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
To the readers of WUWT: Click on the ‘full story’ link at the end of the lead article. Read it.
I just called the local elevator and corn is up today, selling for $6.13 / bushel. If you look at the link I provide below, you can see that some of the Western Nebraska counties have yields in the 100-130 bushel/acre range. With $100 per acre direct input, the farmers in this area have a pretty tight budget in order to make a profit.
http://www.nebraskacorn.org/main-navigation/corn-production-uses/production/
mkelly and others:
Canada is less than 25% of our oil source – have a look at the list of ‘friendly’ nations we’re subsidizing: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm & http://205.254.135.7/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html.
Kevin Kilty and others:
Your arguments about redirecting corn crops are totally off the mark. As I indicated the initial subsidies which were based on corn are now being phased out. If anyone wants to produce ethanol and continue to receive subsidies they must now produce a cellulosic (non-corn, non-sugar) source. Read the legislation.
Kevin Kilty and others: “WAGs”
I try not to snipe but you have got to be kidding – what planet have been on since the ’70’s? Are you implying that are military spending in the Middle East, Arab/Persian nations is for the sole purpose of befriending the world? Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia – tell me, why do we care about these countries and spend trillions invading and defending them?
$480/barrel source : if you actually read the reference is Milton Copulus, the head of the National Defense Council Foundation, former principal energy analyst for the Heritage Foundation – not much of a greenee – huh? As I said, there are many hundreds of references which break down the cost – just google.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” *
Are you aware of the latitude differences between the US vs Brazil, Phil?
.
.
* Origins
“Congress ends corn ethanol subsidy.”
Does this mean that the mandate to use 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022 has been suspended? Does the EPA still get to fine everyone for missing the mandate?
Eric (skeptic) says:
December 28, 2011 at 8:40 am
Presumably when A. Scott said “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.” he is not suggesting creating energy from nothing.
What is not clear if he is only counting the manufacturing plant energy of 1 BTU to get 1.6 BTU or if this includes the planting & harvest of seed corn, packaging/transport of seed corn, the fertilizer/tilling ground for the corn, the planting/harvest of the ethanol corn, the transport of the corn to the ethanol manufacturer. Not counting the manufacture of the tractor, havestor, semi, etc approtioned to this application.
Besides the BTU(calories) in one 20 gal tank would feed a person for a 2/3 of a year. The trade off doesn’t seem equal.
“Approximately 21,300 human-available calories in a US gallon of pure ethanol.” found at a site.
All of the energy contained from corn comes from the sun and the nutrients (natural and enhanced) in the soil. I fail to see how that is at all relevant to this discussion. The 1 BTU of input energy is required to convert the energy in the corn from one chemical form to another: carbohydrate to alcohol. I submit to you that net energy that goes into the production of 1 BTU of corn energy is greater than 1 BTU, All systems that we are aware of are less than 100% efficient for an efficiency of greater than unity can only be a perpetual motion machine that is run on magic. If ETOH produced from corn or any other source contained more energy than is used to create it then all I can say is: WOW!!!!!!!!! Let’s all get on the ETOH bandwagon because it doesn’t need our tax dollars to keep it solvent. It should be a boon to mankind the likes of which have never been seen before. (If we drink a lot of it will it make us understand the logic of pouring good high-energy-density fuels down the drain to produce it?)
Ok, I looked at the report Jabre referenced (December 28, 2011 at 7:22 am). It appears to be complete nonsense. The study apparently uses new math, and attributes all the ills and costs of society to oil, then multiplies by 3 just to make a stronger case. Where have we seen that tactic before? It is good for a laugh, but that’s about all.
If, as A. Scott says (December 28, 2011 at 2:52 am), ethanol from corn is such a good thing, then why the subsidies and tariffs? It is the distortion in the free market that is the issue for me. There is no doubt, however, that the increase in demand for corn above what it would otherwise have been drove the price up (check the price charts at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Corn/2010baseline.htm). It also placed more land under cultivation of a water hungry crop, and caused starvation in the poorest countries because the NGO’s couldn’t afford to buy as much corn.
According to http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/265.pdf, the production of 1.34 BTU of ethanol from corn takes 1BTU of some other fuel. If that other fuel is something other than a fossil fuel, for example electric from solar, hydro, nuclear, etc., then there is a real energy advantage. This is a case where the energy is not fungible. We could convert nuclear power into liquid fuels, which is also a pretty good way to store energy (better than in a battery). The process could be closed loop and self sustaining. (Nuclear generated electric to run the ethanol plants to produce the ethanol to power tractors, pumps, and trucks, and make the fertilizer) with the surplus sold to be added to gasoline.
Congress has mandated that we use 22B gallons of renewable fuels by 2022 vs. 9B in 2008. That is equivalent to about 4.5% of our total petroleum consumption in terms of BTU’s. Hardly a path to energy independence.
The loss of subsidies will transfer the costs to the buyer of the fuel directly, where it belongs. The loss of the tariff protection will help allow the markets to work as they should.
As several have noted, with the mandate still in place, all this means is the pump price rising. So now, instead of the government subsidizing the difference out of tax money collected from the top income earners, it’ll be paid by everyone. The greens get what they want. Higher pump prices, for everyone down to the bottom. This is called “progressive”.
jabre,
Your argument/your cited reference has been
adjudged to be “complete nonsense”; are you going to stand for that?
.
morgo says:
December 28, 2011 at 1:24 am
“maybe we should eating wood chips instead of corn ? what are the left wing greenys eating.the answer [grass]”
I believe the answer is Arugula.
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Produce-440/arugula.aspx
That would be according to our current president.
The difficulty of breaking the covalent carbon bonds of the cellulose chain was painfully apparent to us at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1980, when we first studied this process. Enzymes from termite gut bacteria yadda yadda yadda….
Some scams just never go away. If they want ethyl alcohol so badly, let them capture the waste sugars of beverage bottling plants, cheese whey and other industrial effluents. Kraft Foods did this with parmesan cheese whey permeate at a plant in Minnesota, slick as hell.
Make mine shale oil and natural gas.
_Jim says:
December 28, 2011 at 9:38 am
philincalifornia says on December 28, 2011 at 8:21 am
…
This is happening guys. It’s smoking hot in a different way from the pic. Pity we can’t switch into sugar cane here in the U.S.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” *
Are you aware of the latitude differences between the US vs Brazil, Phil?
”
—
Jim, Philincalifornia, Brazil is adapting a new variety of sugar cane suitable for the south where the climate is subtropical (State of Rio Grande do Sul).
North:
Latitude: -27º 04′ 48”
Longitude: -53º 01′ 53”
South:
Latitude: -33º 45′ 06′
Longitude: -53º 23′ 48”
This subsidy is one of the most immoral of all government subventions and the environmental lobby groups like Greenpeace should hang their heads in shame. The diversion of corn yields into fuel and non-food production has had a major impact on the international cost of food. Who are the main sufferers? – the poor worldwide of course.
I knew the trolls were here and would come to A. Scotts rescue.
I knew you would be here ‘hotrod’ [hotrod (Larry L) says: December 28, 2011 at 8:09 am]. Where is ‘220 mph’?
See:eyesonu says:
December 28, 2011 at 8:40 am
The post that I referred to on WUWT about a year age being hijacked by the ethanol lobby was hijacked by you; ‘hotrod’ and ‘220 mph’. Remember the multiple ‘cut and paste’ comments that you two performed by posting long comments that took 10 minutes to read yet you were posting one after another only a few minutes apart over several hours, that likely took hours to produce with the related links.
So the ethanol trolls are here in force and now include A.Scott. Maybe you should change your ‘tags’ as you have been outed.
Trolls.
“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”
No difference on any of the above between any types of commercial corn. There are different restrictions for sweet corn, but all field corns, which include corn used for chips, sweetners, ethanol, and livestock feed, have the same rules.
I hate to be an ant at the corn ethanol picnic, but to meet a 36billion gals/year mandate by 2022, you still need to build the plants.
If we are going to burn our food in gas tanks at such an outrageous rate by 2022, the figures to build the plants should be figured into the btu needed to create the btu out of food grains.
And to be a further ant at the green energy mandate picnic, grains are a thing which people need to eat. With food prices globally going up over 25% in one year, it might not be best to mandate such an outrageous amount of food to be burned in a gas tank. A gas tank is meant for gas, which can be found in ANWR and in the deep sea beds.
To look at the historic price of corn, I found a site from the University of Illinois on the price of corn received by farmers in Illinois, in dollars per bushel. I used the calendar year annual average price. I then found a Consumer Price Index from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and used the annual average CPI. I adjusted the price of the corn to 2010 prices according to the CPI. The numbers are as shown below for every five years. The average for 2011 is based on January through October and is my calculation from the values presented, and is not adjusted to 2010 prices.
As can be seen by the data, the current price of corn is not high by historical standards. The 2010 inflation adjusted price was actually less than 1990 and before. The current price is less than the Price in 1980 and before. In fact the data shows that the price of corn has been at a historic low level and is just returning to prior levels.
Year, Annual Average, CPI, Price in 2010 dollars
1960 1.03 29.60 7.59
1965 1.19 31.50 8.24
1970 1.27 38.80 7.14
1975 2.72 53.80 11.02
1980 2.78 82.40 7.36
1985 2.53 107.60 5.13
1990 2.46 130.70 4.10
1995 2.61 152.40 3.73
2000 1.90 172.20 2.41
2005 2.04 195.30 2.28
2010 3.85 218.06 3.85
2011 6.17
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt
http://www.farmdoc.illinois.edu/manage/pricehistory/price_history.html
Good news for Koch industries. They just a few weeks ago bought a plant that was built for 50 million and paid 5 million. Of course they had a few from recent bargain purchases. In Georgia a celulosic plant closed 300 million subsidy and almost zero poduction before closing. Now the Government is forking many millions for Abengoa to build a plant in SW Kansas. Cellulosic won’t work and will also fail.
It takes a lot of petroleum to plant, harvest and produce corn and then a lot of natural gas to brew ethanol and dehydrate it. Promoters forget to add that pollution to the carbon claims.
So you are saying a hydro electric dam can never generate more power than the amount of energy used to build the dam? An oil refinery can never produce more gasoline, fuel oil, JP4 or diesel fuel energy than the amount of fuel burned to build the refinery?
Get a grip — we are not talking about recovery of energy in an inelastic collision or the actual energy released when a compound burns compared to the total energy contained in the chemical bonds and actually used to form the compound.
We are talking about the ratio of direct operational energy inputs to run the process compared to the total chemical energy stored in the output ethanol, which includes a surplus of energy from work done by the plants as they grew which is mostly free save the energy costs involved in growing and harvesting the plants. (which by the way is included in those calculations)
Gasoline only produces .85 BTU of fuel energy delivered to the consumer for every 1.00 BTU invested in the refining and delivery chain, but it is still a useful product because you are also getting 19,000 btu / lb of hydrocarbon in free stored energy invested by the sun and geothermal energy over the millions of years it took to turn that bio mass into raw crude. This is the exact same stored energy the corn plant puts into the corn starch, just that the storage process is happening in real time rather than drawing down an energy deposit made long long before man walked the earth.
Larry
An old farmer, my father-in-law, once told me the best way to increase the organic content of soil is to grow continuous corn. The roots, stubble, and debris were left in the field to decay and added to the organic matter. That was in the 1970’s. With the increase in plant densities since then from roughly 25,000 plants per acre to now approaching 40,000 plants per acre, even more organic material is being left in the field. So the assertion that we are depleting the soil to produce ethanol from corn is not true. If 25,000 plants added to the organic matter, 40,000 plants would add even more.
Removing the corn stover as a feedstock for ethanol production, if done to excess, would deplete the organic material in the soil. So the best way to prevent soil depletion is to leave the stover and make the ethanol from the corn.
The problem with the whole 36 billion gallons by 2022 thing, is that it was supposed to be primarily cellulosic ethanol. There is not ONE, NONE, NOWHERE commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plants in production right now, even pilot plant projects are few and far apart and in the plannting stages, and in 10 years we are supposed to be making something on the order of 20 billion gallons of it? Okaaayyyyyy. The truth of the matter is, without subsidies far outweighing that given to corn Ethanol, there would be virtually nothing being done on cellulosic ethanol, and the vast majority of what is being done is to capture govt grants and may never make even a drop of Ethanol.
Zeke says:
“Congress ends corn ethanol subsidy.”
Does this mean that the mandate to use 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022 has been suspended? Does the EPA still get to fine everyone for missing the mandate?
The mandate still exists, they are simply removing the subsidy. This will not cause us not to meet the mandate, it will simply cost more for each gallon of gas/ETOH that we consume. It transfers the cost from the federal taxpayer to EVERYONE, making it a regressive “tax’ on the little guy. This cannot stand – the subsidy will be back unless they remove the mandate.
_Jim says:
December 28, 2011 at 9:38 am
philincalifornia says on December 28, 2011 at 8:21 am
…
This is happening guys. It’s smoking hot in a different way from the pic. Pity we can’t switch into sugar cane here in the U.S.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” *
Are you aware of the latitude differences between the US vs Brazil, Phil?
====================================
Yep. That was, in fact, my point Jim.
“it is useless to wish and that better results will be achieved through action”
On that note, more than a couple of the big advanced biofuel players (the ones that got off their IPOs) are upgrading plants down in Brazil now. My lament was for the U.S. economy, but I shouldn’t begrudge the Brazilians their success in harnessing their climate.