Interesting timing, especially when some biomass companies are switching from wood chips to corn, because they couldn’t turn a profit on wood chips. Looks like all the wheels are coming off the bus now.
To Survive, Some Biofuels Companies Give Up on Biofuels – Technology Review
Gevo, a prominent advanced-biofuels company that has received millions in U.S. government funding to develop fuels made from cellulosic sources such as grass and wood chips, is finding that it can’t use these materials if it hopes to survive. Instead, it’s going to use corn, a common source for conventional biofuels. What’s more, most of the product from its first facility will be used for chemicals rather than fuel.
As the difficulty of producing cellulosic biofuels cheaply becomes apparent, a growing number of advanced-biofuels companies are finding it necessary to take creative approaches to their business, even though that means abandoning some of their green credentials, at least temporarily, and focusing on markets that won’t have a major impact on oil imports. This is hardly the outcome the government hoped for when it announced cellulosic-biofuels mandates, R&D funding, and other incentives in recent years.
Here’s the story on the subsidy ending from the Detroit News:
Congress adjourned for the year on Friday, failing to extend the tax break that’s drawn a wide variety of critics on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Critics also have included environmentalists, frozen food producers, ranchers and others.
The policies have helped shift millions of tons of corn from feedlots, dinner tables and other products into gas tanks.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth praised the move.
“The end of this giant subsidy for dirty corn ethanol is a win for taxpayers, the environment and people struggling to put food on their tables,” biofuels policy campaigner Michal Rosenoer said Friday.
Dirty Corn Ethanol? I’m all for ending taxpayer siphoning, but dirty corn ethanol?
Full story h/t to Lawrence Depenbush
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The solar voltaic industry is also suffering:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/12/28/0236205/prospects-darken-for-solar-energy-companies
A. Scott says:
December 28, 2011 at 2:52 am
Another bash ethanol thread – goody :rollseyes:
To mikelorrey – you are absolutely and completely incorrect – it does NOT take a gallon of anything to make a gallon of ethanol. Unless of course you are quoting Patzek and Pimentel of Berkely fame (or infamy) who have been soundly debunked by almost every agency and group out there – they are worse the Mann, Jones etc in many ways for how much of an incorrect outlier their fully dis-proven work is.
It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to create appx 1.6 BTU of ethanol energy using corn processes. It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to make 6 to 8 btu using cellulosic processes.
==================================================================
Sorry, I don’t have time to respond to all of your errant points, so I’ll just respond to the first one you made and hopefully, you’ll understand that the information you’ve received is wrong.
(my bold) Tell me, what’s wrong with this literary picture? So the energy crisis is solved! We actually create energy!!! Yea!!!
GregO: “If ethanol is a good idea, and production seems fairly well underway, then why can’t the free market provide whatever support is needed? Why is public funding needed? Can’t the industry simply stand on its own?”
Actually, the industry proposed a phase out. Under some duress and political pressure, but they did propose a phase out. The phase out would have had no subsidy when the price of oil was less than $90 per barrel, a level I doubt we’ll see very frequently again. Also, as I understand it, the subsidy was a blender’s credit which went to the oil company using the ethanol, not to the ethanol industry. The benefit to the ethanol producer was indirect.
From ascott – “To mikelorrey – you are absolutely and completely incorrect – it does NOT take a gallon of anything to make a gallon of ethanol. Unless of course you are quoting Patzek and Pimentel of Berkely fame (or infamy) who have been soundly debunked by almost every agency and group out there – they are worse the Mann, Jones etc in many ways for how much of an incorrect outlier their fully dis-proven work is. It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to create appx 1.6 BTU of ethanol energy using corn processes. It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to make 6 to 8 btu using cellulosic processes. ”
Are you comparing apples to oranges? Perhaps mikelorrey was referring to the entire big picture process from planting to production instead of just the end game production aspect which it seems you are arguing here?
Same big picture view exists with green electric cars. Not so green up to the point you are actually in the car and pressing on the gas…errrr electric pedal.
Dirty Corn Ethanol? I’m all for ending taxpayer siphoning, but dirty corn ethanol?
====================================================
Not sure, but they might be referring to fertilizers, pesticides, etc
I was told that corn for ethanol is not regulated the same as corn for food or feed, so you can use a lot more or different pesticides, etc
Such good news and so early in the morning!
To those green spokesmen in this thread who claim that your policies have no ill effects on our nation’s soil bank, etc: why don’t you learn to be a true caretaker of the environment, rather than an advocate for an agenda which ultimately ends in tyranny?
Perhaps along the way, you will reflect on the hypocrisies of your present position and of the true costs and real damages incurred by the doctrines and misinformation which you promote.
I don’t recall Standard Oil whining about a lack of investment funding back in the great depression?
lenbilen says:
December 28, 2011 at 5:43 am
Ethanol is dirty only because the fermenting process converts nearly half of the sugar into CO2, the rest is then the fuel. If you are concerned at all about CO2 levels don’t ferment. This is the environmentalist’s dirty argument.
——————————————-
…… and what a silly argument that is too, given that the CO2 is from a source where it has been taken out of the atmosphere and is just being recycled.
By the way, there are some microorganisms (known as acetogens) that use essentially all the sugar for product and produce no CO2.
http://www.zeachem.com/
philincalifornia says:
December 28, 2011 at 6:33 am
“The Wikipedia article on Brazilian ethanol is pretty good and shows what a huge success story that has been for Brazil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
”
From your link:
“The Brazilian government provided three important initial drivers for the ethanol industry: guaranteed purchases by the state-owned oil company Petrobras, low-interest loans for agro-industrial ethanol firms, and fixed gasoline and ethanol prices where hydrous ethanol sold for 59% of the government-set gasoline price at the pump. Subsidising ethanol production in this manner and setting an artificially low price established ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.”
So, they subsidized it into the market; of, well, actually, not a market, they fixed the prizes. You think that’s a huge success? Now, Brazil has good growth rates at the moment, but they’ve been doing this ethanol thing for decades now, and for a long time during the past decades their economy has been a basketcase. Maybe that has to do with that “huge success” of misallocating capital?
At 2:52AM A. Scott wrote: “The US met 100% of the corn demand for feed, food and fuel in each of the last several years, PLUS we met the entire export demand AND we still added to the US reserves.”
Yet, when I googled “U.S. grain reserves” the first page was filled with multiple alarming stories about very low levels of grain reserves. I hope we do not rue the day we squandered away the food we had in our national cupboard. It seems to me the nation of amber waves of grain and frutied plains is one bad crop away from real hunger.
And, because we are the Saudia Arabia of food exports, if we go hungry, then teeming thousands around the world would starve.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Mike M says:
December 28, 2011 at 7:03 am
A. Scott says: It takes money to research, refine, advance and improve and there was little or no capital avail for that or almost any purpose from 2007/8 to now
I don’t recall Standard Oil whining about a lack of investment funding back in the great depression?
======================
…… or Codexis/Shell and BP in this recession, but A Scott does have a point. In a better economy, the cellulosic field would be far more advanced than it is now (i.e. with more private capital).
@A Scott. I would be interested in the source of your statement than ethanol is less polluting. I spent some considerable time trying to understand this. The EPA has no studies on the subject. There are references to other sources for the idea that it is less polluting, all of which seem to lead back to a single Canadian study, which indicated that with vehicles specifically designed for ethanol, under specific circumstances, there may be a small reduction in some pollutants, with a corresponding increase in other, more dangerous, pollutants.
As for the same milage, personal experience in several vehicles indicates a drop of around 10%. I don’t need a label on the gas pump to tell me it contains ethanol, I can tell by just watching the gas guage.
A. Scott says:
“It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to create appx 1.6 BTU of ethanol energy using corn processes. It takes appx 1 BTU of energy to make 6 to 8 btu using cellulosic processes.”
A 60% gain!! Amazing stuff! Why arent we converting all gasoline to ethanol? I’m going to start growing corn in my back yard. With a little luck, I will have an infinite amount of ETOH in no time. I’ll make 2.44 gal. of ETOH (76,000 BTU/gal) from 1 gal (116,090 BTU/gal) of gas. Then I’ll use the the 2.44 gal of ETOH to make 3.9 gal ETOH, gaining 60% in energy content at every cycle. Soon I’ll have infinite energy all from one gallon of gasoline input.
Does any other conversion of energy feedstock have as high or higher gain? Because 1.6 is pretty good. Actually, anything over 1.0 is great. 6 to 8 is just unbelievable!!! Gotta love it when this kind of thing happens – it’s magical.
And, uh, are that SMOKESTACKS I see in that wikipedia photo of a Brazilian ethanol plant?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Panorama_Usina_Costa_Pinto_Piracicaba_SAO_10_2008.jpg
Doesn’t look like H2O and CO2 what comes out of them. Quick, somebody call EPA.
Don’t forget the subsidies of oil. Also keep in mind that the importing of oil is helping maintain the $100/barrel prices which subsidize the regimes that are hostile to the US and its friends. When you look at costs to the US citizens, after consideration of all hidden costs (subsidies, military spending, etc.) I have seen estimates as high as $10/gallon. Just google real/true cost of oil. One quick, credible reference puts it at $480/barrel (http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461).
Also, keep in mind that the $1/gallon subsidy, which is now rolling into a cellulosic (non-starch) subsidy ensures that the entire amount spent on the fuel remains in the US economy. So, the real tax subsidy is less as the $$ are changing hands and being re-taxed within the country.
If you have some time read the Energy Independence act of 2007. In many ways it is shockingly good legislation with respect to renewable fuels. As I mentioned, it forces the industry to roll over from a starch-based subsidy (corn) to cellulose-based (wood/grasses/etc) over time to maintain the subsidy. That is what is happening now. If we can do nothing else but redirect the $252 Billion of annual (http://useconomy.about.com/od/tradepolicy/p/Trade_Deficit.htm) oil import dollars into the local economy it will significantly outweigh the relatively modest subsidy used to develop the industry necessary to support the transition.
Now to get the crud out of our fuel all together. It makes for lower mpg. An interesting fact is that the fuel that is used to get mpg figures on cars does not contain it.
Newsflash: Hell freezes over! Congress does something right!!
May want to hold off on investing heavily in Mascomas:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/some-red-flags-numbers-in-mascomas-ipo-filing/
Looks like they could become another Solyndra, fairly quickly.
IF one wants to burn food as fuel, it’d make more sense to eliminate all the processing & capital required for corn-to-alcohol conversion. Just dry the corn & burn it in a steam or Sterling-engine powered vehicle.
Kinda puts the idea of food-to-fuel in perspective.
To:
Sal Minella says:
December 28, 2011 at 7:15 am
and others. Are you just trolling? The energy comes from the sun – the calculations of 1:1.6 for corn ethanol etc. are calculated on end to end inputs vs outputs with the growing of the corn harvesting solar energy.
The whole point of the exercise was the propaganda put out by anti-ethanol lobbies (and countered by the pro-ethanol lobbies) on the need for fossil fuel inputs into growing corn. By redefining what are “inputs” and “outputs” you can get a whole range of figures. I think A Scott is pulling out the most rational numbers, but everyone is busy arguing over where you draw the lines around agriculture and ethanol production.
As far as subsidies/mandates go, let’s face it, these (and the biodiesel subsidies/mandates in Europe) were political – buying votes in important constituencies. And with all such market interventions, the US and Europe don’t suffer unduly by the marginally higher food prices since food is such a small part of spending. The impact has been felt in developing countries which pushed state-controlled farming into energy crops (corn for ethanol in S Africa and palm oil for biodiesel in SE Asia) making the same mistakes as when they were pushed into tobacco, coffee etc.. This is where there have been real food issues and is always the problem of overspill of internal policies into international markets.
Forget Al Gore, Newt Gingrich was the champion of ethanol and was an Ethanol Lobbyist:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53678.html
I wouldn’t clap quite yet.
I don’t think congress ended the annual volume requirement for ethanol?
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/8442/rfa-presses-epa-to-release-final-2012-rfs-volumes
All the end of subsidies means is that we will be seeing more of the ‘true cost’ of ethanol at the fuel pumps.
jabre says:
December 28, 2011 at 7:22 am
“One quick, credible reference puts it at $480/barrel (http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461).”
Your credible reference also says the CO2 that the US produces costs 65 trillion a year.
DirkH says:
December 28, 2011 at 7:07 am
———————————————
Maybe Dirk but, as the saying goes “Good things come to those who wait” and the wait is clearly over, as evidenced by the football (soccer) star proxy. Brazilian clubs can now afford to keep their own players even (its economy has now overtaken that of the U.K.):
http://internationalbusinessblog.conversisglobal.com/2011/08/16/is-brazil’s-economic-growth-and-power-changing-european-football/
Also, more seriously:
http://globalgeopolitics.net/wordpress/2011/03/22/sugar-cane-and-ethanol-boom-drives-development-in-southern-brazil/
I see several folks trying to spin this into something it is not. This is not a violation of thermodynamic principles or magic. It is perhaps poor phrasing because those who have taken the time to study fuel ethanol understand the context.
The energy gain is the capture of free solar energy you don’t have to pay for by the growing plants. The energy input quoted is “purchased energy” such as natural gas, coal generated electricity etc. The free energy of solar power absorbed by the plants is not included in the accounting because it is a harvest of a potential energy source that exists free for the taking. Just like the free energy solar energy that moves water to the high mountains so it can be used to produce hydro power during the summer melt, or the free solar energy captured by coal and hydrocarbon fuels thousands or millions of years ago. We don’t include the cost of that solar energy in the accounting for how much energy it takes to produce gasoline either.
It is the net gain in useful energy over the energy contained in the direct energy inputs provided by man.
I am an advocate of E85 and fuel ethanol and am personally glad this has happened. The industry has been on the point of break even for the last few years, where well run plants that were not victims of market manipulation or other active efforts to block their growth could make a profit on ethanol without the subsidy. Some of them are still being forced out of business due to issues they have no control over. For example a law suit was filed for violation of minimum mark up laws in Wisconsin. They were selling their ethanol “too cheaply” and as a result the gasoline vendors filed suit using old minimum mark up laws that were intended to avoid price gouging on gasoline and price wars during the arab oil embargo.
This will shake out the industry and only the well run operations will survive, and marginal operations will have a strong incentive to get their house in order. Fuel ethanol is one of the best methods to improve fuel octane of gasoline available in the market today, and using it as an octane enhancer substantially improves the fuel yield from petroleum and the economics of gasoline production to meet Federal requirements for fuel octane, so it is not going away any time soon.
It took Brazil 30+ years to get their fuel ethanol industry built out and the infrastructure developed to use it as a major part of their fuel cycle and they had the advantage of a tropical climate to grow sugar cane and the political will to do it. Even they ran into some issues but they proved it could be a viable component of a mature fuel energy cycle.
Larry