As President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress mull a bailout for ethanol makers, the industry absorbed two body blows this past week.
1) The Environmental Working Group released a study revealing the profound opportunity costs associated with our government’s generous support for ethanol.
The corn-based fuel grabs three-quarters of all federal renewable-energy tax credits, EWG reports. Ethanol gets more four times as much cheese as wind, solar, and geothermal combined. If you add in support for biodiesel, biofuels grab 80 percent—four dollars in five—of federal tax largesse to renewable fuels. In short, the dubious practice of turning corn and soy into liquid car fuel is crowding out other more energy-rich and sustainable energy sources.
2) A professor from Iowa State University—ground zero of ethanol fervor—has broken ranks and issued a scathing, cogent critique [PDF] of of the ethanol program. Here’s a juicy sample from the paper, by Dennis Keeney, emeritus professor, Department of Agronomy and Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering:
About 6.7% of the gasoline used in the U.S. will be displaced by ethanol in 2009, when corrected for the lower energy content of ethanol and assuming an annual gasoline consumption of 140 billion gallons. Assuming a net energy gain in the conversion of corn to ethanol of 1.25, there is a net energy displacement of approximately 2.8 billion gallons of gasoline, about a 2% net energy gain. If the energy in nonfuel byproducts (e.g. distillers grains, which are used for cattle feed) is removed from the equation, the net energy gain is close to nil. In other words, ethanol from corn will do nothing to boost net energy supplies.
Let’s put these two assessments together: We’re handing three-quarters of the resources we have for alternative fuels to one that delivers precisely ... nothing. At a time of rapid climate change and mounting budget deficits.
Below, a few choice nuggets from the two papers.
From the EWG report:
By 2010, ethanol will cost taxpayers more than $5 billion a year—more than is spent on all U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs to protect soil, water and wildlife habitat.
This is scandalous. Ethanol subsidies promote the exapansion of industrial corn agriculture—an environmentally ruinous process. Conservation programs try to mitigate industrially ruinous agriculture—by, say, leaving buffer strips between chemical-drenched corn fields and streams, or taking marginal land out of production.
In other words, ethanol subsidies and conservation programs are directly at odds (strange, given that ethanol is sometimes sold as an "environmental solution.") It’s telling that government largesse flows more generously to ethanol than to conservation.
From the Keeney paper:
Had ethanol expansion been subject to environmental assessment guidelines and or life cycle analyses, the ethanol support policies, in my opinion, would never have been adopted. However, as I have stated, money, not science, has driven ethanol fuel policy.
This pretty much speaks for itself. I have to note that Keeney is an emeritus professor—i.e., retired and not dependent on the next Monsanto grant to fund his research. Would that his colleagues at land grant colleges across the country be as blunt about biofuel.
Comments
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biodiversivist Posted 6:23 am
10 Jan 2009
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 6:56 am
10 Jan 2009
A 5k subsidy per system would support 1 million of these energy, oil, and GHG saving installations. That's a lot of job stimulus too.
Carefully targeted to replace fuel oil heating in public buildings, it would also allow smart grid operation that can store heat in building mass.
And how much would a 1 million unit order from the government reduce the manufacturing costs?
Subsidy diversion, from the whole range of bad lobbyist driven choices to better ideas like this, could refocus over 50 billion per year from corporate welfare for fossil, nuclear, and agribizz, to actual economy stimulating manufacturing and installation.
A 4% per year reduction in oil use obtained through this method, would prevent energy prices from killing the recovery, as soon as it starts up. Has prices are already on the way up again. Scamming insider trade manipulating markets are set to clobber any move to the upside.
Re-regulation and oil demand reduction just might foil the exxonmob this time around? It's worth a try.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:21 pm
10 Jan 2009
One of the world's finest scientists, Dr. James E. Hansen says, "Tell Barack Obama the truth - the whole truth" about human-driven climate destabilization.
Perhaps here and now, we will find that other great scientists, the likes of Jim Hansen and John Holdren, will speak out loudly, clearly and often to tell Barack Obama the truth - the whole truth about the apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific research of human population dynamics as essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species; about absolute global human population numbers as a function of the world's food supply; about human population numbers being determined by food availability; and about the daunting threats potentially posed to the family of humanity and life as we know it, even in these early years of Century XXI, resulting from the skyrocketing growth of human population numbers worldwide.
For repeated references to the good science of Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., and David Pimentel, Ph.D., please click on the links below. Comments from one and all are invited.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/content.html?contentid ...
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:11 am
11 Jan 2009
For practical purposes, complaining about EROEI is just a strawman argument since that hurdle is easy enough to cross.
The real issue is:
1. Total Carbon Emissions (Direct & InDirect)
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol10
2. Resource scarcity of Fertilizer, Farm-land, and Fresh-water
http://greyfalcon.net/biolimits.png
BioFuels are gonna have a much harder time solving those, (If at all).
And unless they can, we shouldn't support anything but their R&D.
(Much in the same way that we shouldn't be subsidizing conventional coal. Subsidizing coal sequestration R&D is tolerable.
http://greyfalcon.net/coalptc.png)
-David Ahlport
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Pompey Road Posted 12:01 pm
11 Jan 2009
But since our new president is from a corn state I doubt the subsidy will cut anytime soon.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:10 pm
11 Jan 2009
But it's not good at solving the Lifecycle Emissions, and Resource Scarcity issues.
Not to mention, part of the way it gets that higher EROEI number isn't terribly ethical.
http://greyfalcon.net/brazil4
-David Ahlport
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