Posted on 10/23/2018 2:16:55 PM PDT by bananaman22
Over the past decade, “biofuel” has been a major buzz word in the world of clean energy and environmental science. As the topic of advanced biofuels continued to trend over the years, investments and studies ballooned accordingly. Now, however, with a bit of hindsight it has become clear that the vast majority of chatter and speculation about the “next big biofuel” set to change the energy landscape was just hot air.
Many claims made by energy startups, blogs, and think tanks were a bit short of credible, to put it lightly. A laundry list of companies over time claimed that they would be able to efficiently convert biomass like straw, wood chips, algae, and other organics into biofuel in an economically viable way. Some of these hopefuls even claimed to be able to do so for as little as a dollar per gallon.
Investors and taxpayers alike funneled money into ventures that had little to no chance of success. Investment went to technologies that had been abandoned decades before, due to economic impracticality. The most striking example can be found in the case of cellulosic ethanol. Converting straw into ethanol is a prohibitively expensive venture, but companies continued--and still continue--to try. What’s more, despite the fact that “commercial” cellulosic ethanol is only being produced at a very small fraction of the projected volumes, it’s currently being sold into the fuel supply, in large part thanks to heavy subsidization from the Renewable Fuel Standard.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
If one can’t believe Willie Nelson, whom can we believe?
Biofuels based on ethanol production are a total waste. Ethanol is a poor motor fuel at best and the energy needed to produce a gallon of ethanol is greater than the energy burning ethanol as a fuel. Corn ethanol is nothing a but a bloated farm subsidy program. We could quickly end the ethanol.prgram if Congress would pass legislation mandating that farm machinery must use biofuels.
Even when you consider the amount of energy needed to produce fertilizers, operate farm equipment, transport corn, convert corn to ethanol, and distribute the final product - the energy contained in a gallon of corn ethanol is 50% more than the amount of energy needed to produce and distribute it.
The more ethanol is used on input activities, the better the ratio becomes. Ethanol isn’t going away.
As far as I can tell, compared to diesel, it's (roughly) 10% more expensive for 90% of the energy per gallon.
In addition, the hack forgot to include the additional energy cost of hauling around the less efficient fuel, not to mention additional stops for refueling.
Taxes? I doubt that they are on a BTU or other energy scale, so add that addition cost in too.
And you notice no one ever talks about how much energy it takes to produce a gallon of crude oil and refine it down to something useful.
Calculate in the real pervasive damage to people’s cars and engines, and Ethanol is beyond loss, it is mega fraud.
But farm communities are exempted. They only damage city cars. LMAO!
Liberals are sooo stupid.
About the same as the ethanol in gasoline scam.
Total BS. You either work for Archer Daniels Midlands or you get some subsidy. Read David Pimental’s work. Oh and tell me why the farm machinery used to produce ethanol doesn’t use ethanol and the distilling equipment doesn’t burn ethanol. Unless the total process uses ethanol it’s a FRAUD and you’re blowing pink smoke.
It takes X number of BTU’s to move an automobile 1 mile....period, doesn’t matter where they come from....
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