From the department of “told you so” comes this about-face on what was supposed to be an environmental solution. It seems the cure is worse than the disease:
“CORYDON, Iowa — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America’s push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.”
“Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.”
Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo report for the Associated Press November 12, 2013.
h/t to reader Michael J. Bentley
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Here’s the surprising headline and money quote:
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.
Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.
The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America’s demand for it.
“They’re raping the land,” said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.
UPDATE: here is the video report from AP (h/t _Jim)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX2f4JnfS74
In related news:
EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage
November 15
By Sean Cockerham
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Friday proposed the first-ever reduction in the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply, signaling retreat from the Renewable Fuel Standard passed by Congress in 2007.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into gasoline and diesel next year, down from 16.55 billion gallons this year. Most of it is corn-based ethanol.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/15/4624584/epa-orders-cut-in-ethanol-in-gasoline.html#storylink=cpy
Related articles
- Making corn-based ethanol badly hurting environment: AP (cbsnews.com)
- Ethanol criticized as ‘ecological disaster’ (utsandiego.com)
- Obama’s Green Power … Raping The Land (cryandhowl.com)
- EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage (kansascity.com)
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Ethanol is a lousy automotive fuel. We learned that in the 1970s, but apparently our memories are short. Can we please stop trading food for oil now???
Ethanol is an EXCELLENT motor fuel. OK, so its enthalpy is a bit lower than gasoline. But it still has one of the highest specific energy content level amongst the major players. Gasoline is better, and diesel is better yet, but alky is still orders of magnitude better than, say, electric batteries. It has both an inherently high octane rating, and provides natural charge cooling that cools the combustion chamber when it evaporates. This both allows much higher compression ratios and more aggressive spark curves (both of which significantly enhance thermal efficiency), it also reduces the amount of waste heat that is transferred into the coolant, also by definition enhancing thermal efficiency — more of the heat stays in the expanding gasses during the expansion stroke. Because of this, the increase in volumetric fuel consumption is proportionately much less than the decrease in enthalpy of the fuel. You get more mechanical power out for a given enthalpy flow, and flex-fuel engines indeed make more power on E85 than on gasoline. There are downsides. It doesn’t lubricate your valves, injectors, piston rings, etc. as well as gasoline does, and you need stainless steel or other corrosion resistant materials in your fuel system. And I have heard of the lower general operating temperatures in the engine causing water to not boil out of the lubricating oil as readily as typical, meaning you need to stay on top of your oil changes. But the performance advantages still make its use quite compelling, to me at least.
I don’t want to force anybody to use ethanol for fuel – burn cow manure in your car for all I care. I just wish it were more readily available for me to use. It would make putting a supercharger on my old muscle car a no-brainer.
Gary Hladik says:
“To be fair, I vaguely recall claims in earlier WUWT discussions that an engine built/adjusted for ethanol can get better mileage on (pure?) ethanol than on gasoline. Something about higher compression, perhaps? So if all grants/subsidies/mandates for ethanol fuel are ended, maybe a small niche market would remain?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_ratio.
It is my understanding from the Wikipedia article above that engines with higher compression ratios put out more horsepower for a given amount of fuel rather than providing better fuel economy. I subscribed to Car & Driver and Motor Trend for a number of years. High performance cars that they reviewed would sometimes have high compression engines that put out more horsepower than their lower compression counterparts. Didn’t appear to do anything for fuel economy.
Higher compression engines make more power for a given displacement because of improved thermal efficiency. 4-stroke spark ignited engines operate thermodynamically through the Otto cycle. The PV diagram of the Otto cycle can be approximated by isentropic compression, followed by a constant volume addition of heat, followed by an isentropic expansion, followed by an constant volume rejection of heat. This forms a loop. The approximated thermal efficiency (ratio of mechanical work done to the amount of heat energy supplied) is the area of this loop divided by the area formed if the isentropic compression cycle were purely a line of zero pressure. A higher compression ratio (of actually a higher expansion ration, but in Otto cycle engines, the two are mechanically identical) results in more of the heat energy (enthalpy) going into mechanical work, and less is thrown away aw waste heat in the exhaust or coolant. This is because the hot gas is allowed to expand down further towards ambient pressure and temperature. The biggest limiting factor as to how high you can go with the compression ratio (or how much boost to use with a supercharged engine, for that matter) is the octane of the fuel. Lower octane fuels will “detonate” or “auto ignite” due to the higher temperatures associated with high compression, and hence will produce a destructive “ping” rather than a controlled combustion event, and will tear the engine apart.
Bottom line: When you raise compression ratio, you have two choices: Burn the same amount of fuel and make more power, or make the same amount of power and burn less fuel. It is a design trade-off decision as to how to balance these two. The choice is usually made to make more power, since the efficiency increase of the use of 93 vs. 87 octane gas is typically proportionally much less than the price increase of 93 vs. 87 octane gas, but motorheads will pay for power. But E85 is 105 octane! “Flex Fuel” engines have to run on either, so they are not able to really take advantage of this high octane — they have to keep the compression ratio low enough to run reliably on 87 octane regular gasoline. What they do that is helpful, is to be able to automatically advance the spark timing to the point of incipient detonation, which behaves to an extent like increasing the compression ratio. In Flex-Fuel engines running on E85, there is also less waste heat, since the evaporating alky cools the combustion chamber, and hence transfers less heat into the coolant. But if an engine could be dedicated to run on E85 only, the compression ratio could be bumped up a lot. You can’t really do this, though, if you can’t rely on being able to buy the fuel as you travel around the country.
One other thing: In my old Buick, my intent is to MAKE MORE POWER!
Why don’t you great business guys, who have the talking part done, get contracts to divert some of the corn that’s used for ethanol and use it to make food to sell to starving Africans. Sounds like a slam dunk.
Good luck with the financing.
philincalifornia says (November 17, 2013 at 8:33 pm): “Why don’t you great business guys, who have the talking part done, get contracts to divert some of the corn that’s used for ethanol and use it to make food to sell to starving Africans. Sounds like a slam dunk.
Good luck with the financing.”
Clearly phil hasn’t been paying attention. If one really wants to finance an otherwise money-losing venture, the best plan is to
1) Suck up to Obama
2) Get taxpayer financing and/or government mandates for one of his pet “green” projects
You know, like solar panels (Solyndra), or cellulosic ethanol (like the Emmetsburg, Iowa plant). Now if phil really wants to get corn to Africa–and make a profit–I’d suggest his sales pitch includes shipping it in domestically produced solar panels. 🙂
….. except you forgot that this all started during the Bush administration.
… and the subsidies expired during the Obama administration.
Whether you like it or not
philincalifornia says (November 17, 2013 at 9:15 pm): “….. except you forgot that this all started during the Bush administration.”
Obama’s in power now, so that’s where to go for the goodies. Obama’s the guy who plans to decarbonize our economy, with or without Congress. I don’t see him trying to undo the bipartisan ethanol mandate, do you? BTW, on June 21, 2007 Obama voted “Yea” on the Energy Act of 2007, which established the ethanol mandate
http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/9490/barack-obama-ii/?p=3
although strangely he didn’t vote at all on the final version in December (probably too busy campaigning).
But I blame Bush and the idiot Republicans who voted for the Energy Act of 2007 as much as I blame Obama and the Democrats. The real culprit isn’t a particular politician or political party, it’s giving politicians the power to run our lives…because they will.
My 2014 Suburban is a “Flex Fuel” vehicle, yet it says right on the sticker that it gets 30% less MGP on E85 than on Gasoline. My experience, since I can get pure gasoline at certain stations, basically bears that out.
Pure gas only costs about 15% more, though I am forced to buy premium, so I buy it. I wish I could get pure regular gasoline, I am sure I would save even more.
Your flex fuel vehicle does not require premium fuel – you might as well throw money out the window if indeed you are buying premium, let alone ethanol free premium. It is designed for E10, E15, or E85 and runs just fine on all of them. In the midwest, becasue there are a decent number of stations with E85 the price differential is currently $2.15 E85 and $3.09 E10 – which make E85 30.4% cheaper than E10.
I have 97,000 miles on a 2003 Tahoe that has NEVER gotten worse than about 18% less MPG using E85 – which means I come out significantly ahead. I strongly doubt your 2014 flex fuel vehicle gets 30% lower mileage on E85 than E10 – maybe if you manage to find and use straght gas with no ethanol blend it might be possible.
In areas with poor distribution the sellers of E85 tend to have higher costs, and they tend to price gouge – which is a big reason to insuire distribution is available.
It is no longer the 70’s. So you would probably be well served to update your knowledge – educate yourself on the facts today. Simply repeating unsupported and unsupportable claims does not make them so.
By all means though please share with us your evidence we are trading food for – I suspect you mean “fuel” – not “oil”… or any evidence to support you claim about how lousy ethanol is as a fuel.
“Big Don says:
November 17, 2013 at 7:03 pm”
The main reason for high octane in fuel (E85 105 Research Octane Number. We used to get regular leaded “5 star” petrol in the UK, that was 101 RON) in small capacity (2.5L or less), high compression ratio (CR 8.5:1 and above) engines is to prevent detonation. If E85 was at 87 RON, you would not be able to use it effectively, down on power, detonation and other issues. If you had a high capacity engine (3.5L or more) with a low CR (~7.5:1), you’d be OK. Anything petrol engine with a turbo, forget it, the fuel would detonate. If we look at Mazda’s “SkyActiv” engines, petrol AND diesel engines have a CR of 16:1, no turbo. The most impoartant thing with these engines is improved engine ECU mapping as well as significantly improved gas flowing, propperly flowed branched 4 into 1 exhaust manifolds and freer flowing exhaust.
In a petrol engine, more air = more power, hense turbos, and/or gas flowing, for volumetric efficiency.
I can tell you now that my 2003 Subaru, with an ECU that will “re-map” itself, within stored parameters, for the fuel being used, runs terribly on E10 94 RON available here in Australia. I stick to 95 (Regular) or 98 (Super V) RON ULP.
E85 is 105 ~ 104 RON, not 87.
“Big Don says:
November 18, 2013 at 5:26 am”
I said “IF” E85 was at 87 RON, there would be problems. The reason why you do not get detonation, in usual conditions, is becuase it’s rated at 105 RON. But then you will still need an engine and an ECU fuel map mapped to handle that, and not all ECU’s can “learn” from the fuel they burn.
Anthony,
Must be said again—very disappointed in this thread. You continue to promote media pieces and allow commentary that are obviously false pertaining to corn production, consumption and conversion.
I hold a great admiration for you, JC, McIntyre, Lindzen, Spencer, and all others in the scientific community that have been steadfast against the tide of CAGW, and more importantly, have been effective at exposing the political/activist connections that have and continue to pervert the science.
Unfortunately, threads such as this does nothing for the necessary debate on the direction of energy policy in the U.S. and continued role, if any, renewable sources will play now, and into the future.
Thank you to A.Scott for bringing facts, experience and perspective to the discussion.
PS. to Commentators: continued reiteration of long since refuted “studies” by Pimental (a entymologist) and Patzek (a geological engineer) in regards to ethanol’s energy balance does not help your argument. P and P have continued to “move the goalposts” very much like our dear friends on the other side of the CAGW debate, to the point where now they include “sunlight” in their equations for the energy budget of ethanol, but neglect to calculate “compression” for the energy budget of petroleum.
REPLY:Thanks for the comment and I think most certainly you should feel free to be as disappointed as you like. If I worried that some articles I posted might disappoint someone or anger someone, WUWT would likely have zero content. You can also be disappointed at Dr. Judith Curry’s, who also is commenting on this story, calling corn ethanol “folly”. I tend to agree with that label. She writes:
JC comments
The unintended consequences associated with corn ethanol makes this a classic case whereby the ‘cure’ is ineffective and worse than the ‘disease’ at which it is targeted. The rationale for corn ethanol was to ‘prime the system’ for cellulosic ethanol that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Wikipedia sums up the issues:
According to Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratory, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process, may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced. According to the National Academy of Sciences, there is no commercially viable bio-refinery in existence to convert lignocellulosic biomass to fuel. Absence of production of cellulosic ethanol in the quantities required by the regulation was the basis of a United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decision announced January 25, 2013 voiding a requirement imposed on car and truck fuel producers in the United States by the Environmental Protection Agency requiring addition of cellulosic biofuels to their products. These issues, along with many other difficult production challenges, lead George Washington University policy researchers to state that “in the short term, [cellulosic] ethanol cannot meet the energy security and environmental goals of a gasoline alternative.”
– Anthony
Pat – Apologies for misunderstanding. To note, all of the factory-built “Flex Fuel” vehicles that I am aware of, which have been available here in North America for some time now, are equipped with feedback engine control systems that calculate the given ethanol content of the blend that happens to be in the tank at the time, and optimize around it. I know of a mass produced, direct-injected 2.4L 4-cyl flex fuel engine that produces about 9 HP more on E85 than it does on 87 RON gasoline. I’m admittedly not sure its numbers on 93 RON petrol – somewhere in-between, I suspect. With E85 in it, the fuel economy drops, but not nearly by the ethanol / gasoline enthalpy ratio. It clearly exhibits greater thermal efficiency on the ethanol. But It could do better if it could be configured to run only on E85, for both power and fuel economy.
As for James D. Schielein’s post, I believe my comments are indeed relevant to what our energy policy ought to be. In my view, E85 makes for a very good motor vehicle fuel, and I feel I need to state as such, and why. I hope people keep open minds when hearing of new processes and technologies that may render it both economically and ecologically viable.
“Big Don says:
November 18, 2013 at 8:48 am”
The issue is fuel management. We can burn many fuels in engines these days. If we take the British Chieftain tank, it can burn margarine if needed! To use the fuel in a modern petrol engine effectively, you need a properly programable ECU, and then stick to that fuel configuration/map for the fuel used. All stanard ECU fuel maps are “poor”, or “average” IMO fro what I have seen, mfg’s err on the side of caution. The mixture can be “leaned” out for power, but you will burn your top end out rather quickly. That’s why for those that want more power opt for an after market, programmed/programmable ECU, with risks. We have E85 (Not sure RON rating) in V8 motor sport in Australia, BUT, ALL engines are the same, the fuel management in the car is tightly controlled and very configurable, unlike road going cars.
@ur momisugly Big Don,
My comment was directed to the AP story and to many of the comments here that continue a false narrative. I apologize for using the “broad brush”.
@ur momisugly Anthony,
Interesting that both you and JC pivot to the overwhelming challenges that face cellulosic ethanol. I have always been uncomfortable with the linking of corn-based ethanol and cellulosic. Although the end-product is indistinguishable from one another, the logistics and processes for agriculture and industry are radically different.
REPLY: Not a pivot, but a point. Corn ethanol a primer for cellulose, still not there, and corn ethanol apparently no net GHG gains. Wake me when we aren’t burning food pointlessly. – Anthony
Who am I going to believe regarding the loss of mileage if I use E15? Some web commenter who obviously benefits from ethanol mandates, or the lying sticker on my new car?
I get pure gasoline at 3.85 a gallon, even though it is premium, and I certainly would buy pure regular if I could, and can get e10 at 3.40. I personally don’t care if the numbers work out dead even, but here in New England, the numbers work in my favor. I like having the extended range of the real gasoline too, BTW.
In the US, the “flex fuel” vehicle is another scam. The automakers get extra CAFE credit for producing those vehicles, regardless of whether or not the fuel is available or whether or not the vehicles use less fossil fuels or produce more or less emissions. The flex fuel vehicle rules allow the auto manufacturers to build big gas-hog trucks and SUVs (you know what I’m talking about–vehicles Americans actually want to buy) and not have to pay fines for not meeting CAFE targets.
Anthony: Cellulosic has been delayed in very large part because of the financial market meltdown and the drastic reduction in miles driven and fuel use that occurred therewith. There are now several commercial cellulosic plants in operation and more under construction.
As to GHG gains – the vast majority of science shows there are significant GHG gains across the spectrum. Ethanol IS cleaner burning and emmissions/GHG’s ARE reduced compared to burning gasoline. The WORST case claim buy the ethanol “deniers” is, as you note, that it is no better than gasoline. The reality is it has not quite met the 20% reduction target, achieving something like 17% – which some use to attack.
And once again, we are NOT “burning food” for fuel. I and others have repeatedly refuted this claim here – with detailed, supported facts. We use FEED corn for ethanol – corn used for animal feed – NOT food. And every bushel of corn supplies 2.8 gals ethanol, along with corn oil, corn meal,
AND every bushel of corn used for ethanol also returns 17lbs of Distillers Dried Grain Solids. DDGS are a high quality high value animal feed. By nutritional value almost 50% of the feed corn used is returned in high value DDGS animal feed as a co-product of ethanol production.
Half of the feed corn used for ethanol production is returned as high quality DDGS animal feed.
Additionally, many corn ethanol plants are running on ethanol and/or on the waste stream – generating electricity.
We regularly hear the claim our use of corn for ethanol is “starving Guatemalan’s.” This claim is simply put – ridiculous, and not remotely based in fact. The opposite in fact is true. First, Guatemalans do not eat feed corn – they eat WHITE corn, as do virtually every other corn consuming group. And we already supply 100% of the WHITE Corn export demand, just as we supply the majority of the worlds feed and other corn needs. The US has provided the majority – as much as 66% over the years – going back to the 1930’s.
In Guatemala, the givernment buys white corn from the US – becasue it is CHEAPER than their own supplies. They use US corn to lower the local market price – to lower the price of this key food stock for locals. Locals grow LITTLE white corn for themselves, becasue they can use the land to grow much more valuable specialty vegetable and fruit crops. White corn is expensive there becasue of that – NOT becasue of the US using feed corn for ethanol.
Including Guatemala, Mexico, and the rest of the world, the US provides more corn than all other corn exporters COMBINED.
And we STILL have enough corn to supply all of OUR needs and to add annually to the US corn reserves.
The AP story, as is completely typical of them, is hugely short on facts and data. And what data they do use is seriously twisted. For example their claim:
Their insinuation is this increase came from the conversions of virgin prairie and conversion of CRP lands. The facts however do not support this claim. Total acres planted ae virtually unchanged over the last 20 years:
1994 323.70
1995 318.29
1996 333.68
1997 332.07
1998 329.97
1999 329.26
2000 328.69
2001 324.58
2002 327.28
2003 325.69
2004 322.32
2005 317.64
2006 315.65
2007 320.37
2008 325.00
2009 319.25
2010 316.70
2011* 315.14
2012* 326.32
2013* 325.60
Avg: 323.86
How about the claimed loss of CRP acreage? CRP acreage always has a significant churn of acres in vs acres out. Farmers banked land in CRP when times were tough becasue it was financially smart at the time. Today both farming rpactices and crop prices have made some of these lands commercially viable again. In particular no-till farming has become prevalent, which greatly reduces the erosion concerns.
The land coming out of CRP and going to crops represents less than 10% of all CRP land. A review of the map of the land coming OUT of CRP compared to a map of corn production areas, shows a major protion of the land removed from CRP is OUTSIDE corn production areas. A very large protion is in northern Montana (I believe wheat production area).
Attack without critical review of the science and facts is what warmists do.That is NOT what I understand to be what we are supposed to be doing here at WUWT.
I expect ethanol should get the same level of critical review of the facts here as global warming claims. If the science and data prove the AP claims that is one thing, but in my experience and research they do not – not remotely.
James D. Schielein … the reason for the link between corn based and cellulosic ethanol is that for ANY ethanol product to be viable there needs to be a demand and distribution system for it.
Corn ethanol provides an interim product. It makes building all those flex fuel vehicles make sense, and is helping create a distribution and supply system.
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The shallowness of my comments aside, when you quote someone it is helpful if you include their name.
I often use “Ctrl-F” to pull up a search box then enter my name to see if someone responded to a comment I made. (Sometimes I do it to see if I made a comment under that post.)
Including their name also allows a reader to check and see the context of the quote. Just a tip.
There’s more than one angle to ethanol.
If it really is that good for engines, why mandate it? Some engines are designed for it, some aren’t. (When “Cash for Clunkers” came out, I kept my clunker.)
If acres weren’t planted in feed corn to feed the ethanol mandate, who says a different food crop wouldn’t be planted? A farmer might even be able to let a field go fallow for a year and recover without fertilizer or herbicides. (I’m not a farmer so I don’t know if they would but I think that’s supposed to be good for the soil.)
If the goal is to reduce GHG and so fight CAGW but the “big picture” shows neither is true, again, why mandate it?
I remember the gas lines back in the Carter years when OPEC had us over a barrel. A temporary mandate might have made sense then. Not now.
A.Scott says (November 18, 2013 at 1:26 pm): “James D. Schielein … the reason for the link between corn based and cellulosic ethanol is that for ANY ethanol product to be viable there needs to be a demand and distribution system for it.”
And if government, at great expense to the consumer, has to create that demand by force, then the product is not viable. Did politicians create demand for the iPhone? Should the government have ordered consumers to buy Edsels in 1958?