Promoted by Albert
Gasoline prices are more than creeping up in the NE right now due to refinery issues. What does gas cost where you live? Any bio-fuel spots by you?
Ethanol is being touted as the wonder replacement for petroleum based fuels now demand has reached, if not exceeds, new finds of reserves. I want to raise some questions about whether this should be seen as a solution to avoid developing alternatives and improving the public transport systems. I would also argue that we are rapidly approaching, if have not already reached, peak ethanol.
It’s quite simple to make ethanol, humans have known the technique for millenia. All you do is take some sugar and add water and yeast. Sadly the result does not burn so you have to separate the ethanol from the water by heating the mixture and allowing the ethanol, which boils off first, to cool back to liquid form. Now you can produce the intermediate mixture using a range of biomass providing it is rich in sugars or even starches. Grape, cane, potatoes, fruit, rice or many other grains can be employed. Herein lies the problem.
The attraction is of course that these are food crops. Producing ethanol from them can soak up excess production (ideal if like France you have a big stock of indifferent wine) or use by products from other food production (like “high fructose corn syrup”(HFCS) which in the USA is used to sweeten soft drinks but in my opinion is fit for consumption by neither man nor beast.) However, just like oil reserves, the amount of land available to produce such crops are finite. Arguably, such land is already reducing and trying to increase it could have disasterous ecological effects. Unlike oil there are considerable alternative demands on the basic materials used for ethanol. The world has hungry mouths. Given equitable distribution we can just about feed everybody but I seriously question whether there is enough slack in the agricultural system for ethanol to significantly replace the current demand for petroleum.
Let’s look at the problem of the supply of arable land to produce food crops let alone the vast area required for significant ethanol-base production.
Global warming is already nibbling away at these lands. The Sahara is expanding, putting pressure on African crop production. Farming practice changes mean that the EU is just about food self-sufficient. Barring the odd good harvest there is not much spare capacity. The Great Plains in north America are starting to “dust bowl”. This is partly down to global warming, partly to competition for water resources and partly to the effects of monoculture on the soil structure. In the short term however some diversion of US agriculture’s products could have positive outcomes. For a start, the soft drinks will start to be less disgusting as the HFCS is used for ethanol. Less over-production being dumped as “food aid” should mean that 3rd world farmers are less pressured by this competition. On the other hand, there is no way that enough ethanol could be produced to replace the entire motor fuel consumption of the USA. Brazil is often touted as the great success story for ethanol but eeen here we have to seriously question the strategy. Sugar cane production needs land. In Brazil that land is currently occupied by the Amazon rain forests, a vital world reserve for CO2 sequestration. Areas the size of small European countries are being lost each year to food and sugar cane for ethanol production.
Here we come up against another problem. If you are using HFCS to make ethanol, not coke, your sweetener will revert to being cane sugar. Great for the smaller countries who will have a market again but hardly an environmentally satisfactory answer. After all that cane sugar will need transport. If some US senators have their way, once it’s landed in New Oreans it will have to go by road. Their short-term view of wanting to replace a railroad used for freight with a highway to serve the casinos is staggering, quite apart from the financial waste of repairing the tracks only to tear them up for the road
Others with more detailed knowledge of the area required to replace a litre of petroleum based gasoline with ethanol will no doubt provide some better information. But quite apart from the practicalities of being able to produce enough domestically, is it moral to tear the food from the starving to feed the fuel tanks of the rich world’s SUVs?
You raise some valid concerns, as the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface is finite, and we’re already capturing a significant part of it through agriculture and diverting it to address human needs/wants. However, I don’t see it as an either-or of food for the masses versus ethanol for SUVs. The economy is more like a complicated ecosystem, and a tug in one place to generate more ethanol will have effects in many other places:
Soft drinks will become more expensive, or the ones with natural sweeteners will – the artificial sweeteners will, relatively speaking, drop in cost because the chemical industry is beginning to switch to coal as an alternative feedstock as oil is no longer affordable. I’m not touting this as a healthy alternative, but it is a potential logical outcome.
As cropland becomes more valuable to use for ethanol feedstocks, the price of livestock feed – and livestock – will escalate, and consumers will move lower down the food chain for economic reasons. I suspect for many people this is already happening – I know my family eats far less beef than we did 20 years ago. Fortunately, fish is good for you. Unfortunately, the oceans are being fished out. The combination will be a major push into aquaculture, with a push for laws and technologies to address the environmental problems seen in the industry to date. Crustaceans and shellfish will also be farmed – and our diet will come to resemble that of Asian nations.
There is also rabbit farming, which is a much more efficient way of converting grass to meat, as the Europeans knew. Based on cost differences, rabbit may be the new pork 25 years from now.
We could make these kinds of transitions now to allow the poor to eat while ethanol is being made, but even if we don’t, the market will inexorably force us in this direction anyway as the energy costs of generating and shipping everything becomes an increasingly important part of everything in our lives and our economy.
I’m not saying the market will solve everything nor that it is always the best way to do so, but in general the change in relative energy costs will ripple through the economy changing the relative prices of everything, opening up new industries (seafood and rabbit farming; local goods more cost competitive with imports) and making the most efficient way of doing business the most profitable as well (money acts like a stored form of energy).
And of course, government policies to curb global population growth would help as well, but we won’t have that “luxury” for a little while yet…
Perceptive comments Londonbear! Only soo much sunlight, land, potential crop production is possible on our little planet. At the same time geometrically increasing world population increases stress on our Biosphere. What is it now, over 6 billion?? Three to four decades out it is projected to be 12 Billion. That assumes we can sustain our increasing #s till then. Call me a pessimist, but I think that is highly improbable. Will it be a bird flu pandemic this year or next? Nuclear war over decreasing supplies of oil? Rapidly diminishing supplies of food as extinction of species increases due to environmental damage like global warming and industrial pollution? Some other looming catastrophe that my limited mind has yet to imagine??
Short term for humans = a very scary time. However, if life on the planet is to survive, perhaps an “adjustment” in human numbers is necessary. We are doing an efficient job of wrecking the place with 6, let alone 12 Billion, wouldn’t you say?
is it geometric growth or exponential?
One start could be to get rid of the subsidies given to corn and grain farmers to not produce a full 100% harvest. As I understand it, there are several crops [corn and grain among them] who receive government subsidies to not grow certain amounts of their crop to keep prices where they are and all regulated.
If those “surplus” crops could be used solely for ethanol, that could help lessen the blow. But I have no idea how much is not being grown and if that amount would even make a dent in the bigger picture.
on this subject (no pun intended) — can ethanol (or other fuel) be produced from waste products from food processing? I’m thinking of corn husks, fruit peels, etc.
Not quite the level of the DeLorean in Back to the Future, but who knows… 😉
It’s called “cellulosic ethanol”. Here‘s a short (well, medium) primer on the subject.
There are other crops as well that can be refined into ethanol. Switchgrass is one, and maybe soy(?). Corn takes a lot of intense pesticide & fertilizer use to grow. I know I’ve seen some argument against switchgrass and other crops, but can’t recall whether it was vs. those alternatives, or just dismissing ethanol entirely. Corn had been the focus of ethanol research for a long time.
Whatever solution, if it can’t be produced locally, you’ve still got enormous energy drains in the distribution system.
I cross posted this on the orange one and somebody pointed to a site extolling the virtues of a Canadian process to convert cellulose into sugars for ethanol use by breaking it down with enzymes. The remaining solids were used as fuel to produce heat and electricity to run the system.
I assumed for the sake of argument that this process would be applied to produce 85% ethanol fuel and that the cellulose waste (straw, husks etc) from wheat that could be used in the process weighed roughly the same as the grain. (This might be optimistic) The unfortunate thing is that it would take the entire world’s traded wheat to produce enough ethanol to provide 85% ethanol for Canada to replace the gasoline used.
The same site claimed the USA only has enough “feedstock” for about half the amount of ethanol it would need to replace petroleum with 85% ethanol.
As demands for massive annual production of raw plant fiber that can be turned into energy overwhelm us, the verboten weed, hemp, will inevitably be rescued from the DEA’s clutches and planted once again in every corner of every lousy bit of soil across the country.
It is possibly the highest yielding biomass crop available.
I am so totally serious, dude. Check it out at:
http://www.fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRG.htm
I don’t know about elsewhere but here in California(San Diego) many stations are over $3.00 a gallon. Two days ago I paid $2.93! Watch the prices in the grocery store go up too. In fact everywhere because most things are trucked or flown in. Thinking about flying somewhere this summer? Buy your tickets now because those prices are going up too.
So if GW Bush invaded Iraq to keep oil access (relatively)stable til after his term, will President McCain (ew)launch the liberation of Cuba to secure our sugar supply?
Was it a Ford executive I saw interviewed last night on Lou Dobbs? Said they were investing in engines that burn the stuff. I think it is a colossal mistake. People are complaining of not only the price of ethanol, more expensive than regular gas, but that it is not as fuel efficient. The hybrid is the way to go, and eventual total electric.
The American auto industry seems determined to defeat itself.
To answer Albert’s question: I’m in northern NJ, NYC metro area. Our closest “corn station,” as I’ve taken to calling them, seems to be PA, too far for a bio-fuel run vehicle to be feasible. I did just buy a Toyota Highlander hybrid (had to save up for a year and I still have $400 payments for 5 years), which has a 17.5 gallon gas tank. I get around 450 miles on a full tank, since I have to do a lot of local and city driving which doesn’t require gas (under 35 mph). Current gas prices are about $2.75 for regular, $2.95 premium. I understand NJ, where pumping your own gas is illegal, still manages to have among the lowest gas prices in the nation.
There are some pretty simple (at least nowadays) solutions for a lot of these issues. Try adding genes from sugar cane to that fast-growing bamboo (2 ft a day!), et voila. There just hasn’t been incentive for that before, but I guarantee someone is working on it and other innovations in what is a new, and therefore inefficient, ethanol production system.
While I am personally invested in sugar cane ethanol production, I do feel that to focus on one source of energy as a solution is probably not the way to go at all. I would much rather 1st world governments and industry pilot many parallel solutions (perhaps by region, based on access to local energy sources) and let competition determine which moves to supply the energy market, and the rest of the country if not the world. Ethanol, and mixed-fuel cars (as in Brazil) will be a simple stop-gap between the current hybrids and the time when hydrogen cars or whatever more permanent solution arises can be made affordable.
To run the global economy on ethanol would certainly be very destructive to the world environment eventually, so that’s why you won’t find too many folks not on ADM’s payroll saying such things. But it works great for diluting gasoline supplies to buy some more recreational highway time for the Jones.
So as far as ethanol goes, one important thing to do is to keep Congress from protecting our Corn and Sugar guys any more via subsidies (which crush 3rd world farmers). The next budget has to stop or begin the process of ending subsidies to stubborn American agricultural corporations and colonial remnant family sugar empires who won’t learn how to grow something profitable. In many ways, these subsidies are the price we pay to keep entire regions dependent on Western economic aid. I personally abhor this policy and feel that it alone makes the US responsible to make reparations to such areas beyond the creation of literal welfare states.. But that is another subject.
The concerns of bio-engineering aside, flex-fuel hybrid vehicles have got to be the regulation standard in the coming years. We have the technology to make cars that can run on any choice of fuels, and also feature the efficiency of hybrids technology (including the newer home recharging tech) has got to be part of the solution. There’s no excuse not to use innovative hybrid tech to reduce the use of any fuels (green or otherwise) in vehicles.
On a side note, isn’t that bamboo species quite invasive? You’d have to give it a terminator gene along with the cane sugar to keep it from taking over America. It’s an interesting idea though.
Would an infestation of genetically mutated moster sugarboo be all bad? It may well suck for 80% of life on Earth, but I bet energy costs would be pretty darned low.
Having any one solution for fuel seems to me would be very short sighted. It also would seem to be a good time to revisit some of emmasnacker’s diaries on hemp and a hemp based economy-from hemp run cars to thousands of other products it could be used for. If I remember right it also doesn’t do damage to the soil, is drought resistant and is more productive per acre than corn, cotton and other grown products.
Good post. Hemp can create more tons of biomass per acre than just about any other plant.
…from the guys over at The Oil Drum is that the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) is negative (or at least much less positive than for petroleum-based products), and hence relying on ethanol to replace petroleum is a losing strategy (and will only serve to hasten peak oil).
There’s not only the problems that londonbear points out, but there’s also all the other additional costs one has with ethanol production and the fact that you have to compare the costs in terms of production factor as well as the energy density of the finished product. Gallon for gallon, liter for liter, ethanol cannot hold a candle to gasoline.
I don’t know all the specifics, but the oil drum guys have done the math and they say we’re better off sticking with the current system than with going 100% ethanol or even just E85.
Obviously, the real way to go is hybrid and electric cars. But of course, the oil companies don’t like that idea….
Latest I have read, in various articles on Sugar Cane Ethanol is that Corn ethanol, in ideal circumstances, gives you 1.6 -1.8 units of energy for every 1 unit put in. The problem there is the energy necessary for transporting the goods (donkey barges make a comeback?) uses that small margin up.
According to these articles, sugar cane ethanol produces 6-8 units of energy per unit put in (at least if you are producing in Brazil). I hope that larger margin can provide for the additional transport costs of ethanol from South America to here. I imagine a molasses pipeline (pour some hot water over it to increase flow rate) from the Amazon to Texan refineries.. Kidding aside, perhaps this will spur North American investment in South American tranportation and energy infrastructure, as well as our own, giving those countries the leg up they need to fulfill their promises to their people and keep their economies modern and vital..
So, self-sufficiency from American-made ethanol is a pipe dream it seems, but foreign ethanol will likely be a part of our future. We could use a dependency closer to home and farther from eternal conflicts like the whole Arab/Israel thing. Once a junky, always a junky, but ethanol has fewer geo-political ramifications. So far.
The most exciting thing is that if we aren’t complacent, perhaps decent humans who are less attached to the current oil industry can enter emerging energy markets as entrepenuers and innovators. Or we can wait for the powers that are to reposition themselves for the next century of subsidies, corporate welfare and political corruption.
There are two different energy markets. There is the one for liquid fuels (or compressed gas) to be used in transportation and there is the fuel needed primarily for electricity production.
Currently there is no viable alternative to liquid fuels, electric vehicles are not yet practical. In a place like the US where everything is spread out transportation is vital and for the foreseeable future liquid fuels well be in demand and command a premium price. This means that even if it takes more energy in than a gallon of liquid fuel yields this will not prevent the liquid fuel from being made. It will just cost more.
Electricity generation has gone over to natural gas in the past few decades because it was cheap, the plant was cheap and fast to build and the pollution issues were easier to solve. Natural gas is now in short supply in the US and efforts to bring in LNG are lagging. We can expect to see a push to substitute coal and nuclear in the near future.
Without a national industrial policy which deals with the issues of transportation and industrial development there will be no real changes in the trends that already becoming clear.
Hemp. Grows faster than corn, doesn’t need a lot of pesticides (the plant itself is a repellent if memory serves).
Marijuana and hemp are the same plant, but the differnce is that marijuana is bred for the flowering tops, while hemop is raised for the stalk and seed. Hemp is useless as a recreational chemical: think of the dirtiest, seediest schwag you’ve ever smoked.
Not that I’ve ever used that stuff. 😛