Ethanol – the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Beautiful
Critics and special interests try to stop the shift to electric vehicles by wrongly stating that if there is coal power used, then there are no benefits. Mitsubishi estimates that its electric vehicle is 67 percent efficient, in contrast to a 15 percent efficient gasoline vehicle. Efficient electric drive systems lower lifecycle emissions. With the growth of wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewables, lifecycle emissions from electric transportation will continue to fall. For example, my main mode of transportation is electric buses and rail that use hydropower. My backup mode is a Toyota Prius that I share with my wife.
Long-term we will continue to see the growth of electric drive systems in hybrid cars, plug-in hybrids, battery electric, fuel cell vehicles, light-rail, and high-speed rail. Over decades, the use of internal combustion engines will decrease, but the transition will take decades, especially for long-haul trucks. During these decades we can benefit from next generation biofuels that will replace corn ethanol and biodiesel from food sources.
Shell has a five-year development agreement with Virent, which takes biomass and converts it to gasoline - biogasoline. Gasoline, after all, is a complex hydrocarbon molecule that can be made from feedstock other than petroleum. Unlike ethanol, biogasoline has the same energy content as gasoline. Unlike cellulosic ethanol alternatives, Virent produces water using a bioforming process, rather than consuming valuable water. Virent has multi-million dollar investments form from Cargill, Honda, and several venture capital firms. Biogasoline will be its major initial focus. Its technology can also be used to produce hydrogen, biodiesel, and bio jet fuel.
Sapphire is an exciting new biofuels company backed with over $100 million investment from firms such as ARCH Venture Partners, the Wellcome Trust, Cascade Investment, and Venrock. The biotech firm has already produced 91-octane gasoline that conforms to ASTM certification, made from a breakthrough process that produces crude oil directly from sunlight, CO2 and photosynthetic microorganisms, beginning with algae.
Scale is a major challenge. Producing a few gallons per day in a lab is not the same as producing 100 million gallons per year at a lower cost than the petroleum alternative. Yet, some of our best minds are optimistic that it will happen in the next few years. We will see fuel from marginal lands, from crops and algae that sequester carbon emissions. The fuel will blend with existing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, and run in all engines, not just those with low mileage.
Some think that such a transition is as impossible as an interception with a 100 yard run for a touchdown in a Superbowl. It is exciting when the impossible happens.
John Addison is the author of the new book – Save Gas, Save the Planet – which is now available at Amazon. He publishes the Clean Fleet Report.
[Image Credit: drewzhrodague via Flickr under Creative Commons License]
There’s a lot of good information here, but there’s also some bias information. I’m amused that the article seems to blame corn ethanol for everything, including the lower mileage. But then, the author tells us how wonderful cellulosic ethanol (which I also support) is going to be over first generation ethanol – As if that is going to get you any better mileage. The problem with ethanol is that most cars are not optimized for it. That’s going to change. Turbocharged, high compression, “Ethanol Optimized” engines are coming, and they go way beyond flex-fueled. EPA had one of these in 1995, with a 19.5 compression ratio, that got more power and better mileage than it got on gasoline. Just recently both Ricardo and Lotus announced ethanol optimized engines that get better mileage on 100% ethanol than they get on gasoline, with all the torque and power of diesel. GM, Ford, and Chrysler had 70 mpg technology in the mid 90s, but they were in bed with Big-Oil and Gov. That’s where the problem is, not with ethanol. Ethanol is an excellent domestic fuel, if you have engines optimized to use it. We have been steered to keep burning fossil fuels, so the Oil Barrons could keep their monopoly going. This began years ago when there was a conflict between Henry Ford’s Vision of Ethanol vs Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Guess who won.
John Addison makes the mistake of quoting Lester Brown, who’s views are warped. Here’s what this quote: “The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year” does not tell you – That out of those same corn kernels, came a year’s worth of distiller’s grains that fed livestock and dairy cows that put food on your table. Like many other biofuel critics, Omission is a common practice. Again just taking the starch out of one third of the corn crop to make ethanol is not causing starvation in any way. Only a third of our arable land is in cultivation, and we have a surplus of corn. It may not be getting to the people who need it. But that’s not ethanol’s fault. Even after we made 9 billion gallons of ethanol last year, corn is $3.55 a bushel for 56 pounds. That’s only 6 cents a pound. If you’re so concerned about it, then buy surplus corn and distillers grains and feed the hungry.
John Addison talks about transporting ethanol long-distance. OK, then let’s talk about transporting crude oil from the middle east and other foreign countries. Ever see the smoke pouring out of an ocean going oil tanker? Let’s talk about wasting $200 billion a year on an oil war to protect our oil interests overseas, and the amount of fuels and pollution that expends. A recent study concluded that shipping crude oil long distances accounts for half as much again as the pollution and global warming caused by burning fossil fuels in our transportation vehicles. Furthermore the trend, blender pumps and new ethanol plants being built in many other states, points to Localization.
This claim by Addison is totally false: “Subsidies to industrial corn agriculture are not good uses of taxpayer money”. Big oil companies collect 6 times more subsidies than the entire biofuels industry. Coal is subsidized. Natural gas is subsidized. Anything that relates to National Security. The ethanol subsidy you are talking about is a 45 cent per gallon blending subsidy, that’s mainly going to oil companies who splash blend ethanol and gasoline. “In 2007, the (ethanol) tax incentive, that tax break, was $3.3 billion, but the ethanol industry returned $4.6 billion in tax revenue to the Treasury,” Broin says. “We saved $8 billion in farm payments because we eliminated farm payments for the first time in almost 40 years. We saved the consumer $40 to $60 billion in gas prices with extra supplies that kept prices down. We added $47 billion to the Gross Domestic Product” (Jeff Broin – Poet Ethanol). Not a good use of taxpayer money?
Aside from what Addison thinks, next generation biofuels will include the next generation of corn ethanol. Because Algae will be mass produced, onsite, from corn ethanol refinery waste products: CO2, waste heat, and nutrient rich waste water - thin stillage centrate, which contains 6% minerals. That may become the most efficient way to produce biofuels, feed and food.
One billion people are hungry or starving. Without any ethanol production whatsoever, they would still be hungry or starving.
Devoting all of our excess crop production to biofuels might raise those numbers slightly, because excess wouldn’t be available to dump on the market.
Crops grown in the US don’t feed the hungry people of the world by themselves. The process is usually the government using your tax dollars to buy up excess, artificially raising commodity prices, then spending more tax dollars to burn barrel after barrel of bunker fuel to ship the food overseas, so it can be seized by foreign armies and traded for military supplies. Sometimes, the governments of these other countries let people get fed, but if it happens, it is usually due to a lack of planning.
If those billion people are to be fed, someone is paying for the food. TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Literally.
I am told over and over that these people live where nothing can grow. That is not true. These people live where they cannot grow enough for their population. Very often there are agricultural means to produce the calories they need where they are, but only by growing foods they don’t want.
It is easy to say beggars can’t be choosers, it is difficult to understand why hungry people won’t consider alternatives that would end their hunger. Work with the poor and hungry, and you will often find people who could feed themselves, but will not, partially through ignorance, partially through unwillingness.