgapremium.com/index.cfm?show=62&subtype=25
Gasoline $2.27/gal on the NYMEX.
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.”
Kum D. wrote: “The point is, Ethanol is being profitably produced, and shipped to Chicago for $1.54. That Producer hasn’t received any subsidies.”
That’s a silly statement. Surely you’ve seen farmers, for example, ship a product at a loss in the past. Why? Because they need to recover at least some of their sunk costs. The beans might have cost them $4.00 a bushel to produce that year and they will still sell them at $3.50 because that’s the going rate at the time. To do otherwise would be to lose the entire $4.00 of sunk costs.
Ditto with ethanol. You don’t know whether the producer is making money or not (or if you do, you failed to provide that information.) All you know is that the going price of ethanol that day is $1.54. In fact, with ethanol plants going belly up, someone could have bought the producing plant for pennies on the dollar, and they might indeed be making a profit ON THEIR OWN INVESTMENT. Would they build another plant? Not necessarily if the present price of ethanol is insufficient to give them a return on the invested capital, as it clearly hasn’t been for some of the early producers.
You have to understand that the government has mandated ethanol usage, so it will be purchased by the oil companies at whatever price is necessary to get the ethanol. If insufficient amounts of ethanol were to be produced, the producers would get very rich. However, people got sucked into over-investing in the concept and now they’re losing their shirts (some of them anyway.) Yet you claim they’re making a “profit.” As I said, just because a transaction is taking place at a price doesn’t mean that price is profitable to the producer. (See the housing market for another recent example.)
You sound very much like one of those people who have all the answers and would willingly dictate to all of us how our personal resources should be directed, including our land use and how much of a particular product we should fuel our vehicles with. The global warming crowd has plenty of room for people like you while the rest of us are just trying our best to keep you from gaining control over our lives and livelihoods.
“”” 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.
“”” Kum Dollison (09:08:40) :
Kim,
You can’t consider “energy density” without considering “Octane.”
Ethanol is 113 Octane. “””
So what; you can’t burn Octane rating. All octane rating tells you is whether your engine pings or not.
Yes higher octane fuels in principle let you raise the compression ratio and get more power out of the engine. But then the EPA says you are not allowed to do that because high compression ratio, gives you very high cyclinder pressures and temperatures (which is where the extra power comes from.
That is also the condition needed to get your engine to burn the air, and make NOX out of the atmosphere; so the EPA doesn’t allow super high octane fuels for that reason. In the USA a car has to be able to run properly on standard octane fuel, which can be anywhere from 85 to 87 octane depending on what altitude you are at.
oh and just for kicks high octane fuels tend to have longer chain hydrocarbons in them; which ytranslates into more carbon and less hydrogen.
Methane for example, which has a totally lousy octane rating has four hydrogens per carbon. As the chain gets longer to get higher octane, the hydrogen-carbon ratio decreases towards 2:1.
So high octane gasolene actually has a lower heat of compbustion than a low octane hydrocarbon like methane.
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.
Ethanol; C2H5OH, can also be written as 2(CH2)H2O.
so it is two CH2 groups plus a molecule of water.
Methanol on the other hand is CH3OH or (CH2)H2O. You can guess the rest.
And when you burn ethanol or methanol, you get the same energy that you can get by burning n(CH2) along with the energy you get from burning the water; whcih happens to contribute zero.
So if you check the heat of combustion of say Octane, C8 H18 or 8(CH2)H2 fversus “octanol” 8(CH2)H2O, you will find that the alcohol loses out to the alkane by just the heat of combustion of H2.
So when you buy ethanol you are paying good money for plain water.
Arguably, you can do better by burning the alkane, and adding your own tap water in a water injector, which can increase engine power by cooling the intake air, and thereby increasing the air mass going into the engine, which raises the power output. No the water doesn’t contirbute any energy, but it lets you burn the CH2s more efficiently.
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.
Thanks for this interesting subject sharing us. Hope more information.
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
George E. Smith,
“Silly” is telling someone who understands a business that you dont’ understand that he made a “Silly” statement.
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.
George, you could run your ethanol refinery off the DDGS, and have some left over. That would satisfy your test. However, it would be financially senseless inasmuch as the DDGS are worth much more than nat gas.
And, Octane is very important. It will allow a small high performance engine running E85 to deliver the same hp, and Mileage as a larger engine running gasoline.
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.
Good job George
The water consumption can be as high as 1,500 gallons of water per final gallon of 98% ethanol. Rain is part or irrigated water if not dryland. A lot of water is consumed separating the starch and sugars from the solids. Distillers grain comes out soaked and even takes a lot of energy to dry it unless they can sell it wet.
What you understand George is that all the btu’s produced by the petrol from planting, tilling, harvesting, separating sugars, brewing distilation etc yield 80% of the energy used to produce ethanol. Burn 100 btu’s petrol to produce 80 btu’s ethanol available for combustion.
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.
Kum Dollison (17:59:34) :
“…every gallon of ethanol that’s sold, today, pays for its subsidy and after allowing for mileage profits us $0.30.”
So you’re saying it’s time we got rid of the ethanol subsidies? If so, I agree.
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.
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
Smokey,
I wouldn’t mind seeing the subsidy go away for the 98% of corn ethanol that’s used in blends of E10, and below.
I would like to see the blenders credit continue for the small amount of ethanol used in higher blends like E20, and E85. t least for a couple of more years.
We really have to support the “cellulosic” industry for awhile. It’s going to be a very important industry, and it’s at a very vulnerable stage as regards financing, etc.