At Popular Mechanics, The Ethanol Fallacy: Op-Ed
The idea is so appealing: We can reduce our dependence on oilâ€â€stop sending U.S. dollars to corrupt petro-dictators, stop spewing megatons of carbon into the atmos¬phereâ€â€by replacing it with clean, home-grown, all-American corn. It sounds too good to be true.
Sadly, it is.
Now, I like Iowa and Iowans (not the least, IowaHawk), but do you suppose any of the candidates would speak truth to Big Ethanol at this time in the campaign? I didn’t think so.
If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation  or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we’ve turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?
DING!
Oops! Part two of the quote above:
There’s a simple reason that ethanol is popular with politicians: money. Substituting corn ethanol for a large fraction of the gasoline we burn will mean sluicing gushers of cash from more populated states to politically powerful farm states. And a lot of that cash will wind up in the pockets of the big agribusinesses, like Archer Daniels Midland, that dominate ethanol processing  and whose fat checkbooks wield enormous influence in Washington.
Greased palms in Washington? Imagine that!
Actually that isn’t the point. We can probably find ways to produce more corn, or otherwise make up the shortfall.
The ethanol craze is based on the proposition that Exxon-Mobil are vicious unfeeling profiteers, therefore they should be replaced by Archer Daniels Midland. This is as good a working definition of “insanity” as could be formulated.
Regards,
Ric
Actually, John McCain has denounced ethanol subsidies, in Iowa no less.
Bravo for McCain!
If this pans out, then we can talk ethanol. Meanwhile, let’s build a bunch of nuke plants and Teslas.
Rick,
Unlike oil, new “reserves” of corn are not going to be “discovered”. Growing more corn means growing less soybeans, cotton or other alternative crops. Corn prices, along with the prices of most other grains, have skyrocketed this year as demand for protein (pork, chicken soy-protein)is growing dramatically in the emerging economies.
At the same time, end-stocks of most grains are near all-time lows, a sign that demand has exceeded supply for some period of time.
Urban consumers eat 4X the protein of the rural peasants, so as China & India continue to urbanize their populations, the demand for protein will grow even greater.
That protein will come mostly from pork and poultry, both of which consume many pounds of grains to produce 1 pound of edible protein for humans.
Worse yet, corn-based ethanol produces a 1-to-1 energy ratio, whereas sugar cane-based ethanol produces an 8-to-1 energy ratio. That’s why Brazil has gone on a crash program of converting the majority of it’s motor vehicles to cane based-ethanol hybrid status.
We need to get away from corn and focus on cellulosic-based ethanol produced from switch grass or bio-diesel produced from waste.
Corn is not the solution, it’s just an agri-business boondoggle that must be ended.
Ah, more http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Dec17/0,4670,CornDeadZone,00.htmlunintended consequences
Ethanol n: a combustible liquid derived from mixing corn, tax dollars, and political pandering.
Oh! NOW I know what I’m doing wrong…
unintended consequences
Still no word from The Goracle, his legions of Gorons and Iowans in general as to the ethical implications of using food to fuel transportation while some of the world’s citizens struggle to feed themselves.
sorry people, pay no attention to me as I try and figure out how to make the link actually work.
unintended consequences
Move Iowa’s primary to April and a huge industry would die a painful death. And poor assed Mexicans could afford tortillas again.
I am saving my money for one of these:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15146
*sigh*
sorry
I’ll quit now.
Unintended consequences.
Yep.
pvc, I see you’ve been raiding my hard disk under “My Rants and Raves”.
Actually, the solution is (once again) nuclear power plants. If we could get ADM to promote them, they’d be up by next Christmas at the latest.
Cellulosic ethanol could then be easily derived from the rest of the corn plant — the process works perfectly, it just requires more energy than the ethanol contains, thus the need for energy from somewhere — and used for motor fuel. The residue could then be returned to the farmers as soil conditioner, because the only thing lost from it would be the carbon in the cellulose.
It’s as good a way as might exist for converting nuclear energy, which is hard to make portable, into vehicle fuel. The biggest advantage is that it would require enormously less modification of our fuel delivery and storage systems than hydrogen.
Regards,
Ric
According to this power-point presentation from Argonne National Labs, ethanol is fo shizzle. The net energy yield is waaaay higher than gasoline. Take it with a chunk of salt.
I’m not really smart on this stuff. No really. But seems to me that if you had a policy goal of plentiful, cheap electricity, generated pretty much how ever, you’d be more apt to get people working on ways to use electricity in the stead of fossil fuels, whether for heating or transportation or whatever it is all the oil we use is currently being used for. Then you’ll have framed the problem of producing electricity at that market price using non-carbon sources.
Which is what is happening anyway just more slowly cause Democrats are hell-bent on raising the costs of electricity production. This is because they are gay.
16.Comment by Spiny Norman on 12/21 @ 2:03 pm
Show off!!
This is because they are gay.
I KNEW it!
It isn’t just the corn lobby. It’s the sugar lobby. Combined, that’s why we have “high-fructose corn syrup” instead of sugar, and ethanol from corn instead of ethanol from sugar. Ethanol from sugar would actually make sense; Brazil does this on a gigantic scale. But both parties are completely in the pocket of the sugar lobby.
You gotta figure at some point genetic engineering can be pretty much a gamechanger irrespective of lobbies. That will be cool and very modern.
Seems to me there’s a lot of crops they could turn into fuel and I’d never miss ’em. Like, okra. And Brussels sprouts. And asparagus. And…