Do not expect to read much about this in the NY Times — and definitely don’t expect any follow up questions about his motivation for climate policy ($$$). Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted that his “support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.”
Gore was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol in 1994.
From Reuters:
“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
He continues (admitting more of the obvious):
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”
However, don’t make the mistake that he has had an epiphany on climate change:
Gore supported so-called second generation technologies which do not compete with food, for example cellulosic technologies which use chemicals or enzymes to extract sugar from fibre for example in wood, waste or grass.
“I do think second and third generation that don’t compete with food prices will play an increasing role, certainly with aviation fuels.”
Gore added did that he did not expect a U.S. clean energy or climate bill for “at least two years” following the mid-term elections which saw Republicans increase their support.
Again, the Democrats had 60 seats in the Senate, which is a filibuster proof majority and Pelosi controlled the House of Representatives with members to spare for most of 2009. They could have passed whatever they wanted. At least two years is translated: maybe in 2012 if Obama is re-elected, the Dems take back the House, and they don’t lose the Senate. In other words, the bill is dead.
It’s not good policy to get your facts, figures or science from Al ‘the goofer’ Gore.
Ethanol is far less hazardous than gasoline in the event of a spill. Most spills do not pose a large fire hazard as ethanol vaporizes at higher temperatures than gasoline. It also does not pose a threat to groudwater as the MTBE product it replaced. Hundreds of wells have been contaminated by MTBE the product in gasoline that Ethanol replaced as an oxygenate to improve the exhaust emmissions over gasoline burning only. How many people have been killed during your period of time that 1 poor individual died from an ethanol spill, and was that individual killed by the accident or the actual fire itself, from gasoline spills or refinery fires. There have been zero fatalities at ethanol refineries for I don’t know how long, if ever actually, or storage facilities.
First article:No real facts mentioned here only speculation.
Second article: What about our own US. governments claim that ethanol was responsible for 3% of the food price increase in 2006,2007. Corn went from $7.00 on the board to below $4.00/bushel in a period of 5 months during that market. Meanwhile fertilizer prices tripled going from $350/ton for nitrogen to over $1000/ton. P & K the other primary nutrients applied increased in similar fashion for the 2008 crop year. Was that the result of ethanol or oil?? During that same time frame oil went from below $40/barrel to over $140/barrel, a coincidence?? hardly.
What do you propose that we use as a replacement for fossil fuels if biofuels are not a part of the solution? The agricultural sector has shown that it can meet the needs of both the livestock sector, the export market, and still be used for liquid fuel production. You do realise that windmill farms take out nearly 2 acres of food production per windmill FOREVER.
Why would cotton acres not be part of thrde food argument? Cotton acres can grow soybeans, corn, wheat or other crops for that matter. Wool on the other hand comes from sheep, a meat animal that is raised primarily on grasslands unsuited for row crop production without serious environmental damage to the land.
Third article: Since then corn prices collasped $.60/bushel in 3 days to around $5.25/bushel on the Chicago board of trade. The actual price paid to growers varies depending on the local market which is normally $.30-.60/bushel less than quoted on the board.
Cropdoc:
You ask me:
“How pray tell does ethanol dictate the price of fuel?? I had no idea that a product that comprises less than 10% of the supply could be the regulating factor in the price of energy.”
I did not say that !
I said;
“Biofuel usage is … inducing excessively high fuel prices.”
You would have understood that if you had read either of my two papers that I linked. My 2008 paper is at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/biofuel_issues.pdf
and it says:
“No subsidies would be needed if biofuel were economically competitive with the gasoline they displace. Oil prices have soared 40 percent this year but the palm oil has jumped by two-thirds. So now palm oil costs an astonishing US$735 a tonne compared to crude a bargain at about US$593 a tonne. Furthermore, the energy from a tonne of palm oil is less than that from a tonne of crude.
Biomass feedstocks have to be processed to obtain alcohol or ethanol for use as biofuel and crude has to be refined to obtain gasoline.
Ethanol is being used throughout the U.S. as an additive of 10% blended with gasoline. The result has been increased fuel costs for US drivers. In the two months following introduction of this additive at the start of May 2006, demand for ethanol caused its price to rise about 65% to around $4.50 a gallon in U.S. spot markets, according to the Oil Price Information Service. This is much more expensive than gasoline which costs about $2.90 a gallon at the pump so the direct effect is to raise the price at the pump to $3.06 (a price rise of 16%) without taking into consideration costs of transporting and blending the ethanol. The Wall Street Journal commented, 19 June 2006, “Analysts say this has set up a lesson straight out of the Economics
101 textbook: If you add an ingredient to a product that is pricier than the product itself, in effect, you’re driving up the price of the product”.
The existence of the large subsidies for biofuels is – of itself – direct evidence that the use of biofuels is raising fuel prices.”
And the subsidies are both an expensive cost and a gross market distortion. My 2008 paper also says this:
“The US situation is especially strange. The US provides a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol from Brazil. Then the government provides a tax break of 51 cents a gallon to American ethanol producers in addition to generous subsidies that corn growers already receive under the farm program. (As explained in Section 2.3, the trade restrictions are causing problems for Brazil’s ethanol producers.) Hence, the US provides large incentives for US farmers to convert from food to biofuel production.
Meanwhile, the US is exporting much of the product.
Since the start of the 2007, US biodiesel comanies have flooded the European markets with cheap fuel. The volumes are so large that they account for more than 50% of EU demand for biodiesel.
Some EU companies (e.g. including Biofuels Corporation, the UK’s largest producer, and listed group D1 Oils) say the glut of cheap American imports could drive many firms out of business.
American companies have been exploiting federal government subsidies and rebates offered by European countries. Under the US scheme, biodiesel producers are paid a subsidy of $1 per gallon, or 11p per litre. But the groups can also claim 20p per litre in excise duty rebates by importing biofuels to the UK, thus, in effect, ‘double dipping’ on tax relief.
According to a recent report by accountants Ernst & Young, US biofuel exports to Europe were expected to reach more than 500,000 tonnes by the end of 2007. In Germany, some biodiesel refiners have cut their output by 50%, though there are fears this could lead to an 80% fall by the end of 2007.”
So, Cropdoc, I would be grateful in future if you were to read a paper I wrote before you comment on it.
Richard
Actually the EPA did not test every car, those tests are run by the manufactures on mostly pre-production prototype cars, on a chassis dyno according to a pre-specified computer controlled driving cycle. EPA only verifies a small percentage of the test results. The test also is inappropriate, because it does not simulate real world conditions.
A car running E85 behaves differently than the same car on gasoline. It makes about 5% or more power and torque and will pull loads in higher gears that it cannot pull on gasoline. The engine is more tolerant of lugging under load and will pull up into its power band when the same engine on gasoline would stall and buck or require the driver to down shift. This leads to less down shifting for hills, less throttle tip in on acceleration and earlier upshift to a higher gear for real drivers in real traffic conditions. Engines run cooler with less heat (fuel energy) lost to the cooling system as well.
That standardized driving cycle eliminates one of the reasons E85 fuel mileage in the real world does not drop as much as theory says it should, due to differences in fuel energy. The engine is more efficient running on E85 and recovers more useful work from the fuel that it does on gasoline.
Yes you are correct, all those cars get lower fuel mileage on E85 than they do on gasoline, but that is not due to the fuel. It is because the manufactures are doing a horrible job of designing the FFV’s. The only reason they are offering FFV vehicles is to get CAFE credits toward their fleet average fuel mileage. The CAFE standard averages the fuel mileage on gasoline and the fuel mileage on E85 x 6.66, so a FFV that gets 15 mpg on E85 and 25 mpg on gasoline is not credited with a combined fuel mileage of 20 mpg as you would expect but the a value of 62.45 mpg. This is then rolled into the fleet average calculations to determine the manufactures fleet average fuel mileage.
(25 + (15 x 6.66))/2
As a consequence, if they can get the damn thing to start and run on E85 that is good enough to get the maximum fuel credit allowed of 1.2 mpg for the fleet. They have zero incentive to get anything that approaches acceptable fuel mileage on E85. They get 25% fuel mileage reductions per gallon on E85 when they should be getting less than 10%. A few model cars have actually achieved 15% reductions which would be impossible if fuel mileage was actually related to fuel energy content per gallon.
Don’t hold the fuel responsible for incompetent bureaucrats, stupid regulations and cost accounting that make it useless for manufactures to even attempt to accomplish descent fuel mileage on their FFV’s.
All they need to do, is make them run well enough that the buyer will not come back to the dealership and ask for warranty repair.
You obviously have not been paying attention, because there are quite a few cars that list premium as the recommended fuel, and they are not all sports cars.
Even so, E85 is still cheaper than regular gasoline.
On regular gasoline my fuel mileage drops to about 23 mpg vs 22 mpg on E85. Regular gasoline sells for $2.69/gallon so it still costs more at 11.7 cents a mile, vs 10.409 cents per mile on E85. That would save me about $200 a year in fuel costs to use E85 over regular. Not to mention avoiding the crappy performance that would result from using 87 octane gasoline in a car designed for premium fuel. When compared to Premium E85 saves me $370 dollars a year in fuel costs. Of course it is still worse if I actually use a gasoline capable of giving the same performance as E85, that would be $6-$10 per gallon racing gasoline.
Larry
Hazardous and dangerous to deal with when on fire are two different things,
Lets get opinions from real fire fighters not the Ethanol Lobby,
The Trouble With Ethanol (Industrial Fire World)
“Once again, sweeping changes are afoot and the fire service is the last to be asked for an opinion. Remember Halon? Likewise, firefighters have been left out of the debate about ethanol.
Whether blended with gasoline or not, ethanol is highly flammable. Ethanol burns different from gasoline. On the bright side, it is an almost smokeless fire. Unlike alcohol, it has a red visible flame. On the not so bright side, pure ethanol has a flash point of only 55 degrees F. Add 15 percent water and the flashpoint rises to 68 degrees F. Diluted down to a 24 percent solution, ethanol has a flash point of 97 degrees F, so it is still flammable.
At 10 percent, ethanol is still combustible. That means that if you had a spill involving a 100,000 gallon tanker you could dilute it with as much as 900,000 gallons of water and still have a fire hazard. Good luck finding that kind of water. Other than a small spill on the highway, diluting ethanol is out. Picking up that small spill with absorbent materials designed for hydrocarbon is likely to be difficult too. The ethanol may be left behind as if it were water.
Dealing with ethanol on fire involves using an ATC (alcohol type concentrate) foam specifically designed for polar solvents. Straight AFFF and protein foam will not work. A fire department with an extensive stockpile of the wrong kind of foam would be on the same footing as the poorest rural VFD equipped with no more than fire axes and good intentions.
Even with the right kind of foam, fighting a polar solvent fire is no cake walk. I remember a burning 160-foot diameter storage tank in Texas City. Even with a foam blanket six to eight feet deep, flames were still visible. It took four days to bring that one under control.
How much ATC foam will you need in addition to your standard stockpile? Using ATC on an ethanol fire will require double to four times the amount of foam used to extinguish a gasoline fire of the same size. That makes it not only a matter of expense but logistics. […]
If the ethanol is ignited, the track record of extinguishing large quantities of it is not real good. The most recent incident of note was in October when 23 cars of an 86-car train derailed in New Brighton, PA. Among the burning wreckage were nine cars of ethanol. Since 2000, there have been at least 26 major fires in the U.S. involving polar solvents, of which 14 were ethanol plant fires and three were ethanol tanker fires. In addition there have been six train derailments, five with fires. Polar solvent tank fires have been reported in Sydney, Australia; Bayonne, N.J. and Texas City, TX. In almost every case, those tanks burned to the ground.”
Who cares about MTBE? There shouldn’t be any government mandated additives or blends of gasoline.
That was mentioned in the article,
“Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.”
The market can decide what we use next. Government planning has never worked and will never work trying to pick winners in the economy. If Ethanol truly is a viable replacement for gasoline at a certain price point than it should prove itself without any government mandates or subsidies. You don’t seem to understand much about markets.
You seem confused on who you are talking to if you think I support wind power. BTW Wind Power relates to electrical generation not a transportation fuel like oil.
Burning cotton would not directly effect food prices, it would effect things like clothing prices. Your strawman argument has no legs because with U.S. Ethanol you are directly burning food (corn).
Don’t be so scare of the American consumer simply because they would put you out of business without the government welfare.
Prove it.
Yes ALL the car manufacturers do not know how to design a FFV but you do! ROFLMAO!
You missed where I said “mainly” sports cars?
1. What is the standard grade of Gasoline the far majority of cars in the U.S. run on?
I do because it is a substandard fuel compared to gasoline for the American consumer.
Not when adjusted for it’s BUT content and all the subsidies are removed that artificially reduce the price.
Everything you have stated is unverifiable when I have been providing reliable sources to support everything I have stated.
2. So you support removing all government mandates and subsidies on Ethanol?
You conveniently forgot to mention that this price spike was due to the abrupt phase out of MTBE due to its toxic contamination of ground water and the sudden surge in demand for Ethanol as the best replacement for MTBE. That need to suddenly shift product streams, was exploited by futures traders who knew the demand was going to spike and they drove up the cost of ethanol well above its true cost. Once that spike demand to fill up all the tanks formally used for MTBE and the industry adapted to the sudden surge in demand, ethanol prices dropped back down to prices competitive with gasoline.
If you are going to tell the story best not leave out critical aspects that triggered the trading frenzy in ethanol futures and the artificial price spike it produced.
As you can see here the same pressures resulted in speculative trading in corn futures that pushed corn to a price peak at the same time.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Corn/corn_inflation_chart.htm
Corn prices have since dropped from that 2008 price peak to $5.43/bu while actual cost of production is estimated to be about $3.70/bu this year. Speculators are again driving up corn and ethanol prices in anticipation of future inflation.
Rack prices for fuel ethanol reached a minimum of about $1.60/gallon this spring, while gasoline was in the low $2.00 range from $2.03 to $2.24/gallon During the same period, fuel ethanol rack price ranged from $1.60 to $1.86 per gallon. Both have recently gone up as speculators started gobbling up commodities due to inflation worries.
Larry
hotrod (Larry L):
You assert to me:
“You conveniently forgot to mention that this price spike was due to the abrupt phase out of MTBE due to its toxic contamination of ground water and the sudden surge in demand for Ethanol as the best replacement for MTBE.”
No!
Disagree with what I wrote if you like but do not mention an extraneous point then claim I “conveniently forgot” it.
The fact is – and I explained it – that when a more expensive component is blended with a cheaper component then the resulting blend is more expensive than the cheaper component.
I wrote, and you quoted me having written, this:
“Ethanol is being used throughout the U.S. as an additive of 10% blended with gasoline. The result has been increased fuel costs for US drivers. In the two months following introduction of this additive at the start of May 2006, demand for ethanol caused its price to rise about 65% to around $4.50 a gallon in U.S. spot markets, according to the Oil Price Information Service. This is much more expensive than gasoline which costs about $2.90 a gallon at the pump so the direct effect is to raise the price at the pump to $3.06 (a price rise of 16%) without taking into consideration costs of transporting and blending the ethanol. The Wall Street Journal commented, 19 June 2006, “Analysts say this has set up a lesson straight out of the Economics 101 textbook: If you add an ingredient to a product that is pricier than the product itself, in effect, you’re driving up the price of the product”.”
That is entirely true and the MTBE phase-out is not relevant to it.
Richard
Poptech says:
November 24, 2010 at 12:55 am
“If Ethanol truly is a viable replacement for gasoline at a certain price point than it should prove itself without any government mandates or subsidies. You don’t seem to understand much about markets.”
Free markets don’t always serve the greater public good. Things like monopolies and price fixing can cause great harm. Ethanol could never be viable in the U.S. when the price of oil is being fixed by OPEC – they can simply lower their price until ethanol producers are forced out of the market then raise the price again once the competition is eliminated.
Subsidizing corn probably wasn’t a good idea but sometimes you can’t know whether an idea is good or bad until you try it. Ostensibly the idea behind the subsidy was an incentive to shift crop production more towards corn and encourage investment in corn-to-alcohol production facilities until economy of scale negated the need for subsidies. The unintended consquence of higher food prices across the board should have been more evident.
Where the subsidy needs to be applied is in R&D to lower the cost of production of ethanol from agricultural waste and other non-food sources that won’t adversly impact the production or price of food crops.
That said it wasn’t a total waste. Valuable lessons were learned and infrastructure put in place that can be utilized regardless of the feedstock used for the ethanol production. One of the greatest things is a transportation fleet with engines able to self-adjust to up to 85% ethanol blended into gasoline. Ethanol production will eventually become economical – oil price will inevitably rise as easy-to-reach light sweet crude supplies diminish and ethanol production price will fall as technology to convert lower quality feedstocks improves. It’s only a matter of time.
You have just repeated various economic myths,
Predatory Pricing (Video) (7min) (Thomas E. Woods, Ph.D. History)
The Myth of Predatory Pricing (Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Ph.D. Professor of Economics)
OPEC does not control all of the world’s oil,
– Only 40% of U.S. oil imports come from OPEC (EIA)
Even less from the Middle East,
– Only 14% of U.S. oil imports come from the Middle East (EIA)
– The largest supplier of oil to the U.S. is Canada (EIA)
– The second largest supplier of oil to the U.S. is Mexico (EIA)
You are correct on one issue, there is a monopoly problem with oil and it is due to socialist governments not markets,
– 95% of the world’s known oil and gas reserves are controlled by national oil companies (Forbes)
To get a better understanding of how markets server the “public good” I suggest watching,
Free to Choose (Milton Friedman, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, Nobel Prize in Economics, 1976)
Poptech,
Seems to me you are putting words in my mouth, I was commenting on your statements here, not some paper you wrote that talks about biodiesel and palm oil. We are talking about ethanol for your information. Biodiesel has never been and will not be a viable alternative economically until the methodology is perfected to grow algae and extract the oils at a cost that is competitive with diesel fuels. By the way the use of soyoil of palm oil accounts for only 2.5% of the mixture.
Back to ethanol and fires you forgot to talk about how many casualties there have been relating to gasoline fires and spills. As there is 90% more of it shipped around the country I’m sure there have been a lot more, I haven’t bothered to look those facts up. Maybe it was in your paper, but I doubt it.
Talking about a price spike for ethanol that was very short term, making it look like it is the norm is at the very least deceptive of the reality of the situation. Ethanol is almost always cheaper than gasoline and has very little effect if any on the mpg of E10. Therefore under normal market conditions, ethanol lowers the cost of driving for the consumer, which somewhat offsets the cost of the blenders credit that goes to the oil companies. I’ve used up to 50% blend in my pickup and have seen very little difference in mileage. E85 does cause my mileage to drop @15%, but if I’m pulling my boat, the mileage is the same as regular E10 gets. The ethanol industry has as policy that they are in favor of ending the blenders credit, if and when the oil industry no longer recieves subsidies.
I think Al Gore may come to regret his desperate and juvenile attack on Koch Industries
JunkScience to Al Gore: En garde!
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30304
Cropdoc,
You are confusing my comments with the honorable Mr. Courtney.
Obviously you will have more fires in total with the most commonly used transportation fuel over the past century, since the mandate for Ethanol has only been around since 1994 and production only seriously ramped up following the 2005 energy bill mandating much larger quantities. I was specifically addressing that putting out Ethanol fires is much more difficult which by default makes them more dangerous. Whether this immediately translates into more deaths is irrelevant to this fact.
Ethanol is not cheaper than Gasoline once you properly adjust it for it’s lower BTU content and remove all the subsidies that artificially are keeping the price low.
The subsidies the oil industry receives are a pittance compared to the ethanol industry and while ALL subsidies should be removed so should the burdensome taxes and regulations on the oil industry. Once they are all removed, Ethanol is simply not economically viable.
“Big Oil” at the Public Trough? An Examination of Petroleum Subsidies (PDF) (Ronald J. Sutherland, Ph.D. Energy Economist)
Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007 (PDF) (EIA)
Subsidy per million Btu: (2007 dollars)
$0.03 – Petroleum Liquids
$5.72 – Ethanol/Biofuels
It is a joke to even compare the two.
Thanks for the response, KD; I find your voice reliable in all things but this matter.
===============
Richard S. Courtney predicted nothing. He lacks the training to understand agricultural markets and agroindustrial processes. Right-wing shills are just as bad as the ecotard watermelons.
http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-s-courtney
John Q. Galt:
Your silly rant could not be more wrong. Please explain how a card carrying left wing socialist like me can be a right wing shill.
And anybody can check the links I provided to see what I predicted and whether my assessment of those predictions was correct. To save anybody needing to scroll up to find them they are
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/courtney_082006.pdf
and
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/biofuel_issues.pdf
Richard
Poptech,
Your comment on burning cotton is hilarious. I never suggested that, my point is that the acres that are used from year to year could be used to grow food crops and replaced with acres that are not suitable for row crops like corn, soybeans, wheat.
You apparently seem to think that farmers only plant 1 crop on any acres they farm. For your information, farmers rotate crops to enhance yields and the efficiencies of fertilizer use. For someone who seems to think you know it all about agriculture and the effects of converting a portion of the corn crop to fuel you sure do lack any understanding of the farming system.
To me it is obvious that ethanol is a viable system as ethanol plants have been making money for over 90% of the time they operate, those that have gone under did so because they took undue risks in the marketplace and suffered the consequences of poor decisions. They are making money currently, why do you think Valero has become a major player in ethanol in the last 2 years, they apparently feel it is a viable industry.
I checked on the fire safety of ethanol and it may be more difficult to put out said fire, but the truth is they occur far less often by percentage and there have been very few deaths as a result. Meanwhile gasoline is responsible for hundreds of deaths every year by car fires, inhaling fumes, explosions enviromental damage. Does the gulf oil spill come to mind??
In 10 years time the national corn crop will likely exceed 16 to 17 billion bushels of corn/year and of that the ethanol industry will use @ur momisugly 5 billion bushels of corn to produce the 15 billion gallons of ethanol that is allowed under the mandates. The remaining biofuels that are a part of the 22 billion gallons total will have to come from corn residues, wood wasted, grasslands, surgarcane or other sources for ethanol production.
Oh, then the subsidies that oil receives is @ur momisugly 310 billion dollars worldwide, while ethanol is less than 10 billion dollars worldwide. Looks like oil is getting about the same benefits as ethanol. Almost all the articles I found really hammered the subsidies on oil and were much different than the articles you tried to use to support your argument. Ethanol can compete very well with gas, if given the same access to the marketplace, which is why the mandates are in place and also to make gasoline less damaging to the environment using ethanol as the oxygenate that helps gasoline burn more efficiently which explains how you get the same mileage using up to 30% ethanol blends even though there are fewer BTU’s in ethanol. Ethanol has a much higher octane rating, thus that is how you maintain mileage even though you are using a lower btu product.
Dave Springer,
I enjoy reading your posts, but this comment needs clarification:
“Free markets don’t always serve the greater public good. Things like monopolies and price fixing can cause great harm.”
First, monopolies are by definition not the ‘free market,’ nor is price fixing. Regulation is sometimes necessary to ensure a level playing field, but regulation evenly applied is neither a monopoly nor price fixing.
The consumer is best served by the free market, which in the long run results in the lowest prices. It is true that there are occasional hiccups in any market that can cause price disruptions, but in a true free market they are always temporary.
Not so with monopolies, which always result in higher prices to the end users. FedEx and UPS would have put the USPS out of business long ago if the post office was not enshrined as a monopoly in the U.S. Constitution.
Regulation is often confused with the free market. Adam Smith pointed out that left to their own devices, shop owners will always conspire to set prices. Regulations outlawing those practices are not contrary to free markets.
The promotion of ethanol is much like the promotion of MTBE in gasoline. MTBE suppliers conspired to use government police power to put an unnecessary ingredient into gasoline, making the end product inferior in quality and more expensive.
Vested interests conspired to promote ethanol. Those interests reap financial rewards at the expense of customers. In a true free market ethanol might be a small niche product, but nothing more.
Cropdoc,
There is nothing funny about burning food. My comment about burning cotton is in direct relation to burning corn because that is the concern.
Your strawman argument about what I think farmers plant is just that because I made no statement on any such thing.
The fact that you think Ethanol is viable only demonstrates your economic illiteracy as there is nothing economically viable about government mandates and subsidies.
I have seen no comprehensive study comparing ethanol to gasoline fires so your statement is meaningless. As I already stated you will have more fires in total with the most commonly used U.S. transportation fuel over the past century, since the mandate for Ethanol has only been around since 1994 and production only seriously ramped up following the 2005 energy bill mandating much larger quantities.
I’ve already went over the subsidies,
Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007 (PDF) (EIA)
Subsidy per million Btu: (2007 dollars)
$0.03 – Petroleum Liquids
$5.72 – Ethanol/Biofuels
As you can see they are no where near equivalent. Using your silly total dollar amount for a fuel that is used at a ratio of 9 to 1 at least is nonsense. The dollar amount must be properly calculated into actual energy produced as the above numbers represent. Since you apparently missed my other comments it is of no surprise where you missed where I stated that I want ALL subsidies repealed. Once the mandate and subsidies are repealed it will NOT be competitive with oil.
Government Mandates do not “provide access to markets”, they artificially force usage of something that is not economically viable.
You don’t get the same mileage with even 10% of Ethanol. The American Coalition for Ethanol finds average fuel economy reductions for E10, E20, and E30 of 1.43%, 2.15%, and 5.08% compared to regular unleaded gasoline.
Ethanol fuels have not been independently shown to provide the same fuel economy as gasoline.
This is a myth,
Ethanol in gasoline: environmental impacts and sustainability review article
(Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 9, Issue 6, pp. 535-555, December 2005)
– Robert K. Niven
The study indicates that E10 is of debatable air pollution merit (and may in fact increase the production of photochemical smog); offers little advantage in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency or environmental sustainability; and will significantly increase both the risk and severity of soil and groundwater contamination. In contrast, E85 …will produce significant air pollution impacts, involves substantial risks to biodiversity, and its groundwater contamination impacts and overall sustainability are largely unknown.”
Poptech,
Your last so called proof has been shown to be so full of inaccuracies and false assumptions that it is really not worth responding to,but will just so you know it is a pitiful argument on your part.
Glad to see you want all subsidies ended, for all entities, cut government to the bone I say.
When talking about fuel economy please explain your conclusion when here are the facts of the situation according to you. E10 reduces mpg by 1.43%, yet E10 contains 4.08% fewer BTU’s. E20 reduces mpg by 2.15% you say, yet it has 7.84% fewer BTU’s /gallon. Then E30 reduces mpg by 11.76%, when the BTU content is only 5.08% lower in BTU’s. Lastly, I see a 15% reduction in mpg when using E85, only when I’m not pulling something, yet the BTU content is 39.2% lower. Please explain how it is that you get better efficiency of BTU/gallon of fuel when adding ethanol to the mix???
A 2008 study done by the U of Nebraska has shown that there are 13 gallons of ethanol produced for every 1 gallon liquid petroleum used. The overall net energy gain is between 1.5 to 1.6 return for every 1 btu expended. Not bad for an industry that just really got going 20 years ago. Today the crush margin as of Nov 22 $.595/bushel of corn utilized for ethanol production. Even if you applied all of the “blenders credit” to the ethanol plants they would be profitable, and have been profitable for a long time now. At the time the huge expansions took place in 2006 the crush margin exceeded $4.00/bushel, which is why there was such a large infusion of outside investment into the industry from outside of the agricultural producer owned ethanol plants. I say follow the money and you will get the evidence about the viability of a business. Ethanol is profitable with or without the blenders credit and is a net gain for energy, why should it not be part of the energy solution?
Oh and the cotton acres thing, you still don’t get it. Those acres could be used to grow food, as coul the CRP acres that produce nothing today except “good feelings” by the wacky environmentalists. There is more wildlife around a corn field than any CRP field, hint it has more food available. By 2030 it is projected that corn yields will nearly double from today’s levels, which will mean net gain for energy will become nearly 2.5 to 1. The reason is that most of the gain will be from the corn plant efficiencies, not an increase in inputs. The point is we can use corn for energy today, just like we did 100 years ago when every acre was farmed using horsepower, again using “food for fuel”.
I will obviously not change your mind about this subject, but I would ask you to be open to the possibility that an industry can become more viable as it hones its’ business model and the processes that make it go. Ethanol is a success story, regardless of your opinions and will be a part of the energy equation wether you like it or not.
Have a great day
Cropdoc,
My last proof was as scientific as they come, a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating that E10 is not as environmentally friendly as claimed. There is nothing pitiful about it.
Do you want ALL Ethanol subsidies and mandates abolished? Yes or No?
My statement on fuel efficiency was simply to reject yours (that there is no loss in MPG using ethanol blends). I intentionally used the American Coalition for Ethanol so you could not dismiss the source.
What “you see” is not verifiable and any statements made like this are worthless.
You don’t source anything so it is not possible to verify any of your statements. Regardless the study you mention like the rest that state positive energy gains fail to properly account for ALL inputs of energy that go into ethanol production.
Ethanol Fuels: Energy Balance, Economics, and Environmental Impacts Are Negative
(Natural Resources Research, Volume 12, Number 2, pp. 127-134, June 2003)
– David Pimentel
“In the U.S. ethanol system, considerably more energy, including high-grade fossil fuel, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy-ethanol output. Specifically about 29% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy in a gallon of ethanol. Fossil energy powers corn production and the fermentation/distillation processes.”
The blenders credit is just one of the subsides that go into corn farming to produce ethanol. It is not the only one. Without the subsidies and mandates ethanol production would not only not be profitable it would not exist.
You have to be kidding. The huge expansion in 2006 is related to the 2005 energy bill! It mandated a dramatic increase in ethanol usage of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.
Have you ever studied economics, seriously? Government mandates and subsidies are not needed for economically viable industries.
I understand your strawman argument about cotton. No one is arguing about growing food vs textile crops. I am arguing about growing and burning food crops.
I already stated I want to completely deregulate the agricultural industry in the U.S. and that would mean abolishing the CRP. Why do you keep repeating the same strawman arguments I already addressed?
Not only do you not understand economic but you have no remote idea about energy. Why would we want to reverse course and return today’s America to a carbohydrate-fueled economy? Why should we use a more inefficient, less dense form of energy?
There is no mind to open. If you have an elementary understanding of economics, you understand what economic viability is and it is not an industry propped up with welfare and mandates.
Pimentals’ study has been found to TOTALLY full of false and outdated information. His conclusions have been totally debunked to the degree that anyone who uses his so called scientific studies to make an argument is really quite stupid. I don’t put up papers to make my argument, especially all the old studies that are entirely out of date by todays’ standards and efficiencies that are the ethanol industry.
Do you really think that the oil companies would even offer to sell a product to the American consumer if it was not mandated?? If you do, you have no concept of competition in the marketplace, and for your information I have plenty of knowledge about economics as I have run my own company for many years now and tire of egg heads like yourself that do not understand how the real economy works, rather you are what I call educated idiots who can quote facts, but don’t know the first thing about how the world works, and couldn’t operate or run a business if they had to. What I really tire of is all the false statements that people like yourself espouse time and time again, regardless of the honest evidence that your facts are simply wrong, yet you keep with the liberal mantra that if we say it long enough people might actually believe the lies.
I’m done with this subject. Someday you will realise that you are totally wrong, but somehow I doubt it.
Cropdoc, please provide the published comment on his paper in a peer-reviewed journal that verifies your claims. If there was any scientific argument against his peer-reviewed paper it would be made via the peer-review process.
Oil companies do not prevent anyone from selling alternative fuels. The only thing that could prevent that is the government. Clearly they would never sell a fuel produced by a competing company if it was not mandated.
Your illogical argument is the equivalent of complaining that Coca Cola would never sell Coke made from 10% Pepsi without a government mandate. No kidding!
I not only studied economics in college but also run my own successful business (so you attempt here fails as well). If you had a remote understanding of free-market economics you would not be supporting government mandates and subsidies as they are nothing more than welfare for the ethanol industry.
Everything I have claimed I have supported with valid sources. You and Larry are the ones making unsubstantiated statements.
None of my statements have been false.
I don’t say it long enough, I reference my facts extensively.
Actually the more I research this the more I realize how much the American taxpayer is being ripped off keeping an industry (Ethanol) that is not economically viable afloat.
Sorry if I discredited all your propaganda about the ethanol industry.