The folly of E15 anti-hydrocarbon policie
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EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy
Guest post by Paul Driessen
The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.
Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.
The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels.
Pummeled by Obama policies that have helped send regular gasoline prices skyrocketing from $1.85 a gallon when he took office to $4.00 today – many motorists will welcome any perceived “bargain gas.” E15 will likely reduce their obvious pump pain by several cents a gallon, thus persuading people to fill up their cars, trucks and maybe even boats, lawnmowers and other equipment with the new blends.
That would be a huge mistake.
E15 gasoline will be cheaper because we already paid for it with decades of taxpayer subsidies that the Congressional Budget Office says cost taxpayers $1.78 every time a gallon of ethanol replaced a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol blends get fewer miles per tank than gasoline. More ethanol means even worse mileage. People may save at the pump, but cost per mile will increase, as will car maintenance and repair costs.
Ethanol collects water, which can cause engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars and motorcycles mistakenly (or for price or convenience) fueled with E15 could conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines could die miles from land or in the face of a thunderstorm, and snowmobiles could sputter to a stop in a frigid wilderness.
Homeowners and yard care professionals have voiced concerns that E15’s corrosive qualities could damage their gasoline-powered equipment. Because it burns hotter than gasoline, high ethanol gasoline engines could burn users or cause lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power equipment to start inadvertently or catch fire, they worry.
As several trade associations have noted in a lawsuit, the Clean Air Act says EPA may grant a waiver for a new fuel additive or fuel blend only if it has demonstrated that the new fuel will not damage the emissions control devices of “any” engine in the existing inventory. E15 has not yet met this requirement. EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.
Largely because of corn-based ethanol, US corn prices shot up from an annual average of $1.96 per bushel in 2005 to $6.01 in 2011. This year we will make ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn grown on an area the size of Iowa. E15 fuels will worsen the problem, especially if corn crops fall below expectations.
Ethanol mandates mean more revenues and profits for corn growers and ethanol makers. However, skyrocketing corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; and families see prices soar for almost everything on their dinner table.
Farmers like pork producer Jim A were hammered hard. Over a 20-year period, Jim became a part owner in a Texas operation and planned to buy out the other shareholders. But when corn and ethanol subsidies went into effect, the cost of feed corn shot from $2.80 per bushel in 2005 to “over $7.00” a bushel in 2008. “We went from treading water and making payments, to losing $100,000 a month,” he told me.
His farm was threatened with foreclosure and the ominous prospect of having to make up the difference in a short sale. After “never missing a single payment to anybody” in his life, he almost lost everything. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a large pork producer leased the property, the bank refinanced his loans and Jim arranged a five-year lease. But thanks to ethanol he almost lost everything he’d ever worked for.
Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute. Soaring corn and wheat prices have also made it far harder for the USAID and World Food Organization to feed the world’s malnourished, destitute children.
Simply put, corn ethanol is wasteful and immoral. And yet E15 advocates want to go even further.
“For 40 years we have been addicted to foreign oil,” says Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis. “Our nation needs E15 to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep gas prices down at the pump, and end the extreme fluctuations in gas prices caused by our reliance on fuel from unstable parts of the world.”
That’s nonsense. America is blessed with centuries of untapped petroleum resources that antediluvian Deep Ecologists, ideology-driven politicians and EPA officials, and subsidy-obsessed renewable energy lobbyists seem intent on keeping locked up, regardless of the negative consequences.
These oil and gas deposits cannot be developed overnight. However, 40 years is not overnight. Yet that’s how long America has kept Alaska’s ANWR coastal plain, most of our Outer Continental Shelf, and most of our western states’ public lands and resources off limits to leasing, exploration and drilling.
If we had started the process twenty, ten or even five years ago, we’d have enough oil flowing to slash imports and cut world crude and US pump prices significantly. If President Obama had approved the Keystone XL pipeline, within two years over 800,000 barrels of Canadian, Montana and North Dakota crude would be flowing daily to Texas refineries – with similar effects on imports and prices.
Developing these resources would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs – and billions of dollars in lease bonuses and rents, production royalties, and corporate and personal taxes.
America’s surging natural gas production has already driven that fuel’s price from $8 to barely $2.00 per thousand cubic feet (or million Btus). That alone will persuade auto makers to build nat-gas-powered cars and trucks (and consumers to buy them), without massive new subsidy programs as advocated by T. Boone Pickens and assorted politicians. Natural gas can even be converted into ethanol (and diesel).
It will happen, unless Congress interferes – or EPA tries to regulate horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) into oblivion, and send natural gas prices back into the stratosphere.
Right now, we are burning our own – and the world’s – food, to fuel cars and trucks. And to grow corn, convert it into 14 billion gallons of ethanol, and ship it by truck or train, we are consuming one-third of America’s entire corn crop – and using millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of energy (all petroleum-based), and trillions of gallons of water.
Just imagine how those numbers will soar, if E15 is adopted nationwide – or if Big Ethanol’s big dream becomes reality, and motorists begin to burn “cheap” corn-based E85 in flex-fuel vehicles.
Will President Obama, Democrats and extreme environmentalists ever end their hatred of hydrocarbons, and their obsession with biofuels – and start embracing reliable, affordable energy that actually works?
__________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Related articles
- U.S. approves 20 firms to make ethanol for E15 (reuters.com)
- EPA moves closer to approval of 15 pct ethanol gas (kansascity.com)
- EPA gives E15 go-ahead despite objections, approves production applications (green.autoblog.com)
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Really?
“We currently [list] 5071 [stations [where pure gas is available] entered for the following states and provinces. Click on a state to see them!”
Minnesota alone has almost 200 ….
And lets look at Minnesota’s ACTUAL Statute since you claim it prevents sale of 100% gasoline:
Here are just a few excerpts – each includes a variation of this wording; “A person responsible for the product may offer for sale, sell, or dispense … gasoline that is not oxygenated in accordance with subdivision 1” – darn inconvenient it often is to attack’s when you read the actual laws:
:
Non-oxygenated fuel can and is sold in hundreds of locations in Minnesota. And more than 5,000 locations across the country.
Oh – and I would point out the mandates came from the EPA. They were enacted initially in the 10 county metro area during the winter to (successfully) help alleviate wintertime air quality issues.
I would also note that despite all the scare mongering over using ethanol blends in winter that in almost 10 years and 93,000 miles I have never had a single issue with ethanol fuel – including using E85.
I use E85 with zero issue from 100+ degrees in summer, including pulling an 8,000gvw race car trailer, to 30+ below zero F real temps (and 70+ below zero windchills.
Another swing and a miss for Poptech.
Wise man once say – watch out for desperate man grasping for straws.
I must say I did find it a humorous suggestion … if the car renatl agencies want to rip us off for fuel simply because they can why shouldn’t we play the same game … 😉
Another wise man once say
“First rule of holes … stop digging”
Distillers Dried Grain Solids are used instead of corn and other feeds – they are absolutely and completely legitimate products being created the reduce the need and use of other products.
You assertion is simply ridiculous – and, although I hesitate to say it, just plain ignorant. Which is what happens when peopel try to pontificate on subjects they do not understand.
It is a simple calculation. With ethanol production you “input” or “expend ONE (1) unit of energy. In return you receive “X” amount of ethanol, and “X” amount of other useful co-products.
One bushel (56lbs) of corn used for ethanol will generate appx:
2.5 gals of ethanol
17lbs Distillers Dried Grain Solid high quality animal feed
3lbs gluten meal
1.5lbs corn oil
July 2010 prices per USDA:
Corn gluten meal – $441/ton
Corn Gluten feed – $58/ton
Corn Oil – $830/ton
DDGS – $105/ton
Other standard feeds costs:
High Protein Soy Meal – $ 326/ton
Corn Feed – $135/ton
Your argument is that these products have zero economic value and thus the energy expended in producing them is irrelevant – that ALL of the enrgy expended should be allocated to the ethanol, regardless of the value of these other products.
Why is that claim wrong – why is the word “ignorant” appropriate here?
Because if you use that methodology then you MUST allocate ALL of energy expended in refining one (1) unit of oil to the gasoline produced – and ignore all the co-products produced in the oil refining process.
I barrel (42 gals) of oil produces 19.15 gals gasoline.
Your claim would ignore all these valuable co-products from the gasoline refining process:
Every 42-US-gallon barrel of crude provides a little more than 44 gallons of petroleum products. This is gained due to processing of crude. From one barrel we get (in gallons):
7.27 gallons (27.5 liters): Other products (feedstocks for petrochemical plants, asphalt, bitumen, tar, etc.)
1.72 gallons (6.5 liters): Liquefied Petroleum Gases (LPG)
3.82 gallons (14.5 liters): Jet Fuel
1.76 gallons (6.6 liters): Heavy Fuel Oil (Residual)
1.75 gallons (6.6 liters): Other Distillates (Heating Oil)
9.21 gallons (35 liters): Diesel
19.15 gallons (72.5 liters): Gasoline
Patzek and Pimentel claimed ethanol got something like .87 to 1 energy balance – that for every 1 unit energy expended they got .87 units in return.
Using their – and your – mentality that co-products are largely worthless and all energy expended in production must be applied to the fuel created then gasoline has a .46 to 1 energy balance. About HALF what even Patzek and Pimentel claim ethanol has.
No surpise from P & P – they also refused to include the large energy cost to turn soy beans into soy meal animal feed when comparing its value to distillers dried grains animal feed.
One last comment from our old wise friend;
“Wise man say … in battle of wits, win goes to educated… ”
And a bonus; “Wise man say …. man who only listens to those he agrees with has a fool for a teacher”
Folks like you read/research to “win”, not to learn.
Its the exact same disease that inflicts the AGW crowd. By all appearances you only read information that supports or conforms to your beliefs. You research for facts that you think prove your point. But becasue you never took time to learn – to review both sides and educate yourself, you will rarely win.
You do yourself, and others who read your comments, and significant disservice.
If you want to make educated decisions stop reading Patzek and Pimentel and the very few that agree with them. Read all of the very many reports and study’s that refute them. Only then can you make an educated judgement on their claims.
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
April 25, 2012 at 5:55 pm
“source “Handbook for Handling, Storing, and Dispensing E85″ page 18
Fire Safety Considerations
Fuel ethanol fires, like all fires, should be taken
seriously. An E85 fire should be handled like a
gasoline fire. Use a CO2, halon, or dry chemical
extinguisher that is marked B, C, BC, or ABC.
Good luck finding halon. The EPA stopped its manufacture in ’98 because it ate ozone and burped carbon dioxide or some such…
99% sell only premium (91 octane) because of the E10 mandate.
Yes, please read it, “Exemptions include: Motor sports racing, airports, marinas, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, small engines and collectors vehicles.” The “exemptions” do not include regular passenger vehicles. Is this some new form of desperate argument?
That is only 3% of the 164,000 gas stations in the country. In ten states it is difficult to impossible to obtain regular gasoline.
You of course support these oppressive laws denying people their freedom to choose the fuel they wish to use in their vehicles.
“Economic value” of DDG is irrelevant to the energy content of the ethanol produced and as Patzek correctly pointed out DDG should not be a credit but a negative as energy has to be expended to transport it away from the refinery. The DDG co-product cannot be used to make more ethanol and it does not magically add energy to the ethanol that is produced, thus it should have nothing to do with the EROI of Ethanol.
Finally, you admit that using E85 is a rip off!
A. Scott says: April 27, 2012 at 1:47 am
Another option would seem to be to drill wells into known reserves but then cap them for future strategic reserve use. Then they’re ready to be started producing with nominal effort and time. It has always seemed outright stupid to me to spend huge sums to drill wells, produce the crude, ship it across the country and then pump it back underground.
———————————————————————————————–
That’s not how oil wells work. They are not reservoirs of liquid pumped from a container. The oil wets the formation (porous rock) and cannot be drained at an arbitrary rate. If you pump faster, you get less. It’s a surface tension thing. You don’t say which strategic reserve you are talking about, but some of them *are* big containers of liquid.
More funny stuff Pop.
DDGS replace corn (and soy beans among others) used for feed. Approximately 1/3 of every bushel used for ethanol is returned as DDGS. And becasue DDGS have a higher nutritional value than corn – 1lb of DDGS replaces appx 1.25lbs of corn.
So in reality every bushel of corn used for ethanol the resultant DDGS replaces appx 21.25 pounds of corn feed … which means for every bushel of corn used in ethanol production 38% of the corn used is essentially returned at end of the process.
Using your mentality – and in reality – that 21.25lbs of corn that DDFS replaces can be used to create more ethanol – for every 2.64 bushels of corn expended in production of ethanol we would get 7.4 gallons of ethanol, plus enough DDGS to replace 56lbs of corn – one full bushel …
So – for every 2.64 bushels used for ethanol, the newly created DDGS replaces 1 bushel of corn – which can be used to make another 2.8 gallons ethanol plus effectively 21.25 more pounds DDGS.
Patzek & Pimental also refuse to consider that the waste material from the corn can be burned to provide energy for more ethanol production. Numerous studies have shown there is enough energy to run the ethanol process AND have enough energy left to create electricity to be sold.
And REAL WORLD examples confirm these studies. As the report you linked earlier showed – there currently are processing plants using this waste stream today. These authors rely on real world examples, along with studies by experienced and competent engineers.
Patzek and Pimental – not so much, their source for these claims – a website. And P&P don’t just argue that all of the many other studies are inaccurate – they argue they are all grossly wrong – that there is virtually NO value at all.
As to this gem of yours:
About the only response is to just shake ones head – or laugh. You simply don’t understand. And now you are arguing against your own position.
What we are talking about is EROI, or more accurately EROEI … “energy” returned on “energy” invested. Total energy returned for total energy invested. And EVERY co-product has an “energy” value – whether the co-product is tar from oil refining or DDGS or corn-oil from ethanol, each is “energy” – each can be converted to a BTU value.
You and Patzek & Pimentel want to include all the energy returned when talking about oil, but want to conveniently exclude a large portion of the energy returned when talking about ethanol.
Patzek and Pimentel go a step further in their cooking of the books – they resort to such blatant hypocrisy as excluding the considerable energy required to covert soy beans into soy meal animal feed when comparing the value of DDGS animal feed against soy meal.
There is a reason that virtually EVERY other study, report, analysis etc. on the subject is different that Patzek & Pimentel. Not just a little different, as in a disagreement about details, but massively different – on orders of magnitude different. Almost the entirety of research goes dramatically against them and their findings. And all of those entities, institutions, scientists, engineers and the like HAVE reviewed P & P’s work – which has existed since the 90’s and thoroughly shown the many errors and omissions it contains.
The simple irrefutable facts are that production of ethanol from corn has a positive net energy balance. And the co-products of the ethanol process have a significant economic and “energy” value.
The waste can be – and is being – burned to power ethanol production (and is also returning excess electricity that can be sold).
The DDGS IS being used as high value animal feed directly replacing appx 1/3 of the corn used to produce ethanol, but effectively, because of its higher quality, replacing appx 38% of the corn used to produce ethanol.
Other co-products, corn meal, corn gluten and corn oil are also all usable and useful products.
And last – just as with oil – the refined product – ethanol – can, and is, being used to create more – as the energy source to create more energy.
The 2012 US corn harvest is projected at 14.5 billion bushels for 2012. Despite a below expected crop the 2011 corn surplus was more than 1.1 billion bushels.
For 2012 the expected corn use for ethanol is appx. 5 billion bushels … from that we will get:
-14 billion gals ethanol
PLUS:
-87.5 billion lbs DDGS
(equal to 1.96 billion bushels, of corn – or 39% of corn used for feed in the US)
-16.5 billion lbs corn meal
-7,5 billion lbs corn oil
-enough waste product to power the majority of ethanol production
Yep Poptech, those co-products are simply worthless. The 1.96 billion bushels of DDGS alone represents 39% of the total corn used for ethanol in the US, and 11% of the entire US corn crop.
It is enough corn use freed up to produce another 5.5 billion gals of ethanol.
Nope – no value to those co-products … none at all….. not!
Along the way ethanol contributed $43+billion to the economy in just operating and R&D spending. Directly supported 90,000+ jobs, indirectly supported a similar number more, and partially supported over 400,000 jobs. And reduced our crude oil imports by 13%
Nope – no value there either.
The information I saw noted the current US strategic reserves have a capacity of appx 727 million gals but can only withdraw at a max daily rate of 4.4 million gals per day. As I understand it the “strategic reserves” are in salt dome caverns along the Gulf of Mexico – and as such you’d be correct – they are large containers of liquid.
I understand the difference in extraction rates between pumping a reservoir (which is still constricted to a max daily rate) and producing from wells.
Every well produces a finite amount per day as well. Don’t know why we couldn’t simply secure well-head production equivalent to what our perceived needs are.
My comment was a general question. About why couldn’t we – for at least some portion of out strategic reserves, simply secure wellhead production capacity thus saving expense of producing, transporting and storing the oil.
The one advantage of storing is that it is also a significant financial investment with usually pretty good return. I believe I read the total investment in the Strategic Reserves was about $22 billion – with appx $17 billion for purchase of the oil. At $100 a barrel, that 727 million bbls is worth almost $73 billion today
It only gets better,
Study of the Effects of Intermediate Ethanol-Blended Gasoline Fuels (E20, E15) on Engine Durability (PDF) (FEV, March 27, 2012)
…for feed.
Not in the energy content of Ethanol or in the energy used to make Ethanol.
Yes it helps free up corn acreage for additional ethanol production but it does not contribute to Ethanol’s EROI as the existence of DDG at the end of the refining process does not contribute to the energy content of the produced Ethanol nor does it reduce the energy needed to produce additional Ethanol.
Source?
Source?
Source?
So how is misrepresenting my argument “arguing against my own position”?
No we do not, we want to accurately reflect the actual EROI of producing Ethanol.
Which has nothing to do with the EROI of producing Ethanol.
The handful of actual peer-reviewed studies you presented have all been refuted by Pimentel and Patzek.
DDG is effectively worthless in relation to Ethanol’s EROI.
This is a fraction of the jobs destroyed in other parts of the economy due to the market distortions created by the government with the U.S. Ethanol industry. If it was such a benefit to the economy it would not need the government welfare and mandates to create an artificial demand for an inferior fuel.
Briggs and Stratton Warns Consumers New Ethanol e-15 Will Harm Small Engines (Briggs and Stratton, October 25, 2010)
What would they know, they only manufacture the engines?
The “source” for my comments was your link – as I noted in my comments above:
Now you’re simply making stuff up out of thin air:
Please privude support for this specious claim.