Guest essay by Phil Hutchings
Coming back to live in Brisbane after a couple of years away, I was staggered to find the Queensland Government is running TV advertisements to promote the use of E10 (petrol blended with 10% ethanol).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMbGrLZDijI
And, to be fair, when your state is one of the world’s biggest coal and gas exporters, it’s hard to present yourself as eco-friendly in today’s GHG-phobic world.
But promoting ethanol in fuel?
Fifteen years ago, I worked on the (then) abortive financing for a sorghum-to-ethanol plant in Queensland’s Darling Downs. That plant was built subsequently. It has struggled, with lack of demand for ethanol. It was close to closure in 2015.
But, hey, the clean green Queensland Government has ridden to the rescue, seeking to burnish its environmental credentials. Hence – a tax-payer advertising campaign. Advertising giant Ogilvy Brisbane got the gig to produce the TV ads and place saturation billboard coverage in every suburb. The campaign cleverly focuses on whether your “car is E10 ok”.
It stays away from directly suggesting E10 is better environmentally.
Just as well. Here are some uncomfortable facts about ethanol, which we don’t talk about:
Ethanol has much lower calorific value than petrol. In fact, a litre of ethanol has only 2/3 the energy value of unleaded petrol.
Hence, with E10 fuel (10% ethanol, 90% petrol), your fuel consumption and running costs will increase by 4%.
Production of ethanol from sugar cane or sorghum (as we do in Queensland) itself produces CO2. During ethanol fermentation, glucose and other sugars are converted into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Simple chemistry:
C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH+ 2 CO2
So, CO2 is released both in the use and manufacture of E10.
And our Federal Government helps too, leaving ethanol with significantly reduced excise rates. Currently, ethanol gets a $0.26 litre subsidy from the Feds compared with petrol. For comparison, you can import refined petrol into Australia from Singapore for about $0.55 per litre today (pre-tax and excise).
So, ethanol is getting a close to 50% subsidy.
I can’t find any scholarly articles that truly look at whether ethanol is “environmentally better” than fossil fuels.
But hey, like they say on TV, it’s “a renewable energy sources and produced right here in Queensland”. Must be good, right?
A year or so ago the CarsGuide (Aust) did a comparison of the 5 fuels available in OZ (E85, E10, ULP91-92, PULP 95 and 98) …. guess which one gave the better fuel consumption and actually worked out to be cheaper over-all, although it was the dearest to buy?
“But hey, like they say on TV, it’s “a renewable energy sources and produced right here in Queensland”. Must be good, right?”
Obviously a National Party boondoggle.
what? come again.
True, not the National party but Labour trying to appease those constituents – grain and sugar growers who would love a new subsidised market for their produce.
Dressing it up in green clothing is a convenient camouflage for it’s ineffectiveness.
Some Queensland Nationals support it “to help the cane growers”. Others know its bunk.
Last time I saw any calculations, they showed that it takes 3 units of conventional fossil-fuel energy to create 1 unit of of ethanol energy.
Not surprising. cane growers in Queensland have always had their hands in taxpayers pockets, as well as having “sympathetic” “scientists” and politicians at their side. Google cane toad! Say it’s not true! It is true and it is a *REAL* problem!
When oh when are we going to wake up to the fact climate alarmism is one vast confidence trick?
FYI: I think you meant ‘brandish’ not ‘burnish’.
First generation (broadly crop-based) biofuels (liquid fuels derived from foodstuffs such as corn) were described by Jean Ziegler of the UN as a “crime against humanity”. According to his report “…232kg of corn is needed to make 50 litres of bioethanol…. a child could live on that amount of corn for a year”.
Leftist rant, complete with poor child used as “human shield” rhetoric. The truth is, bioethanol was designed because western corn producers couldn’t make a living and stopped production because of too low prices of corn. That is, this amount of corn wouldn’t have be produced in the first place, so no child could live on it.
There is plenty food in the world, trouble is always some kind of political oppression.
That doesn’t make biofuels a good thing ; they are not. But they just have enough shortcomings of their own, without this nonsensical accusation.
I disagree. Look at world food prices through that period.
Definitely *not* better than regular gas. Burning it is more destructive to the atmosphere http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december14/ozone-ethanol-health-121409.html and there is a little climate accounting problem that needs to be addressed (I don’t think it’s been fixed yet) http://www.pfpi.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Searchinger-et-al-2009.pdf (Scroll down page to article by Searchinger)
A 4% increase in running costs? Baloney. I tried E10 fuel in my Mercedes A Class. Fuel consumption increased by more than 20% over using standard fuel. I soon gave up using it.
Phil Hutchings, yes, Ethanol sucks.
And the greens ought to pay for their:
‘Ethanol has much lower calorific value than petrol. In fact, a litre of ethanol has only 2/3 the energy value of unleaded petrol.
Hence, with E10 fuel (10% ethanol, 90% petrol), your fuel consumption and running costs will increase by 4%.
Production of ethanol from sugar cane or sorghum (as we do in Queensland) itself produces CO2. During ethanol fermentation, glucose and other sugars are converted into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Simple chemistry:
C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH+ 2 CO2’
___________________________________
Enough miles down the Via Appia over the weekend to crucifie them greens for national treason.
– touristic national heritage –
After months of silence Jeff Id has a couple of new posts up over at The Air Vent.
The best reason to use E5 or at most E10 is because it is an oxygenate to help burn the fuel better. If smog is a major concern then it makes sense to add ethanol rather than MTBE which pollutes the groundwater. There are other chemicals which could be used instead of ethanol but cost is usually the reason not to.
“Currently, ethanol gets a $0.26 litre subsidy ”
Just checked: NOT SO.
Ethanol is taxed, A$0.026 per liter, lower than regular unleaded petrol fuel, but, still, this is NOT subsidy.
Or would you agree to have the same kind of “subsidy” ? quite easy. Send me any amount of alcohol (preferably 12-y old, any kind) with $0.52 per liter, and I will subsidize you no less than $0.26 per liter ; wouldn’t make you happy ?
Using E10 is supposed to reduce the need for precious petroleum in the manufacture of motor fuel. It has nothing to fi with being green or saving the environment! Now that we are in a worldwide glut of petroleum, I hardly see the need to continue the practice.
Why isn’t there a measure of the “environmental cost of capital” that can be applied to government subsidies? Meaning the amount of the energy consumed in the creation of wealth, that’s then taxed and redistributed…