Rethinking Ethanol

[Baack]

Rethinking Ethanol
The time has come for Congress to rethink ethanol, an alternative fuel that has lately fallen from favor. Specifically, it is time to end an outdated tax break for corn ethanol and to call a timeout in the fivefold increase in ethanol production mandated in the 2007 energy bill.
This does not mean that Congress should give up on biofuels as an important part of the effort to reduce the country’s dependency on imported oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What it does mean is that some biofuels are (or are likely to be) better than others, and that Congress should realign its tax and subsidy programs to encourage the good ones. Unlike corn ethanol, those biofuels will not compete for the world’s food supply and will deliver significant reductions in greenhouse gases.
Last year’s energy bill required that 36 billion gallons of biofuels be produced annually by 2022. Of that, 21 billion gallons would be “advanced” biofuels that are still mostly in the experimental stage; the rest would be the corn-based variety beloved by farmers, Midwestern politicians and presidential candidates. This mandate comes on top of a 51-cents-a-gallon subsidy to ethanol blenders enacted when the industry was small and oil prices low.
The industry is no longer small — seven billion gallons and climbing rapidly — and oil is over $120 a barrel, making ethanol not only competitive but a bargain.
Ending the tax subsidy should be easy. Ending the mandate will be tougher, though some members of Congress are showing buyer’s remorse. One reason is the worldwide spike in food prices. That has been driven largely by a huge increase in demand and rising energy costs. The diversion of American corn from food to fuel — about one-fourth of the crop — has not helped.
The other reason is a spate of studies suggesting that some biofuels — corn ethanol in particular — could accelerate global warming. Environmentalists had long regarded corn ethanol as at least carbon-neutral, emitting greenhouse gases when burned but absorbing those gases while growing. But rising demand for corn, for fuel and food, can have a profoundly negative effect if it causes farmers to clear previously untouched land, in turn releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.
Congress’s guiding principle should be to tie federal help to environmental performance. The goal is not just to stop the headlong rush to corn ethanol but to use the system to bring to commercial scale promising second-generation biofuels — cellulosic ethanol derived from crop wastes, wood wastes, perennial grasses. These could provide environmental benefits and reduce dependence on oil without displacing food production.
Though Congress is unlikely to undo the mandate, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency can. Unfortunately, President Bush is an ardent corn ethanol supporter, and Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A. administrator, is nothing if not a Bush loyalist.
Without reform, rising food prices and increasing damage to the climate could provoke a reaction that could be the undoing of the entire biofuels industry. That would not be helpful to the industry or the planet.

[slowpoke1967]

if people dont want to use bio-fuel why wud they think of makeing Ethanol???

[peanut2008]

It seems like to me that most people in this country as just as much against the farmers making a profit as they are truckers.We can export less corn use it here ourselves maybe even take high fructose corn syrup out of our soft drinks and go back to using sugar for a sweetner.If we don`t get some real competition to the oil companies those vice grips they got squeezing our balls will just keep getting tighter till they just fall off then where will we be?

[Phil1Fla]

My guess that one day soon the oil bubble will pop. then the oil co. will have all that oil to eat them selves. I hope that they choke on it. Oh by the way they can make oil out of coal dust. and there seems to be tons of that dust around all the coal mines.

[danc694u]

Actually, I've seen some logic being used in Washington on this topic lately.

I feel some of them looked around and realized..."We screwed up, big time!"

Saw/Straw Grass is getting more mention as of late.

[Moses]

Ethanol just plain sucks as a fuel. Its energy density is far lower than gasoline and the refining cost is equal to or greater than. You burn up to 1/3 more ethanol per mile than gasoline. There's no benefit to the consumer. Notice what's happened to the price of food lately? All that cheap corn that used to be making cheap food ain't there anymore....

Methanol is cheap and packs a punch, but highly corrosive. This is acceptable in a race car, where the fuel never sits in the tank, but not in a daily driver.


Hybrids are a feel-good joke. Why automakers think toting a half-ton of batteries around (that are highly toxic at recycling time) makes a car more efficient or "green" than a small diesel is beyond me. Yank all the hybrid crapola out of a Prius, put in a 1-liter turbodiesel and you'd double your mileage.


Diesel can be made from just about anything. Doktor Diesel himself designed it to run on peanut oil. There are literally billions of used tires piled up in this country, each one has OIL that went into its manufacture. It can be recovered, if it becomes economically feasible. And we're probably close to that point.

[rookietrucker]

I added a news story on another thread concerning ethanol........

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.

[25(2)+2]

I have seen no evidence that ethanol production has raised food prices, all I have seen is some self serving politicians making hay off a cloudy issue on a cloudy day, at the behest of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which hired a public relations firm to take the blame for the rising cost of groceries and place it where it doesn't belong. Who cares if the farmer gets 6 cents for the wheat in that loaf of bread instead of 3 cents? Or that ethanol production uses the starch from corn to make ethanol, leaving the by-products. The corn in corn flakes is not feed grade corn anyway, it's food grade, big difference in price and quality. There is still only pennies worth of corn in a box of corn flakes, the box costs more than the contents, was one way to put it.

The falling dollar is the big reason food prices are shooting up all over the world, and the price of energy along with it. If the ethanol wasn't supplementing the fuel of this country and some others and increasing the supply of said fuel, the price of energy would probably be higher, and the dollar lower, further increasing the price of food. Ethanol is being bid up by speculation now as well., the price of ethanol blends and E-85 is closer to what the price of gasoline is. Commodities traders make money hand over fist, as long as they are on the right side of the market.

It was also mentioned that it costs more energy to get the energy out of ethanol than it does gasoline, that is also a numbers game that doesn't add up, Actual ratios are .7 to 1 for ethanol, and 1.2 to 1 for gasoline. The fuel mileage per gallon is less but per BTU is better, ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline. There are things as yet not addressed adequately, but to say ethanol is evil and gasoline is good is too big a stretching of the known facts to make.

So before any more of you pile on in this idiotic argument, just remember that puiblic relations firms are best known for making lies believable and selling used hay to make their clients and themselves, lots of money.