In some ways the Ethanol movement is beginning to look like another government give away program where a few select family members get to go on a World cruise at taxpayer's expense. Perhaps this is simply the unavoidable cost of progress..Capitalism may be fraught with pork and graft but nothing fuels new discoveries quite like the promise of financial gain.

A Distraction from the real solution?

This particular version of ethanol production seems to have some marked advantages over the more popular corn processing we now push but in the final analysis it is still a combustion technology. For those who are concerned about Global Warming ( an exercise in folly IMO ) it doesn't make much sense to rally behind another combustion technology. Yes it burns more efficiently but it yields less energy per unit and so more must be burned to achieve the same amount of work, what you gain in efficiency of process you lose in total amount of process. I don't know if anyone has done the math yet but It could be close to a zero sum effort from a purely chemical standpoint ( because a btu is a btu ) however there's more to the story.

Some Hidden Benefits

If we must continue to develop combustion technologies then perhaps we could look at Ethanol from an overall economic standpoint. There is an advantage to keeping the money here at home and the analysis of the real cost of Gasoline is a bit more complex than subtracting product cost from refinery and transportation costs. After a discussion with Ducadmo in a thread authored by Dubina [ wherein I was obliged to do a Tartuffian level proofing :) ] I am forced to retract the common myth that has been popularly propounded that Ethanol is a net energy loser. There are a number of erroneous reports that have apparently been done with biased research that indicate, and incorrectly so, that it takes more energy to create one gallon of ethanol than can be harvested from the same gallon. This simply is not true and smacks of big oil propaganda.

Maybe the best choice for the Immediate future.

In the final analysis it would appear that there are more benefits to us as a nation than we have previously been lead to believe for the use of Ethanol even if corn is not the ideal source. All actions will have some unintended consequences. The key to survival lies not in laying down before the onslaught but in finding a way to calm the overreaction and the "Sky is falling " chorus. Corn is a very hearty crop. Why can't we just grow more of it? Or if not corn there are other alternatives...either way it would appear that ethanol is a net positive for the immediate energy needs of our nation. If the development of such technologies depends on government funding then we may be sure that oil company lobbyists will be doing whatever they can to slow it down...as a nation we simply have not become pissed off enough to force the issue..but wait...when we start paying eight, nine and ten dollars for a gallon of petroleum product...we might be.

Words to that effect

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I have seen his presentation before. He is making the claim that we can totally replace oil with ethanol ...clearly a financial ploy...

Most of the articles that I researched presented the far more plausible scenario of using ethanol to help control petroleum prices...something that makes a lot more sense than total replacement.

One thing I keep noticing in the background in all of the issues here is the assumption that we will be able to sustain combustion technology...this is where I disagree. I think that one of our biggest problems lies in not seeing combustion technology as the main culprit...the more we reduce combustion technology and find alternatives the less hydrocarbon fuel, be it ethanol or gasoline, we will need.

well, you've come halfway into the hellish realm of repulican-think. now take another step, and consider the following:

• there is no equation, anywhere, that shows that ethanol is keeping the price of gas down. in fact, its been skyrocketing.
• the price of corn, and all related grains, is skyrocketing, too
• if ethanol was the answer, then why is foreign ethanol not subject to the same "incentives" as we give to domestic farmers?
• didn't we build huge, thirsty pickup trucks and SUVs, for DECADES, simply as a tactic for keeping the united autoworkers from going unemployed at an even faster pace?
• isn't ethanol production basically a dead end? petroleum refineries cannot be used to distill ethanol, and the new one's being built for ethanol will be unsuitable for any other purpose, too. that's an awful lot of infrastructure and capital investment, for something that's going to dead-end in 5-10 years, when expanded renewable resources come online.

Good post...

What the heck would that be, I wonder. Let me clue you in - a renewable resource basically means that the energy comes from the sun. Period. The sun is the only thing that puts energy into our little system. Energy from the sun can be used directly. Or we can use wind (the sun makes the air move around) or we can build hyrdo-electric dams (the sun evaporates water and it comes back as rain) or we can harvest photosynthetical organics.

That's about it.

You would think using solar energy would be the most efficient, but wind is the easiest to capture. We've been doing for ages - ever since mankind invented the sail.

But for massive systems, we need storage and distribution and that breaks down into two simple systems - electricity and combustible fuels. Now, there is interest in hydrogen as a combustible, but the advantage of organic hydrocarbons is that they can be blended into the mix of fossil-derived hydrocarbons in various ratios and many of our cars are smart enough to adapt their combustion.

There will be competition between electical and combustible power and that's where hybrid technology comes into play. Electrical drives provide high-torque, but batteries don't take you far. Tuning the Integration of electrical and combustion systems is going to be how this all plays out for the better part of this century.

The price of gas isn't going to come down much, because the demand will continue to increase and ethanol is the best product to mix with gas. Biodiesel will have a market as long as there are diesel engines. You still have to grow the bio part of the diesel. One way or another, a renewable combustible is grown and harvested - be it corn, sugar cane, beets, switchgrass, jatropha, or algae. And the end product will be a vegetable oil or ethanol.

There is nothing else. Not this century.

Largely agree, but I remain cautious about how much positive impact that will have. For all the crops used here, it seems that the net energy balance is not that good, and the environmental and economic impact of the amount of land required to be cultivated for feedstock to produce meaningful quantities of bio-fuels cannot be ignored.

I am more optimistic about use of electricity (from solar or wind), as better energy storage becomes feasible -- I would include hydrogen in that category.

Far more compelling argument than ethanol, in my opinion.

already in widespread use

no new refinery infrastructure needed

plenty of fuel in North America

factory-built NGVs (Natural Gas Vehicles) or conversions available

cleaner, more efficient than gasoline or diesel

a dead end. It truly surprises me that no too many in charge are looking at the real cause of our oil thirst...the spark and cylinder prime movers that consume the largest amounts of hydrocarbon fuels collectively. This is where we need to begin to make any kind of lasting difference...rather than looking for ways to feed the drunk we need to get him off the bottle.

A single 20 MW power plant...( very small by today's standards ) fueled with #6 crude can use as much as 30,000 gallons a day..considering that most of that is carbon you have probably 150,000 pounds or more of C02.

Industrial boilers are expensive to maintain and the steam systems that accompany them are also a pain in the ass requiring all kinds of technical support and chemical treatment to avoid corrosion and scaling.

On the other hand a 20 MW Wind farm...about 15 turbines produces no CO2 ( you know that's not a big issue with me anyway ) uses no water, no hydrocarbon fuel and requires nothing but the set up costs to run for as many as five years with minimal maintenance.

From what I have been able to glean, since we are doomed to use hydrocarbons for at least the next thirty years, ethanol is indeed keeping the price of an average btu or an average therm down. It would appear that gasoline would be even more expensive than it is now without the minimal competition. Of course the ethanol producers themselves are customers of the oil companies too...a fact that many ethanol advocates tend not to mention.

What I find curious about the claims above in one of the links that ethanol is a 34% net positive is the absence of independently powered plants that need no input from petroleum products whatsoever.....34% to the positive should be more than enough to accomplish that and yet we do not see it.

is not NG also an opec product? Are we not subjected to the same cycles of commodities piracy and the like? I don't know for sure but I suspect that it is the same cycle of supply and demand that screws us now with petoleum.

open to suggestions

jo

Agree as an interim step, but it is not a renewable resource. And it is certainly subject to the price volatility similar to oil.

Yadda yadda. Corn, wind, sun. We're already doing the hydro thing. Have been for years.

None of these things are currently capable of replacing fossil fuels. We do have a proven technology that can provide tons of power with very little waste.

It never ceases to astound me when people make the argument that you burn less fuel with electric cars. Heck, they use electricity, not that dirty terror-tainted gasoline. So, apparently, this electricity is generated from hamster-wheels, people scuffing across carpets in socks, and peppermints crunched in darkened rooms. Totally doesn't consume fuel.

Nobody's interested in coconut power yet, but I'm certain my investment will pay off.

But we don't get any of it from OPEC

And we only import 12% of what we consume, almost all from Canada

I'm interested in energy independence now (or soon), ahead of renewable energy in the future, because of how badly dependence on OPEC has distorted our Foreign Policy

supply and demand are one thing but they do not begin to account for the recent runup in price.

Whatever the views of the IEA, it should be clear that the recent rise in oil prices is not driven by fundamentals. Economists differ about the price elasticity of oil, but the lowest plausible estimates for short-term price elasticity are around 10%, with medium-term elasticity being much higher. Thus if oil legend T Boone Pickens is right that oil supplies are currently 85 million barrels per day and oil demand is 87 million, that is a supply shortfall of 2.4%, which at a 10% elasticity should produce a price increase of 24%, not 60%. Hutchinson

The rest is speculation driven by low interest rates, and geostrategic risk premium.

i charge my electric truck with power generated by nuclear and coal

See, that's good. I'm all for electric cars, but I do wish people would occasionally stop to think about whence the electricity flows.

It's been astonishing to me just how much agreement we have here on BOTF about energy. Sure, you get some whack-jobs who want to cut the population in half, and some deniers who think we should all just get solar panels and everything will work out. But there seems to be wide agreement on:

1. Research into clean stuff;
2. Nuke plants; and
3. Opening up more drilling.

This strikes me as an eminently sensible policy, not killing either the economy or the environment.

BOTF needs to send a White Paper.