Ethano-no-no, Round 2
Farmers, businesses and state officials are investing millions of dollars in ethanol and biofuel plants as renewable energy sources, but a new study says the alternative fuels burn more energy than they produce.
Didn’t I and every logic bound thinker go over this already?
Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.
Lie! Lie! And farm subsidy.
But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent
Damn the facts, it keeps American companies from making money!
It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.
Damn the facts, no more blood for oil.
“Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation’s energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment,”
Dancing my gig over here. And weaping for these guys as they will now be found burned and tortured by ELF or the other moron cult that uses the “saving Earth” excuse to smoke pot every hour on the hour.
The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel.
Damn the facts, I have results to produce.
The ethanol industry claims that using 8 billion gallons of ethanol a year will allow refiners to use 2 billion fewer barrels of oil. The oil industry disputes that, saying the ethanol mandate would have negligible impact on oil imports.
Hold it! Burning 8 billion gallons of one saves 2 billion of the other? Huh????
They say that by BURNING 8 Billion gallons of ETHANOL, it stops 2 Billion gallons of Gasoline from being burned. They burn 4 times the amount of ethanol to stop the use of one quarter the amount of gasoline.
By spending $800 I saved $200. Does that make any flapping sense to anyone?
Ethanol producers dispute Pimentel and Patzek’s findings, saying the data is outdated and doesn’t take into account profits that offset costs
Again what? What profits? The $3 billion that State and Federal Governments pour into the ethanol industry?
Michael Brower, director of community and government relations at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, points to reports by the Energy and Agriculture departments that have shown the ethanol produced delivers at least 60 percent more energy the amount used in production.
So again, we are burning fossil fuel to not burn it. Hello, McFly? Stop with it all already. Ethanol sucks. It will cost Americans millions in damages done to everything it comes in contact with. Like fuel system components in cars, lawnmowers, and gas station in ground holding tanks. It is less efficient than gasoline, and more needs to be burned to equal to power created. We consume fossil fules to make it, and government has had to regulate/mandate ethanol’s use and heavily subcidize the industry.
It is doing nothing. And one of the suggestions by the researchers who got it, say the money should go into alternative fuels liek hydrogen. Not any better. 75% of the hydrogen we have in reserves, comes from natural gas, another fossil fuel that needs to be consumed to produce an alternative energy.
Just stop it already, you all look foolish.
For those interested in the benefits of cleaner-burning E85 and biodiesel in Minnesota, we invite you to visit our website, http://www.cleanairchoice.org and our blog: http://www.alamn.org/media/blogger.html
Or, you can just keep listening to guys like triple a… Your choice.
Robert Moffitt
Communications Director
American Lung Association of Minnesota
Remember its cleaner even though you burn 4 times the ethanol. And it costs more to produce. And it consumes fossil fuels to make. And it damages internal car parts and filling station equipment. It is a corrosive liquid that is highly combustable and dangerous to transport.
That is when you go to ‘their’ blog that is in no way biased either.
Sorry Bob, your policies are damaging to our economy, equipment I own, and are actually harder on the environment than regular old gasoline. Just simply the amount of euipment and parts that will have to routinely replaced due to ethanol coorosion, will take up vast amounts of space in landfills. Or does that not matter to you?
Yes. E85 is a cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline.
Remember, we are talking about E85, not E10. This is not a gasoline additive. This is an alternative to gasoline.
A good car costs more to produce than a bad car. Same can be said of good beer…or good fuel. You get what you pay for. Cleaner-burning fuels that are largely renewable, grown, produced and sold in Minnesota sounds good to me — and to thousands of other Minnesota drivers who have switched to E85 for their flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs).
Damages internal car parts and filling station equipment? Not when E85 is used in an FFV and the E85 station owner installs pumps, etc. according to the detailed guidelines and instructions provided to them.
Corrosive liquid that is highly combustable and dangerous to transport? It’s just simple ethanol, for crying out loud. The same stuff that’s in our scotch, beer and wine. Certainly ethanol is no more dangerous to transport than gasoline. Who says otherwise?
The myth that ethanol fuel (either E85 or the common E10 blend we all use in Minnesota) hurts our cars, lawnmowers, etc. continues to persist, despite all proof to the contrary. Certainly E85 should only be used in vehicles designed to use the fuel, but E10 works fine in today’s motors.
Bottom line: Don’t like ethanol subsidies? Fine. I get your point, but don’t embrace the ‘junk science’ from Pimentel and Patzek, the dynamic duo of suspicious statistics on ethanol. Yes, there is a lot a hype on ethanol. It’s not a perfect fuel (far from it) and there are legitimate concerns on fossil fuels used to produce it (note that ground has been broken on a Little Falls ethanol facility that uses biomass energy for its heat and electricity from scrap wood, using virtually no fossil fuels), but I must return to the point I started with:
E85 is a cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline.
That’s what matters to me, and to the American Lung Association of Minnesota.
You are leaving out that gasoline or diesel is burned to produced ethanol. Net loss. Could you put down the TPs and realize that ethanol is only a farm subsidy? You need to burn more of it, so any gallon to gallon emmissions advantage it has over gasoline is negated by the FACT that more is burned.
And what do you say to its corrosiveness? What about all the damage done to vehicles, gas stations, and transport trucks? What about all the equipment that will end up in a landfill due solely to ethanol? Remember that tanker fire in St. Paul a couple years ago? Truck burned so hot that the fire fighters couldn’t get close enough, and the extra heat mel;ted the highway. It was at the time, said to be worse than a regular gasoline fire.
And for damage. I was religously using non-oxigenated gas in all my small engines and my boat. The station that I could get it from had to discontinue it use. Since then, all of those engines have seen serious problems ranging from poor performance to fuel system failure. They are not designed to have ANY ethanol in them.
I’m not using junk science. I am using personal experience and first hand expert input. Gas station owners, retailers, and wholesalers who have nothing to do with the companies you mention.
In final, gallon per gallon, it may be cleaner if you are correct, but you burn more to equal the same output. People will burn more ethanol to go from point a to point b. That is what needs to be measured. You can’t compare the EPA mileage results on the window stickers to the actual mileage you get from your car.
Ethanol is a fuel designed in a lab, where real world common sense is left out of the equation. If you are only looking for an alternative to gasoline, ethanol is merely a start. If you are looking for an emergency replacement IF AND WHEN we actually do run out of gasoline, fine. But you will never prove to me that it is cleaner since more is consumed to get me around, meaning more exhaust out of my tailpipe, more parts replaced and disposed in landfills, and more energy consumed to produce it than is actually gained from the final product.
Where are you guys getting some of your information ? Gasoline and Diesel are not burned to make ethanol. Nonsense. Some plants use cornstalks or methane gas from the landfill, some have wood firing, amd some have natural gas piped in. But gasoline or diesel fuel, um….no. If you have read Patzel and Pimental’s alledged ’study’ then youhave read a bunch of propaganda. This ’study’ isn’t new, and it isn’t accurate. It is a re-release of the same ‘information’ those guys have been spouting off for years. Who are they anyway ? Well, Pimental is an entomologist for Cornell. Thats right, he is a bug expert. Does that make him knowledgable about about fuel production ? I don’t think so. He also teaches at Cornells new campus, on Qatar. Thats right, the little oil-soaked place. I wonder whose money paid for his bogus study ? Oil maybe ? He releases the same info every six months or so. His latest helper, Tad Patzek, is a consultant for shell oil company. Look these guys up on the net. You wil easily find they have zero credibility, just a couple of oil industry shillls singing what they are paid to sing. I will say this however, the oil industry is spectacularly good at dis-information. E85 is not corrosive, and doesn’t damage engines. You engine DOES have to be setup correctly to use it however. If you can’t make the needed changes, a mechanic can do it for you. I’m thinking a FFV is not the way to go, however. If an engine were built with an adequate mechanical compression ratio, like 12 to 1, ( gasoline doesdn’t tolerate more than about 9 ), the thermal efficiency is increased enough to get the same miles per liquid gallon as gasoline gives. Then gasoline no longer has any advantage. Yes, there are some farm subsidys out there. But what of the billions in giveaways to the oil industry in our latest energy bill ? Even George Jr questioned the need for tax breaks for them, given their current profits. Yet they got 14.5 billion. And ethanol got only 3 billion. The current Iraq war has cost us over 1800 of our people, E85 hasn’t killed anyone. Ethanol won’t corrode your engine parts or filing station equipment, and it CAN get pumped through a pipeline. It doesn’t have to be trucked everywhere. Now who do you suppose owns the pipelines that says ethanol can’t go through ? In my state, Michigan, they are owned by a consortium of oil companies. It would seem that the oil industry knows that E85 could be a serious threat to their monopoly on the transportation fuel market, and they won’t give up without a fight. The resons we have gasoline instead of ethanol as our main transportation fuel is complicated, and started 100 yrs ago. But they have nothing to do with gasoline being ‘better’. It isn’t . When Mr Ford started selling lots of his cars, ethanol was what he had in mind. Diesels, Mr Rudy Diesel said, were supposed to be run on peanut and soybean oil. The oil industry used lies and decete and government help to squash the biofuel industry in the early 1900s, even though they knew their petro products were inferioir and bad for peoples health. It realy is all about the money. For a more truthful study about ethanol ptoduction, try Sharpoui, from the USDA. P&P are pretty alone in thinking ethanol is a bad deal. Cal
Cal, Your distaste for Oil aside, I have personal experience with small engine that have gone to heck since the percentage of ethanol has been increased. If the “gas” we get nowadays at the pump sits for more than a month, the lawnmowers, trimmers, or vintage carburated enigines I have run like absolute garbage. Sorry to break your heart, but I’m using my own experiences not some report.
And as for paid pushers, why is it then that Bob from the American Lung Assoc. of MN is the biggest supporter of ethanol. Look at what he has been saying about polution. He is paid to say that, where is your criticism of that?
As for the consumption of fossil fuels to make ethanol-
Farm tractors used to harvest the corn, what do they burn?
The trucks that get the raw corn to the processing plants, Hum?
If the plants are fired with nat gas, that is an oil biproduct.
And then there is the FACT that ethanol is less efficient than pure petroleum. People are getting about 10% less mpg’s with the 10% blend in MN and the people I’ve talked to in WI. How much less will it be when we go to 20%? Will we get 20% less mpg then? With today’s high price at the pump, will people so willingly burn an extra 20% of fuel to save whatever it is you ethanol pushers are saying today?
In MN do you know who the biggest lobbiers for ethanol are? Farmers! Is that not saying something similar to your “info” about the oil indusrty? And where did you get your facts about Mr. Ford and Diesel? As far as I know, ethanol is a relatively new concoction.
As far as those thinking ethanol is a bad deal, P&P are far from alone. I think the shoe is on the other foot there. Everyone I know is very against ethanol from personal experience, not studies.
The stuff sucks tailpipe.
[...] Sorry for the tittle. I’m still getting some comments and hits to my ethano-no-no Rnd 2 post. They are from fringe thinkers if you know what I mean. Black helicopters and such. Check it outr if you like. [...]
AAA, who started this topic anyway ? It is an excellent discission. I wish more people were asking questions and trying to learn. I’ll answer to the best of my memory, which is sometimes admitiedly poor ( CRS disease ) or at least scattered,. But here we go. Yes some folks ( LOTS of folks ? ) have had a bad time with fuel containing ethanol. But were the problems they had the result of the ethanol, or something else in the gasoline ? A few years ago, ( maybe it still happens, I don’t know….) there were some less than reputable refiners who were blending in ethanol as a oxygenate ( governmet said they had to ) who then used a cheaper, less refined oil as the base stock for their gasoline. What happens all to frequently is that the aromatics in the blend ( benzene, toulene, that sort of thing ) evapourate too soon and leave the heavier molecules, and the ethanol, behind. Then you have stale gasoline that makes your engine run badly, if at all. But it wasn’t the ethanol’s fault, it was poor refining form the refinery. I think some of it was a learning curve for the refinerys, and some of it was a deliberate attemp by the API to make ethanol look bad. Then we have the problem of engine tune. Most engines aren’t ready for ethanol. Ethanol is probably as close as we can get to a ‘pour it in and go’ replacement for normal gasoline, but your engine needs to be ready. Lots of them aren’t. There was a test a while back I read on the web of dozens of differant cars that were tested on blends of ethanol, from 10-30%. In the 10% tests, most of the cars saw little or no diffearnce in mileage, but when the 30% tests were done, the fuel economy was all over the map. Teh Chryslers had about the same, some of the Fords improved, but the GMs were suffering badly, like 30-40% less MPG. The easy answer, and the one you’ll get rom a GM dealer ( I asked ) is to not use gasoline containing ethanol. But depending on where you live, that might not be an option. So why are the GM cars suffering ? I think there is something in the programing on GM’s engine control computers that senses the extra oxygen in the exhaust, ( ethanol is C2H5OH ) and mistakenly believes that the engine is running too lean, and then it richens the mixture as much as the computer allows. Makes the car run very nicely, but fuel economy goes to heck in a hurry. Ford is already queitly stocking up on new chips that give engines the correct commands to utilize ethanol at an 85% blend, I’m sure GM is working on the problem and will get it figured out. I find it very interesting that all 3 of the USA’s big auto manufacturers are offering fex fuel cars that are ethanol ready. Do they know or suspect something about oil supply that the rest of us don’t ? Also much has been made of the BTU differance between ethanol 80K, and gasoline 120K. But that doesn’t take into account thermal efficiency. Most gasloine engines run at about 25% TE, meaning about 30K of BTUs are actually pushing the pistons, the rest is lost as heat out the tailpipe. But ethanol engines have no trouble achieving 40% TE, giving us 32K to push the pistons down, and then losing the rest as heat. But in order to use ethanols greater thermal efficiency, you have to have an engine ready to use it. Most ‘tests’ are done on an engine intended for gasoline only, it is no surprize ethanol loses. But when an engine is built with ethanol as the intended fuel, like with 12 to 1 mechanical compression, ethanol wins every time. But most testers won’t build a 12 to 1 engine, because it can’t be run on normal gasoline. A few years ago, the cron lobby was giving new trucks to sevral colledges and lettting the kids modify the new gas engines to take ethanol. The winners of the ‘Ethanol Vehicle Challenge’ always managed to get the same MPGs on ethanol that the factory got on gasoline. So it CAN be done, if you are willing to commit to ethanol as a fuel. Which not everyone is willing or able to do. As for myself, I’m building an ethanol only ( I’ll use E85 ) engine for one of my trucks. With 2 other gasoline only trucks here at the house, I can be ready for whicever is cheaper and more easily available. I’ll come back later tonight with the History portion of today’s rant. Cal
Cal,
I guess since its my blog, I’m the originaltor.
In MN the taxpayers fund a part of ethanol refinement. Should we also be forced, against our will, to fund the engine remanufacturing?
And also, what is the goal of ethanol? There are multiple stated goals, that are all defunked by certain facts, and collectively are a joke.
Oil independance? Well, oild is part of the process, either in production, harvesting, or transporting, Or in the end result of E85, 15% is still oil based.
Clean burning, but is less efficient. If your claims are true, ALL, each and every!, engine on the road today has to be remanufacture or replaced in order to meet the “cleaner” goal.
We can solve to “dependance” by drilling ANWAR.
That is just for cars, what about small engines? Are we going to make EVERY homeowner and business that owns small engine equipment buy new or remanufacture the equipment they currently have in order to meet the specifications for ethanol rich fuels? Talk about a devastating economic burden. Are you willing to tell the poor they have to buy a new lawnmower? Are you willing to tell businesses that they must buy a new fleet of equipment? Better yet, would you propose a law mandating just that?
Ethanol has too many hardships to be as great as the claims made in support of it. Tons of money is needed to make it the solution to a problem that I don’t agree we have.
The proponnents of ethanol accuse the Oil Cos. of steering the science, but I see it on you side as well. The tests doen in support of ethanol require either the data to be influenced or set at predetermined levels to get the results “desired”. Junk science, not true science.
But I appreciate your input. I’m interested to read more.
AAA, heres some more, about the ’study’ P&P put out. Those fellows included allsorts of strange inputs to their formula, like steel to make the tanker trucks and tractors to work the feilds. Yes, we need those things, but you can use the tractor for many years before it wears out. P&P’s data assumes you have to have anew one every year. Tanker trucks and the like can be the same ones we already have to carry gasoline. The API is trying now to put out the myth that ethanol HAS to be trucked, and that it can’t go thriugh a pipline. Pure BS, the real reason, in Michigan at least, is that the pipelines are owned by a consortium of oil companies, and they won’t let it go through. What happens if we use P&Ps methods on gasoline ? You’d have to figure in the steel for drilling rigs and refinerys…it is not as if the stuff just bubbles up from the ground in useable fashion. Some of P&Ps numbers include things like the value of the sunlight shining on the cornfield. While it is true the corn soaks this up, our benevelent Creator provides the sunshine whether we use it or not, and we don’t have to pay for it. Yeah, ethanol is currently enjoying some subsidies. I don’t have a problem with the Gov’t using a bit of incentive to encourage the development of alternatives to petroleum. I DO have a problem with the gov’t giving the petro industry 14 billion in tax breaks when they are having their most profitable period ever. We have spent 1800 lives of OUR people of in oil rich iraq, that seems like one hell of a subsidy. Why not just nuke them and be done with it ? It sure got the japanese in line quickly. And on efficiency, it is not less efficient than gasoline, it is better. I think ‘remanufacturing’ is too strong a word. All it would take is to remove the cylinderheads from the engine, mill about .050″, and then reassamble with steel shim gaskets .020 thick, instead of the compostion style, which are usually about .040 thick. No more difficult than doing a valvejob. The same thing could be done to small engines. Ignition timing and carburator jet changes will have a huge effect on how any engine runs, small or large, and don’t have to cost alot. And nobody HAS to change. We could have ethanol and gasoline sold in side by side pumps, you buy what your car needs. Kind of like how we had leaded and unleaded gasoline for sale next to each other for several years before lead went away. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. I would much rather have my transportation fuel dollars go to a farmer than some towelhead who wants to kill me. As for ethanol being a ‘new’ concoction, far from it. It was what Samuel Morey used for fuel when he patented the internal combustion engine in 1826. Mr Ford and Mr Olds used the same stuff when they started building cars. It was widely available and used as burning fluid in lamps. The API did not yet have a filling station on every corner. When the USA started to be come electrified in the early 1900s, the API was in full panic mode, because folks we not buying kerosene for their lamps anymore. Alcohol for lamps made less soot, and some folks who had electric power needed no lamp fuel at all. At first the API tried to use kerosene in car engines, didn’t work to well. They soon found that they could refine the crude into a sort of usable fuel, but they had problems with engine knock. Alcohol fuels didn’t have the knock problem. There were several gasoline VS alcohol tests and races and demonstations starting as early as 1902. Our navy tested ethanol in submarine engines, the USDA tested it in farm tractors, and compared it to gasoline. Scientific american tested against gaoline in the early 20s. Ethanol won every test, every time. So why did petro achieve dominance ? In the 1920s Mr Rockafeller ( of standard oil ) donated 20 million dollars to the Womens Christian Temperance Union. A bunch of angry women used this fianacial windfall to have alcohol outlawed. The law was really only intended to be against beverage ethanol, but it was the same chemical. Revenue agents busted up thousands of stills all across the nation. Commercial ethanol distilleries were closed overnight. Then standard oil was the only game in town for transportation fuel. But there was still the problem of ‘knock’ even in the low ( 6 to 1 ) compression engines of the day. Standard oil, with help from GM, then foisted tetraethyl lead on an unsuspecting public. Dupont, who first made T-lead, tried to warn the public that the stuff was toxic and should be used at all. Several Dupont workers died making it. Standard’s solution was to buy the rights to the chemical, and if some workers died, well, we can get new ones. The API has been able to smother the ethanol industry for the last 100 years, but the truth is leaking out. With so much information available on the internet, and the API unable to control what you read and learn about fuel ,the truth will surface eventually. Do some history searches on google. Use Ford, Alcohol fuel, and Kovarik in your searches. Kovarik is a professor somewhere ( don’t remember the school ) and has some really good pages up, with all of his sources listed. I think he explains it better than I do. Cal p.s. whats with the black helicopter comment ? I know what they really are, doesn’t everyone ?
Just some of my personal knowledge of the subject… E85 can reduce fuel economy by as much as 30%. And although it does cost much more than gasoling to produce considering all of the subsidies, it DOES give a pretty good return on energy. For every 1 BTU of Ethanol you have it took .4 BTU’s to produce, therefore there is a NET GAIN in energy, no matter what source that .4 BTU’s comes from. Also, there is a higher content of Hydrogen in Ethanol, so when that positive .6 BTU’s are burned, there is less CO2 released and more H20. Most Ethanol plants run on (very clean) natural gas, some on carbon-neutral biomass (it absorbs as much CO2 growing as it releases burning). All in all it IS worth it, if you want to pay the price.
Um, natural gas is a fossil fuel. So are most of the other fuels used in the “plants”. How will we make ethanol if we ever run out of them? That is the whole thing with ethanol, it takes fossil fuel to make. Am I the only one who sees the irony in that?
Let’s get the facts straight, ethanol is being sold as a replacement for gas. Then why the heck would we want to settle for something that is “pretty” good?
As for the price, are we willing to pay full price for ethanol? It is subsidized to be affordable in MN, would people pay more for it? A few would, but most people would buy the real stuff if it is cheaper.
“Um, natural gas is a fossil fuel. So are most of the other fuels used in the “plantsâ€. How will we make ethanol if we ever run out of them?”
Well then does that mean that I shouldn’t buy a car because it runs of fossil fuels that may run out some day? Ethanol isn’t a miracle but it is and extender… more expensive or not however much fossil fuels you put into ethanol production you will get more energy out… that’s why it’s good. I did environmental consulting at an ethanol plant in Wisconsin, and trust me they are still working on perfecting the process. This is still new technology (making it in mass quantities that is). In time it will get much more efficient. One thing that was being discussed when I was there was running the boilers on ethanol. It isn’t being done right now because they can make more money selling the ethanol (it’s worth more per BTU than natural gas). But if natural gas did run out you could run the boilers on ethanol and still have a very positive energy return. Sounds “pretty” good to me. As for if we are willing to pay full price for ethanol, that’s not the question. Ethanol isn’t a better fuel that gasoline, but it is renewable. In 30-40 years there will be affordable ethanol, but there most likely won’t be affordable gasoline. It boils down to that… we need to start finding other things to supply our energy. Even if it is subsidized now, take that away and it costs what, $3.50 or $4.00 a gallon? Well you’ll be loving that price when a gallon of gas reaches $10.00 a gallon, if you can find it. Get my point?
You don’t get more energy out!
“very positive energy return” ???? Sound like Spin to me.
If we gave gasoline the same advantages that ethanol has, it’d be dirt cheap too.
Etrhanol is so full of flaws that it is not ready for mandation. I have no problem with people putting on lab coats and playing chemist, but the fact that it is being manadated is just plain wrong. It is not ready for the masses.
Plan for the future, but don’t destroy the present.
I agree with you that it should not be mandated. Not every aspect of the process is perfect yet. But the very simple fact is that you DO GET MORE ENERGY OUT! Even after factoring in fuel use in farming, transport, everything. It’s friggin fact man!!! I’ve seen it with my own eyes… that facilities that make this stuff pump out thousands of gallons a day and they use about as much natural gas as a good sized office building does for heat in the winter. I don’t care if you think that ethanol isn’t a viable replacement for gasoline, because you may very well be right. But don’t tell me that there isn’t a positive energy return, I’m a god damn engineer and I spent a month working in the industry in Wisconsin, going over these and other numbers. I don’t care what people who are pro or con ethanol say, they are surely both biased but I’ve seen it from the inside on the ground. You get more energy out than you put in. FACT. Everything else is still open to debate, that’s not my specialty.