Guest post by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times.
Last week, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and other lawmakers introduced legislation in the House of Representatives calling for major changes in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The RFS is the reason why most US automobile fuel contains ten percent ethanol. The bill would eliminate the current mandate to blend 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol into fuel by 2022 and ban ethanol fuel content over ten percent. But are ethanol mandates good public policy?
For decades, ethanol vehicle fuel was touted first as a solution to reduce oil imports and second as a solution for global warming. The Energy Tax Act of 1978 established the US “gasohol” industry, providing a subsidy of 40 cents per gallon for ethanol blended with gasoline. President George W. Bush promoted biofuels to reduce dependence on foreign oil, stating, “I set a goal to replace oil from around the world. The best way and the fastest way to do so is to expand the use of ethanol.” Last year the Environmental Protection Agency promoted E15, a fifteen percent ethanol blend for cars and trucks, announcing, “Increased use of renewable fuels in the United States can reduce dependence upon foreign sources of crude oil and foster development of domestic energy sources, while at the same time providing important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.” But it appears that these two reasons for promoting ethanol vehicle fuel have disappeared.
First, US dependence on oil imports is greatly reduced. Net imports of crude oil peaked in 2005, providing 60 percent of US consumption. In 2012, just six years later, oil imports dropped to 40 percent of consumption and continue to fall. Imports from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries declined from half of US imports in 1993 to 40 percent of imports 2012. Canada is now the largest single-nation supplier of crude to the US, rising from 14 percent in 1993 to 28 percent today. Construction of the Keystone pipeline would switch additional imports from OPEC to Canada.
At the same time, US oil production is ramping due to the hydrofracturing revolution. Oil production from shale fields in North Dakota and Texas led to a boost in US oil production by 30 percent since 2006. Industry experts predict almost all US petroleum will come from domestic and Canadian sources by 2030. There’s no longer a need to force ethanol use to reduce oil imports.
Second, recent studies show that the use of ethanol and biodiesel does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For many years, proponents of decarbonization assumed that the burning of biofuels would be “carbon neutral.” The carbon neutral concept assumes that as plants grow they absorb carbon dioxide equal to the amount released when burned. If true, the substitution of ethanol for gasoline would reduce emissions.
But a 2011 opinion from the Science Committee of the European Environment Agency pointed out what it called a “serious accounting error.” The carbon neutral concept does not consider vegetation that would naturally grow on land used for biofuel production. Since biofuels are less efficient than gasoline or diesel fuel, they actually emit more CO2 per mile driven than hydrocarbon fuels, when proper accounting is used for carbon sequestered in natural vegetation. Further, a 2011 study for the National Academy of Sciences found that, “…production of ethanol as fuel to displace gasoline is likely to increase such air pollutants as particulate matter, ozone, and sulfur oxides.”
Ethanol fuel is no bargain. For example, when gasoline is priced at $3.40 per gallon, the 85 percent ethanol blend (E85) is priced at about $3.00 per gallon. But since the energy content of ethanol is only 66 percent that of gasoline, a tank of E85 gets only about 71 percent of the mileage of a tank of pure gasoline. E85 fuel should be priced at $2.41 per gallon for the driver to break even. According to the US Department of Agriculture, ethanol fuel remains about 25 percent more expensive than gasoline.
World biofuel production has increased by a factor of seven over the last ten years. Corn and soybean prices have doubled over the same period. (US Dept. of Energy, Food and Policy Research Institute, 2011)
Mandates for ethanol vehicle fuel are also boosting food prices. Forty percent of the US corn crop is diverted to produce about ten percent of US vehicle fuel. Global corn and soybean prices have doubled over the last ten years in concert with the growth in ethanol and biodiesel production. Anyone who drives a car or eats food is paying higher prices due to ethanol mandates.
But isn’t ethanol fuel sustainable? Not in terms of water consumption. Studies by the Argonne National Laboratory and the Netherlands University of Twente found that ethanol production consumes twice to dozens of times more water than gasoline produced from petroleum, even from Canadian oil sands.
Gallons of water consumed per gallon of fuel produced for gasoline, ethanol, and biodiesel from various sources, including irrigation and fuel production, but not including precipitation. Variations in water consumption for three US regions and global averages for ethanol and biodiesel are primarily due to amount of irrigation used and agricultural yield. (Argonne National Laboratory, 2009; University of Twente, 2009)
Suppose we return to using corn for food and gasoline to power our vehicles?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
the public are outraged over this “windy” excuse:
16 April: UK Daily Mail: Matt Chorley/Sean Poulter: Npower under fire after admitting it has not paid ANY corporation tax in the UK for three years (and blames spending on wind farms)
German-owned firm joins under-fire Amazon, Google and Starbucks
£766million profits could have generated tax bill of £200million
Chief executive says company put wind farm costs against tax liability
Labour MP says public are ‘sick and tired’ of firms not paying ‘fair share’
Mr Massara replied: ‘We have invested £5billion in the last five years building power plants, creating jobs, creating employment and helping to keep the lights on.
‘There is no mystery to it, there is no desire not to pay tax. The fact is you are allowed depreciation for your investments. And we have been the biggest investor by a mile in the renewable offshore business.
‘If we had not made that investment, we would not have the (tax) deductibility that we would be allowed. That is a simple UK accounting rule.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2310001/Npower-admitting-paid-ANY-corporation-tax-UK-years-blames-spending-wind-farms.html
Biofuel is a means for rich people to buy food out of the mouths of starving poor children and feed it to their machines. Biofuel is therefore evil and should be banned forever.
“Is it time to end ethanol vehicle fuel mandates?”
Any day when the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west is a good day to end ethanol fuel mandates.
I agree that the government rules on ethanol should be eliminated but this should go both ways. They should also eliminate the 10% cap. If these rules are eliminated, you will find that the percent of ethanol in your fuel will rise for the simple reason that ethanol is almost always much less expensive than gasoline.
E85 has an octane rating of well over 100, regular gasoline is around 87 so their prices are not directly comparable. If you are going to compare them, it should be at the wholesale level as E85 is a boutique fuel. If you want to compare E85 with no-ethanol gasoline then you should use no-ethanol gasoline which is also a boutique fuel (used in aviation) which sells at a premium.
On the other hand a fair comparison would be the wholesale price of pure ethanol and the wholesale price of pure gasoline. However, ethanol is a boutique fuel and consequently is expensive to ship. It’s currently cheapest in the corn belt of course, at around $1.63 per gallon: http://www.ethanolmarket.com/fuelethanol.html I don’t know where to get the wholesale price of gasoline right now so I don’t know how much cheaper ethanol really is. My point is that they’re using retail prices and are comparing a boutique fuel with one that is sold in every single gas station in the US. That’s extremely unfair and a sign that the article was not written with the intention of being fair.
Also fuel and bargain has little to do with “energy content”. What matters is “miles per gallon”. The engines with the highest performance require higher octane fuels. Ethanol gives these engines the highest performance, much higher than gasoline. The 25 or 30% loss in mpg when running ethanol in a low compression engine (i.e. a standard gasoline engine) will disappear when the engine is run at a higher compression. Work is under way to develop engines that adjust their compression to the fuel. Such engines will give roughly equal mpg with gasoline and ethanol but will give much higher power with ethanol. This is why the racers use ethanol, they tuned their engines for it. See: http://www.igniteracingfuel.com/Partners.html or http://www.americanethanolracing.com/ or google racing+ethanol.
And if you remove the ethanol from gasoline currently sold in the US the result will be that what is left will have considerably lower octane and will destroy many of the engines you burn it in.
Just as with global warming alarmism, “recent studies” does not imply “correct studies” regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Look around you’ll find “recent studies” showing the opposite. Who cares, greenhouse gas emissions are a good thing.
If we passed a law and outlawed the use of foods in biofuels the result would not be a huge decrease in the cost of food. Instead the amount of corn grown would suddenly decrease drastically. The large amount of corn we grow for fuel should be thought of as an important food safety net. Any time food prices rise because of crop failures, we can always divert some biofuel production to food production. This happens automatically when the price of corn exceeds the price of the corresponding amount of ethanol (and byproducts plus costs, etc., of course).
The chart of water consumption for biofuels is ridiculous because it includes irrigation water. Very little corn in the US is irrigated. For example, see: http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropirrigation.html What’s more, there are plenty of dry land food crops (barley for example) that can be used for ethanol in places where irrigation isn’t available. Huge amounts of farmland currently have nothing growing on it. If you follow the link you’ll find that “Region 7” which shows the huge water usage, is responsible for only 23% of US corn production. Furthermore, if they don’t grow corn the farmers are still going to use that irrigation water to grow something. Eliminating the corn crop does not save any water. Irrigation water is very very cheap. Don’t waste our time telling the farmers what to grow and what to do with it. They sell to the highest bidder. If a guy wants to drive a car instead of eat breakfast, let him pay for it.
I’m busy working on my PhD in physics and don’t have time to argue about this. I know it’s pretty much hopeless anyway. Suffice it to say that you can approach the truth by doing your own reasearch. As with global warming, that means you have to read the articles written by *both* sides. Eventually you will learn to recognize garbage.
Rob JM says: April 16, 2013 at 5:39 pm
“There is a good reason for Using E10, it improves combustion efficiency because of the extra oxygen thus reducing production of CO and carbon particulate [ … ]”
Guest blogger, Steve Goreham, says:
“[ … ] the energy content of ethanol is only 66 percent that of gasoline, a tank of E85 gets only about 71 percent of the mileage of a tank of pure gasoline.”
Surely if ethanol has less energy content than gasoline then it is less efficient than gasoline … if you need “combustion efficiency” then there are many off the shelf additive that can be added to gasoline that don’t reduce its energy efficiency which is patently more important to its economic efficiency. 😉
Here’s the irony: the rural heartland isn’t buying the global warming crap, but they are all in on ethanol. That is, when public policy gets conflicted, the pocketbook wins.
In my youth I was always able to buy methanol in a pure form for speed way motorcycling, it was unfortunate that it was not user friendly for mixing with coke cola. Is it possible that an entire new industry using ethanol as a food source could be instigated in the corn belt, I have a feeling that it was once frowned upon by the revenuers to make ethanol.
I have a tendency to like corn ethanol even in the form where it has little or no colour, the four major food groups are very important to many people, comprising caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and the food you chew. This important food group being wasted as fuel when the revenuers could be collecting billions is totally dumb. How much a barrel can this stuff be purchased for, and does anyone know a good shipping agent for export to Australia.?
“Have you seriously looked at this in detail from an engineering practicality standpoint? How big a tank would be needed for the CH4? How the required tank would *subtract* from usable internal ‘carry’/transport space? The gas pressures involved? The *demand* placed on fixed the nat gas delivery (infrastructure) system?
Any of that?”
Nope. I’m just an idea guy. 10 years ago, I read an article in Car and Driver where they tested a dual-fueled Volvo exactly like I described. The problem was NG fueling stations were few and far between and when you DID find one it took forever to fill up, so you were always running on regular gas. But if we could do it at night in our garage, like some do for their EVs…
2 generations ago we launched men into space using equipment with vacuum tubes. You really think we can’t do this??
Climate change is definitely a disaster for mankind.
But it’s not the mild 20th century warming that’s the problem – quite the reverse – it’s government policies intended to solve this non-existent problem. Biofuels is a prime example of this. To take away food from empty stomachs in order to fill empty gas tanks seems to me to be criminal folly and actually obscene.
And, like many other measures, such as wind power, quite likely these policies don’t actually cut emissions. But they do harm the environment, push up the cost of energy, increase the pressure on rainforests, and threaten regular power cuts when the wind doesn’t blow. Far more people are killed by the cold than by the heat.
Yes, I’m sure climate change really is killing people. It kills people because the price of food has been pushed up by biofuels. It kills people because they can’t afford to properly heat their homes as we in the UK experience increasingly cold winters.
As I said, climate change is possibly the greatest threat facing mankind. But who will have the courage and the honesty needed to solve it?
Chris
MattN:
Your entire post at April 16, 2013 at 6:40 pm said
_Jim questioned the engineering practicalities of your suggestion at April 16, 2013 at 8:06 pm.
At April 17, 2013 at 4:03 am you answer him and conclude by asking
But you have not addressed the much more important question; i.e.
Why would anybody want to do this?
Richard
Haus “With that said, corn-ethanol is not the way to go, and we need to get cellulosic ethanol plants pumping out more of this stuff asap.”
Well said Haus. I know the history of cellulose ethanol production, and will not repeat here. Let me just say that the only production plant for cellulose ethanol production is now under consruction by Poet/DSM, and production should start in 2014. This plant is being built with private money and it is claimed will be financially viable if the wholesale price of gas is >$2 per gallon; the price is now just under $3 per gallon.
Is there a future for cellulose ethanol? We dont know. If it is successful, it will be because the money put up to build the current production plant came partially from profits made producing corn ethanol. But from what I have read, it is likely that the Poet/DSM plant will be a financial success. And we have Shell, using Iogen technology, waiting in the wings.
One can argue about the finer points of ethanol til the cows come home. Government interference into the marketplace is never a good idea, and runs counter to our Constitution. The ends, whether real or imagined don’t justify the means. If I don’t want to buy ethanol, I shouldn’t have to, nor should I have to subsidize it. Remove the mandate and the subsidy and ethanol as an additive vaporizes, like a bad dream.
Stop the ethanol subsidy today. It was a bad idea when it started and it’s still a bad idea. The main reason for its existence is to buy votes with taxpayer money. It’s also time to stop shaming people for burning gasoline in their vehicles. I’m 100% in favor of clean burning, highly efficient gasoline and diesel powered vehicles.
Carl Brannen says:
April 17, 2013 at 12:34 am
I’m busy working on my PhD in physics and don’t have time to argue about this. I know it’s pretty much hopeless anyway. Suffice it to say that you can approach the truth by doing your own reasearch. As with global warming, that means you have to read the articles written by *both* sides. Eventually you will learn to recognize garbage.
It is interesting that you are strongly in support of use of food crops for fuel. Your in depth PhD level research obviously covered the issues of existing famine in the world. So you are aware that currently, a child dies every 5 seconds from lack of food – but you feel despite alternative fuels being available, that crop plants should be used for fuel instead of feeding the starving. As you say if farmers were not growing ethanol corn they would be growing some other food crop – well precisely Einstein – and perhaps less people would be dying of hunger or in food riots.
The bill would eliminate the current mandate to blend 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol into fuel by 2022 and ban ethanol fuel content over ten percent. But are ethanol mandates good public policy?
In a word, “No”.
Sadly, this article is just more of the same ignorance, wives tales, half truths and outright lies perpetrated about ethanol, that arise every time this topic comes up here. I, and others, have refuted and rebutted them with detailed, documented, fully sourced rebuttal every time.
For a start the author’s claim regarding the costs, energy and “value” of ethanol do not reflect the real world:
Lets review a real world situation – mine – which I have often written about here. Lets work thru the facts that the author glossed over in his rush to condemn.
Per the ENERGY.gov “Fuel Comparison Chart” straight gasoline has 124,340 BTU per gallon. Straight ethanol – “E100” – has 84,530 BTU per gallon, or 32.02% less BTU per gallon that gasoline. Other sources show straight gasoline at appx. 114,000 BTU/gal, and E100 at 76,100 BTU/gal, or 33.25% less BTU per gallon.
We need to compare current gasoline sold at the pump – E10 blends – with E85, not “gasoline” to “ethanol”. It is a simple calculation to determine from the above information.
E85 thus has 27.2% less energy content than standard pump blend “regular” E10 gasoline
E85 ethanol vs E10 gas prices nationally per AAA are $3.093 and $3.522 respectively, or a 12.2% difference. E85prices.com shows a national average of $3.12 for E85 vs $3.63 for E10, or 14% less for E85.
I drive a 2003 Tahoe Flex fuel vehicle with 90,000 miles on it. I have used E85 when available and priced competitively, since new. With E85’s 110 octane vs E10’s 87 or so octane, my truck has slightly more power and runs smoother on E85.
Over my 90,000+ mile history I currently average 14.8 mpg on E10 and 12.4 mpg on E85, a difference of 16.8%.
This is less than the difference in BTU’s between E85 and E10, however, comparing BTU’s tells us little but generalities. Flex fuel vehicles, of which there are approaching 10 million on the road, (and as I understand it many vehicles with computerized fuel injection, flex or not) have ECU’s which can adjust for, and take advantage of, the higher octane of E85. Which is why I get better real world efficiency than the straight BTU difference implies.
I have E85 readily available in my area. A local station has E85 at $2.989 and E10 at $3.529 – a difference of 15.1%. Using 14.8 and 12.4 mpg for E10 and E85 respectively that puts my cost per mile – the only true measure of efficiency – at $0.236 cents per mile for E10 and $0.241 cents per mile for E85 – nearly identical.
Using the typical 10,000 miles per year, my annual fuel costs are $2,361 for E10 and $2,410 for E85. It costs me a total difference of just $49 a year, or $4 a month, between E85 and E10 use.
The author claims “a tank of E85 gets only about 71 percent of the mileage of a tank of pure gasoline.” My calculations and real world experience above show his claim to be false. In the real world using E85, I get 83.2% of the mileage of a tank of gasoline, while paying 84.9% of the price of E10.
This is an email from an IndyCar engine builder friend. IndyCars have run methanol in past, and ethanol for several years. His comment almost directly confirms my real world experience:
There are a myriad of other serious problems with this article, which I’ll address when I have time. But one is particularly egregious and must be mentioned. It goes straight to the credibility of the author and the article.
The author references the Argonne paper re: water use in the production of ethanol compared to other fossil fuels water use. And makes the claim that ethanol production uses huge amounts of water to produce each gallon, compared to drilling for and processing crude oil into gasoline.
He even presents the obligatory scary graphic to allegedly prove his claim, with bright red bars showing the huge amounts of water required to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn. The worst of the warmist’s would be proud of this graphic for its sheer audacity in presenting this outright rubbish. It is, in true CAGW scare mongering style, gigantically misleading and out right false.
This chart leads the reader to believe ethanol in the US requires 324 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol produced, while gasoline – including crude oil production and refining uses only 6 to 7 gals of water per gallon of gas produced.
A simple read of the paper itself puts the outright lie to this silly and false claim.
Table 5 on page 34 (PDF page 48) of the Argonne paper shows the conclusions of the section regarding water used for corn based ethanol. Taking the table at face value, and ignoring the significant problem with the authors allocating irrigation water to ethanol costs, which I’ll come back to, we can find the real conclusions and extremely important CONTEXT to show these ethanol water use claims to be simply false – and worse.
We find that they reported on the 3 main individual corn growing regions in the US – USDA regions 5, 6 and 7. To be fair the graph does show these 3 regions but absent both critical context and accuracy. The takeaway for the average reader from that graph, and the authors comments, is using corn for ethanol takes 324 gals or water per gal, while gas takes 6 or 7 gals.
This is 100% false.
First – the “324 gallons” bar on the graph ONLY applies to USDA corn growing region 7. Region 7 comprises just 23% of the US corn production, but is an area with minimal rainfall highly dependent on irrigation to grow the crop – the high plains region of the US.
Regions 5 and 6 comprise fully 65% – nearly 2/3rds of the total US corn production. And they use a comparatively very tiny amount of water for growing corn for ethanol production.
Reading Table 5 further however, we find that those big numbers on ethanol water use in the uber scary graphic Mr. Goreham posts are not even remotely accurate. Table 5 informs us that the real net total water use for Area 7 was 160 gallons per gallon of ethanol – not 324 as the graphic claims.
A closer inspection shows whoever created the graphic completely cooked the books – not once but twice – in creating the graphic for Area 7.
The Argonne paper’s Table 5 shows area’s 5 and 6 water total net use at 11 and 17 gallons of total water usage per gal of ethanol respectively. The graphic accurately reports these numbers for USDA areas 5 and 6. For area 7 not only does it report a different line from Table 5 – the gross irrigation groundwater used (as opposed to the net total water from all sources as noted for area 5 and 6), but it also inflates that number from the 224 shown in Table 5 to 324 gallons.
This graphic was by all appearances created by Mr. Goreham. I do not see it in either the Argonne or the Twente paper he referenced.
Despite these egregious falsifications – they are far more than errors – we haven’t even come close to touching upon the important errors yet.
Reading further in Table 5 we find a far more important number – the actual water used in corn ethanol production. Which is less than 3 gallons per gallon of ethanol produced – from the paper:
But even that number is still highly misleading.
Reading further, at the bottom of page 29, we find this authors footnote:
The corn ethanol production process creates a significant quantity of high quality distillers dried gran solids animal feed (along with various other valuable co-products). The Argonne authors admit this and allocate 33% of the total water usage for growing the corn towards DDGS co-products, thus reducing the share of that water use attributed to ethanol production.
Despite the acknowledgement of the issue, they do NOT credit any part of the processing water used to refine the corn into ethanol.
Had they allocated the same 33% of the ethanol production water use to DDGS co-products – the actual water use to produce ethanol would be reduced to 1.98 gallons per gallon of ethanol.
But there is even more yet …
Although the authors note recycling and re-use of water in the ethanol refining process in the paper and very briefly in the conclusions:
….they make no allowance for recycling and or re-use of the water used to produce the ethanol in their calculations. Many, perhaps most, plants today recycle and re-use water repeatedly for the production process. And when they are done they are required to treat the remaining effluent before discharging it back into the environment from which it came.
On the other hand they exert considerable time and effort on describing and justifying the extensive use of recycled well production water for oil extraction, thus reducing the reported total water usage for producing crude oil and then refining gasoline. And on page 61 the authors talk in some detail about recycling refinery production water as well, while ignoring the same regarding ethanol.
Further down page 61 we get the real numbers for water use to produce the crude oil and refine a gallon of gasoline:
1.98 gallons of water (after co-product allocation of 33% – and completely ignoring recycling and re-use) to process corn into one gallon of ethanol. Versus 1.53 gallons of water to refine crude oil into 1 gallon of gasoline.
Virtually identical. Not the massive difference Mr. Goreham claims in his article.
In true late nite TV fashion however … ‘But Wait! There’s More!‘ … we still aren’t done with this water topic even yet.
The Argonne authors break the process of turning both crude oil and corn into fuel, into two parts. Producing the feedstock and processing the feedstock into fuel.
In the case of crude oil to gasoline, the production stage is drilling for and extracting the crude oil. In the ethanol side it is growing the corn.
Crude oil has one use – producing oil based products. Drilling and production of crude oil has no other purpose than creating fuels and similar oil based products. As such the drilling and production is integral to the end product. If you aren’t producing some kind of fuel or oil based product you would not drill and produce the crude oil.
In the case of corn however, their are multiple other uses for the feedstock. Corn’s primary uses are food and feed, which comprise the majority of corn production. Put simply the same corn would be grown and harvested regardless of its use for ethanol. Growing corn is thus independent of and not directly integrated with processing into ethanol. If not used for ethanol it will still be grown and used for food or feed.
Thus the water used to produce the corn will be used – in exactly the same amounts and fashion – regardless of whether corn is used for ethanol. As such the water used to grow the corn cannot and should not be allocated to the processing of ethanol as that water would be used to produce the corn regardless of the use. In other words no water is saved by not using corn for ethanol, becasue the corn will be used regardless.
The real conclusion here, as opposed to the author of this article’s claims, is that the processing of the feed-stocks – crude oil or corn, into gas and ethanol – shows the two almost directly comparable … 1.53 gallons of water per gallon of gas and 1.98 gallons of water per gallons of finished product of each. And this after giving gasoline the benefit of recycling, reuse, co-generation and the like, and withholding those same benefits to the ethanol side.
Just like almost every attack on ethanol, this article is seriously flawed and in many parts outright false.
And, very much like the CAGW proponents, it seems accuracy or truthfulness has little bearing on the ability to get published.
But don’t believe me. Follow my notes, read the paper – and see and learn for yourself.
Folks who have a legitimate position and claim rarely have to cook the books, spin the story out of context, place two or three “thumbs on the scale” or, by appearances here, outright lie, to prove their claims….
Yes that is a harsh statement. But it is in my opinion appropriate here. It is no different than the review or treatment we would give a similarly poorly done global warming paper or proponent making the same type sloppy and outright false claims.
A respected former UK politician (long since deceased) by the name of Ernest Benn, had this to say:
‘Politics is the art of looking for trouble; finding it everywhere; diagnosing it wrongly and applying unsuitable remedies..’
Says it all, really..
Ah, Russel – you probably should do a little research before you keep repeatin’ that one. Since the ethanol subsidy was ended some time back.
I challenge those who repeatedly make the claim, to provide proof that people are “going hungry” because of corn used for ethanol.
Provide ANY credible, supportable,documented evidence that corn being used in the US for ethanol has any appreciable affect on food supplies for anyone, anywhere.
So.. it’s uneconomical, unethical, unsafe, un-polluting, un-carbonweatherising and to top it all off … sob, unsustainable.
Another green dream crashes and burns fiercely from a total lack of hindsight, foresight and insight mixed with corpulent amounts of pork, bullshit and unicorn dust.
/realism
sarc/ When will they ever learn? /sarc
I’ve mentioned this before on Ethanol topics:
Ethanol, an oxygenate, is extremely useful to engines that are tuned for it. My turbo cars LOVE Ethanol. I had my last one running around 45 MPG on the highway, and that was a 12 second car. But not everyone has a turbo, not everyone WANTS a turbo, and not everyone would understand the importance of oil changes on a turbo car…
I don’t want to see Ethanol banned or any similar overreaction… I just want to see the MANDATES removed. Some of us will still want Ethanol. I do think the claims of engine and fuel system damage are a bit exaggerated unless you’re still driving a car that also needs lead. Long before mandates Husky oil was pushing “Mother Nature’s Gasoline”, an E10 made from grain. The green spin was stupid, of course, but we turbo car owners loved it. It’s an almost result-free octane booster… and that means that an engine that is built and tuned for it will be able to get better efficiency.
Simply dumping ANY chemical into gasoline will kill the efficiency of cars that were designed and built for gasoline. And I think it’s fair to assume that automakers aren’t idiots. Late model vehicles are tuned for E10 at least, and since the writing is on the wall, most vehicles will adapt pretty well to increased Ethanol content.
Now, imagine the uproar in a few years when you can’t GET E10 and the current crop of cars run poorly on pure gasoline…
A. Scott:
re your post at April 17, 2013 at 5:41 am.
I write to provide a correction. I am not commenting on American private grief.
The ethanol is mandated as an additive to vehicle fuel in the US. Any such mandate is a subsidy because it provides market share irrespective of all other considerations. Hence, the additive does have a subsidy although – as you say – its direct monetary subsidy may have been removed.
If anybody fails to understand that such a mandate is a subsidy, then I offer them this analogy in hope that it will aid comprehension.
House bricks do not contain straw. A mandate that all house bricks must contain a proportion of straw increases demand for straw and ensures a new market for straw which requires no competition by straw. The increased demand increases prices and the mandate ensures the more-expensive straw can be sold. The high price and large markets each increase profits from sale of straw, and the increased profits are a subsidy provided to the sellers of straw. The subsidy is financed by the purchasers of the bricks. And the straw additive may affect the quality of the bricks.
Is there any possible justification for such a subsidy for straw? If so, then a direct State Benefit to the farmers who provide the straw would be a more efficient subsidy for their farming.
Richard
A. Scott says:
April 17, 2013 at 5:47 am
I challenge those who repeatedly make the claim, to provide proof that people are “going hungry” because of corn used for ethanol.
Provide ANY credible, supportable,documented evidence that corn being used in the US for ethanol has any appreciable affect on food supplies for anyone, anywhere.
Well you stated it yourself.
If the corn is used for ethanol then it is not being used for food and therefore it can have no effect on food supplies.
What you should really be asking is what would food prices be worldwide if instead of growing corn for ethanol other food crops had been grown. The USA is currently IMPORTING corn from Brazil, cattle were being killed in the drought areas due to the cost of feed – that could perhaps have been shipped in cheaper from non-drought areas of the US but it was being put into vehicle tanks instead. Expect the cost of beef to rise quite dramatically.
Richard … a mandate may be a form of subsidy, – however not in the traditional sense. That people are still seemingly unaware that the true subsidies are long gone is a troubling situation.
The ethanol mandate was to replace a worse oxygenate – MBTE. The ethanol mandate also helped/helps insure demand for the product in its early stages. It is no different than thousands of other situations where assistance is provided to get something established, by supporting it early on.
Since the energy return is lousy corn ethanol is just a liquid fuel derived from a complicated process using natural gas. There is nothing green about it. It transforms natural gas into a liquid fuel which could be accomplished directly with a much less complex process with out wasting farmland and fertilizer. What the greens don’t understand is that the free market will always use energy more efficiently and most like produce less carbon carbon than their government programs. Only economic shrinkage will actually reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. Politicians like Obama try to kill the economy with one hand while trying to stimulate it the other. The result is good for government and the recipients of the stimulus, but bad for everybody else. By miscalulating inflation they try to create the illusion of growth while the economy is actually shrinking.Obama’s plan to fix the budget and Social Security is to fudge the CPI even more. Not only should the ethanol mandates be eliminated most of the government should be eliminated to free up resources for the rest of the economy.