U.S. must 'hustle' to reach 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, ag secretary says

Kansas City Star ^ | March12, 2012 | by Cory Nealon

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The United States can meet President Barack Obama's goal of producing 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, but it better get moving.

That's according to Tom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to a 2010 Agriculture Department report, the agency plans for the U.S. to produce 13.4 billion gallons of biofuels from grasses and sugars. The rest would come from oil seeds, crop residues and wood waste.

The EPA is exploring other sources, such as animal fats, municipal solid waste and algae.

The push for more biofuels comes as other industries, such as commercial power companies, seek alternative fuel sources to comply with tougher pollution standards set by the Obama administration. For example, Dominion Virginia Power announced last year it would convert three coal-fired power plants to biomass.

Citing a Penn State University study that states the U.S. produces more than 1 billion tons of biomass a year, Vilsack said there is plenty to satisfy numerous industries. Environmental groups aren't so sure.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is concerned that companies will start removing healthy trees from forests to meet demands that are expected to grow.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The Dept. of Agriculture and the EPA are in charge of our energy future.

Pray for America.

[HiTech RedNeck]

More unicorn droppings.

[Bryanw92]

Soylent GAS is people?!?

[Cicero]

Total nonsense. Grass and corn are needed to feed animals and people.

And the most efficient use of wood waste is as pellets, which can be burned in pellet stoves and furnaces. I put in a pellet fireplace insert a few years ago, and it has saved us a bundle on fuel oil, which at last billing was going for $4.15 a gallon.

[Trteamer]

Let me translate his comments into English:

We need more money to keep the gravy train a rolling.....

[SkyDancer]

Takes more energy to produce bio-fuels than what you get out of it.

[unixfox]

These people just keep pushing and pushing.

It’ll come to a head. And not soon enough.

F U B O !

[SunkenCiv]

It's the Obamacare, stupid! One-half gallon of oil in the form of pesticides per bushel of corn would cost $2 to $3 per bushel. If this were true -- and it clearly isn't -- it should be enough to illustrate to literally anyone that the price of petroleum is quite literally the ONLY thing driving corn prices. And this idiotic piece of agitprop -- from a hydrogen "energy" advocacy site -- also shows the guy in the encounter suit spraying chemical fertilizer, a sight that I've never been privileged to see, what with me *growing up on a farm*. The Bum Rap on Biofuels [2008] Campaign to vilify ethanol revealed [2008] Oil Price Pressure Driving Global Switch to Biofuels [2006]

[SunkenCiv]

• Obama: "I want to make sure we end before the call to prayer"

[JRandomFreeper]

The rest would come from oil seeds, crop residues and wood waste.

The EPA is exploring other sources, such as animal fats, municipal solid waste and algae.

Isn't this what Hitler's Germany did when they were up against the wall?

/johnny

[SunkenCiv]

= 857,142,857 bbls

What makes anyone think that Zero *wants* biofuels to succeed?!?

Thanks Oldeconomybuyer.

[depressed in 06]

Let us hope this is another promise the One makes, that, the next American President doesn’t keep.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Maybe the cartoon was fostered by folks trying to grind an axe for other impractical fuels like hydrogen, but still this does not look like a claim that 1/2 gallon of oil goes solely into pesticides for a bushel of corn — but that it goes collectively into all the activity involved in producing the bushel, harvesting it, and processing that bushel into ethanol a la Arthur Daniels Midland. And the poison suit simply is a caricatured way of showing this ain’t watering the corn... gee whiz the whole operation isn’t located together either, are we going to quibble about this too.

[KoRn]

That’s a shit-ton of Algae. They’d best get started!

[ogen hal]

If all the nobama minions were processed into soylent green this goal might be reached.

[Ron C.]

We don't need no stinkin' biofuels. We're sitting on top of two billion barrels of oil right under Los Angeles. ALL of the old capped well's are full again - a well known fact.

The mayor of Long Beach found out about a couple of them being full-to-the-brim and tried to start pumping oil to aid the Long Beach city coffers. He was denied a permit, and told to 'shut up about wells being full again.'

I know too that wells drilled in Oklahoma when I was a child (on extensive family property) are also full to the brim. Those too have been 'locked up' - no pumping of oil allowed.

[HiTech RedNeck]

And if they went fracking at those sites — there wouldn’t be any waiting decades for them to refill either.

[Iron Munro]

These people are insane.

They are destroying America.
And idiots keep voting more of them into office.

By the time it all comes crashing down there will be no returning to the policies and conditions that led to America's success and wealth.

There are now too many moochers and takers, too many communists, too many greedy and stupid politicians, not enough producers.

The culture of self reliance, personal pride, and morality has been over run by government dependent freaks, perverts moochers and vote sellers.

Once the Republic is gone, it's gone forever.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s a completely false claim, so the source doesn’t matter, neither does your quibbling.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Your reference for “complete falsity”?

Can you better quantify how much petroleum goes to subsidize fuel ethanol?

[RetiredTexasVet]

So what the Secretary in charge of cow discharge is saying is “hurry the stupid up, you’re not stupiding fast enough”. Seems appropriate for someone in charge of cow discharge.

[El Laton Caliente]

The military just bought biofuel at what $26 a gallon? That should make $5 gas look cheap...

[Sarajevo]

The Dept. of Agriculture and the EPA Archer Daniels Midland are in charge of our energy future.

Fixed it for ya'.

[editor-surveyor]

>> “Takes more energy to produce bio-fuels than what you get out of it.” <<

.
That is an absolute fact!

It takes more than a gallon of real diesel oil to produce a gallon of ‘bio-fuel.’
.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

We better get crackin' making more of the stuff they demand, because they'll sue us if we don't use the stuff that doesn't exist.

Think I'm making that up? Think again. They are already doing it! Government forces refiners to pay fine for nonexistent ethanol (Institute for Energy Research).

[Campion]

Takes more energy to produce bio-fuels than what you get out of it.

Depends. Biodiesel, e.g. from soybeans, produces 3.2 units of fuel for every unit of (fossil) fuel input, according to the USDA. A German study came up with a number of 2.5 to 1. That's still a pretty good deal.

Ethanol from corn barely breaks even. Don't tar all biofuel with the ethanol-from-corn brush. Ethanol from corn is only viable because it's subsidized by government.

[editor-surveyor]

Sunken, it is you that has posted the agitprop here.

The cartoon does not say 1/2 gallon of pesticides. The 1/2 gallon of fuel includes working the soil, harvesting the crop, and transporting it.

Ethanol is a waste of useful land.

[raccoonnookkeeper]

Awwwww, the flat statement that this was a “complete falsity” shoulda stopped you in your tracks! There is no arguing with such a coffin-lid pronouncement!

[editor-surveyor]

All bio-diesel shortens engine life, increases maintenance costs, and reduces the reliability of the engine.

It also cannot be used below 40 degrees F, because it thickens in the fuel system, thus starving the engine.

[SkyDancer]

Maybe you’ll have to add a heater run on oil to heat the bio-fuel to where it’ll flow okay.

[SunkenCiv]

No, in fact, it is not. It doesn’t take 1/2 of fuel to produce a bushel of corn, and it doesn’t take more ethanol to produce ethanol and can be produced from the corn. ALL of that is agitprop. The price of producing and distributing our food (and everything has an energy component, even among the Amish) using OPEC oil is the issue, and will continue to be while we remain dependent on them.

Zero’s claim that we’re somehow better off because the price of oil is high as a kite and consumption of it is (for now) down, and production is up (and more of it going overseas), while simultaneously claiming (as others do here) that the price of crude is really just inflated by speculators, is one giant pile of flapdoodle.

[SunkenCiv]

Petroleum doesn’t subsidize fuel ethanol. There’s an oxygenation requirement for gasoline sold in the US, rather a series of them, and most states have banned the petrochemical MTBA because it shows up in the water etc, while ethanol does not. I’ve never seen anyone call MTBA out for being the product of a federal subsidy. But if ethanol is considered to be subsidized because of a floor price, then the subsidy is actually going the other way, since most ethanol produced in the US (and imported) is going directly into gasoline.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/March09/Features/FertilizerPrices.htm

[snip] Fertilizer price volatility affects the profitability of corn and small grains, where fertilizer accounts for a relatively large share of production costs, compared with that for soybeans and cotton. [/snip]

[editor-surveyor]

In Bend, Oregon, they had to add ducting to direct exhaust heat to the fuel system on all their new ‘bio’ school buses last winter.

One morning, every bus in their fleet got stalled on the road after they left the warmth of the barn. It took two days to tow them all back to the barn, and a whole bunch of taxis to bring the students home. School was canceled for the week.

[Fractal Trader]

ping

[NormsRevenge]

WE been FRacked! FRom the inside!

[Vendome]

Tom, you idiot. Can’t you do simple math?

It so not possible to produce 36 billion barrels of your imaginary goo.

Evuh.

[SkyDancer]

Total insanity.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

I grew up in a small town in west-central Kansas. Folks had oil wells in their backyard. Hard to imagine the EPA regulations on that today...

[HiTech RedNeck]

What’s getting burned to run the tractors etc.? Are these operations so purist that they themselves only employ pure ethanol for their own energy needs?

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, I see, ethanol is elitist. /s

[Starstruck]

The military just bought biofuel at what $26 a gallon? That should make $5 gas look cheap...

I would pay $26 a gallon if it was processed out of liberals.

[thackney]

There are 601 active producing wells in the Long Beach field near Los Angeles.

Although there are many other older wells capped, there is plenty of production continuing to drain this field.

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/dog/maps/Pages/goto_welllocation.aspx
Download the MS Excel file for District 1. The well database can be sorted by status of well, county, township, field, etc.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Is this an exercise in missing the point?

To get that ethanol from corn, petroleum has to be consumed in various ways. Maybe the figure given is exaggerated but it cannot be nonzero.

[Ron C.]

Well, that's an interesting database - but far from accurate, it appears. Sorting the data for district #1 shows that the only active wells are in Torrance, Whittier, and Wilmington - and I know that to be wrong. Don't know where you found the 601 producing wells in Long Beach, but I can sure see a lot of them, and in some places there are drilling rigs actively drilling away.

You can see one well being drilled at 33.812000000 -118.185600000 - and just north of that location, you can see one (probably) active pump.

Just immediately west of that location, you can see other pumps, likely active, (white pickup truck with open door beside one) - and a block further west are two more active pumps, with associated storage tanks.

Half a block to the east and south of the one being drilled is another probably active pump.

The question regarding why old capped wells in Long Beach, known to be full again, could not be opened and pumped again by the owner of the well, still remains an unanswered question - the likely impediment being federal and state government standing in the way.

[thackney]

601 in the long beach oil field, not the postal address.

To address the claim of oil being left in the ground untapped, I looked at the number of actively flowing wells.

Old Abandoned wells do not just have a cap on top. They are filled with cement.