Posted on 12/08/2007 9:20:06 PM PST by neverdem
For millennia, civilization’s main event, the harvest, has focused our attention upon the fruit of our agricultural efforts — the kernel, the grain, busheled and bagged. So it’s no surprise that the fledgling biofuel industry has been similarly focused: America’s favorite biofuels come mostly from corn and from soy. But when food crops are used as fuel, difficulties may follow. The vogue for corn ethanol has driven up the price of corn around the world, putting the poor in jeopardy. (An expert affiliated with the United Nations went so far as to label the production of biofuels derived from food stock “a crime against humanity.”) Corn ethanol is also astonishingly inefficient: because vast amounts of fossil fuels are required for its manufacture, every 1 unit of energy nets a mere 1.3 units of ethanol.
Is there a better way? In 2007, significant steps were taken toward a potentially great second harvest, some of it coming from the byproducts of animals, some of it from municipal waste and garbage but the bulk of it coming from plant biomass, which is really about breaking down cellulose, the key structural component of all plant cell walls and the most abundant of all naturally occurring organic compounds on earth. A recent Department of Energy study found the United States can produce a billion tons of plant biomass annually, yet 400 million years of evolution has made cellulose resistant — the term of art is “recalcitrant” — to manipulation. Unlocking its complex compounds of sugars, whose potential yield is 4 times that of corn on a gallons-per-acre basis, typically requires an aggressive, four-step thermo-chemical process. Taken together, these steps have been too costly or too energy intensive for cellulosic fuel production to become economically viable. Cracking the conundrum of plant cell walls cheaply has become...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
every 1 unit of energy nets a mere 1.3 units of ethanol. ... depends which analysis you use. Many energy analyses say you get 0.9 or 1.0 units of energy out for every unit of energy in.
“An expert affiliated with the United Nations went so far as to label the production of biofuels derived from food stock “a crime against humanity”
I agree... If you think the world hates us today, wait till we start burning food in out vehicles...
I also agree. Biofules is as big a scam as “man made global warming”.
Food is for eating or growing more food.
ethanol from corn
one unit of energy from the ragheads in the middle east,
produces ten units of liquid energy.
better than that,
refineries never touch the stuff
We were fools to turn over our technology to the ME tribesmen on how to get it out of the earth in the first place and we need to take the steps to retake total control of that whole process or soon the Indians and Chinese will do it instead of us. Then we'll REALLY be up a well known tributary without the necessary accessories!!!
Nonsense.
We have had as much as 20% of our farmland devoted to “fuel” before, and the world didn’t hate us.
Remember, there were days before tractors, before combines, before oil and before GMO’s.
Between the 1890’s and 1910, about 20% of our farmland was in hay and pasture for draft horses and riding horses. Draft horses, commonly used for delivery of goods and farm work, used to heat huge amounts of forage and grain.
We’re nowhere close to that past level of farmland being devoted to fuel at this time, and even the biggest SUV converts burning ethanol converts acreage into motion more efficiently than a horse does.
Second, there is no shortage of corn (or beans). If you belly up to the commodities exchanges with the right amount of money, you can buy all you want.
Third, the price of commodities has gone up significantly due to the price of diesel fuel going up as well as demand for field corn in ethanol. Take away the ethanol demand and you’d still see corn prices up significantly from 2000/2001.
What all these malthusians are complaining about is that the price of food has gone up. Well, DUH. In modern farming, if you raise the price of diesel fuel (which has more than tripled since 2001), and then the price of fertilizer (which has gone up with the price of natural gas to make it and diesel to deliver it) and so on, then the price of food is going to go up. The farmer uses diesel fuel, then there is diesel fuel used to haul the gain from the farm to the elevator. Then more diesel fuel to haul the grain from the elevators to shipping terminals on rivers or just keep the grain in railcars. Then more diesel fuel (or perhaps bunker fuel) to haul the grain overseas. At every step along the way, the cost to produce and move the grain has gone up, up, and up.
Lastly: When has anyone connected with the United Nations been an expert in anything, much less food?
Panic spreads as Uganda reports 101 Ebola cases
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Sending billions to people who want to kill us, is a preferable course of action?...
That's history. Let's see the Chicoms and/or Indians become the new hegemon of the Middle East.
We need energy independence for a number of reasons. Our demand for energy restricts our economy, funds many bad actors, and hurts our current accounts deficit, i.e. our trade balance that undermines the value of a dollar.
However we get energy independence, let's do it without perpetual subsidies.
NO...Drilling our own oil is the preferable course of action. Wakeup. I can’t believe you think Food fuel is the answer.
The poorest of the poor are subsistence farmers in third world countries. Higher commodities prices are a good thing for subsistence producers. They will be a good thing for third world cities as well if they enhance economic development in the villages and small towns, thus reducing the pressure on the rural poor to flock to the shantytowns.
The dominant food vs. fuel narrative right now is being written by affluent urban journalists looking at grocery story prices. The rural poor, as usual, are out of sight, out of mind. But that can change. I brush shoulders from time to time with people involved with this, so I'm aware that some of the ag-econ and international development types are starting to look at the rural feedback loops.
This gets sticky. For example: Is military spending to secure petrochemical supply lines an industry subsidy? By analogy: Is subsidizing an independent source of supply a national defense expenditure?
I'm not arguing either way, but I am pointing out that the issue of "subsidy" is more complex than most economists would imply.
What, you ain't a shine drinker? Wishful thinking is so much fun.
A favorite line from a Steve Earle song:
"My Daddy used to say...Never seen a good intention that a man could eat"
Best line of the whole thread.
I would dearly love to have all the "Ethanol Drinkers" post an actual ROI of, say, $25K of their own money in an Ethanol Venture. Having your own "skin" in a deal, means a whole lot more than FR bloviating.
The vogue for corn ethanol has driven up the price of corn around the world, putting the poor in jeopardy. (An expert affiliated with the United Nations went so far as to label the production of biofuels derived from food stock “a crime against humanity.”)
“Corn ethanol is also astonishingly inefficient: because vast amounts of fossil fuels are required for its manufacture, every 1 unit of energy nets a mere 1.3 units of ethanol.”
I don’t have time to research the last comment this morning. I think the ratio is reversed when all of the fossil fuel needed to plant, grow, harvest, carry the corn to the distillery, produce the bio fuel and transport it to the gas stations.
This alternate fuel bs is another critical issue that flushes out the pseudo conservatives with vested interests in the alternate fuels or just an insane hatred of fossil fuels.
Many of the smaller ethanol plants in the midwest are owned by farmer co-ops. Many of these co-op ethanol plants have a minimum buy-in of $50K per farmer.
Good enough for you?
Nope. Show me the ROI.
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