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These days, ethanol is praised as the whiz-bang cure-all for our energy ills. And maybe all the sweet talk will cause this "new" fuel to forget that America dumped her for oil in the early 20th century. Oil's just so ... ew all of a sudden. We may finally be ready to return to our first love, an energy source that's been by our side in some form or another since Neolithic times. Oil was too high-maintenance and demanding, anyway.
And ethanol's a much better match ... right? Or maybe biodiesel is the one? Or vegetable oil? Hemp? Turkey guts?
For all the hype, most people barely know enough about biofuels to drop a line or two at a cocktail party. What is ethanol, and how's it different from biodiesel, and where does fry grease come in? Are there cars that can run on this stuff, and who's making them, and where can they fuel up? Who sells it, who makes money off it, and why's it such a political darling? Does "cellulosic" ethanol actually exist in the wild? What's the big deal with Brazil? And does Willie Nelson really run his bong on biodiesel?
We're here to help. Biofuels -- derived from recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, aka plants, animals, and poop -- are back, big time. Here's your two-week crash course.
Biofuels series index:
Explainers
Issues and implications
Profiles of proponents
Helpful resources
- How the world got addicted to oil, and where biofuels will take us.
- The numbers behind ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel in the U.S.
- How experts measure the energy balance of alternative fuels.
- Cellulosic ethanol may be coming sooner than you think.
Not so fast: Issues and implications
- A look at the impacts of biofuels production, in the U.S. and the world.
- How cash and corporate pressure pushed ethanol to the fore.
- It's time for a real "food vs. fuel" debate.
- What Brazil can teach the U.S. about energy and ethanol.
- As its neighbors back biofuels, Central America gears up for business.
- Three perspectives on the biofuels debate.
- To fulfill its environmental promises, biofuel policy needs a kick in the pants.
- Toward a community-owned, decentralized biofuel future.
- An interview with biofuels naysayer David Pimentel.
- An environmental-justice advocate responds to the biofuels boom.
- What we've learned from the biofuels series.
Count me in: Profiles of proponents
- Using grease and other goodies, small producers are making a big difference.
- Grassroots biodiesel operations contend with industrial sand-kickers.
- How a grassroots biodiesel group can show the way for others.
- An interview with Seattle biodiesel distributor Dan Freeman.
- An interview with Greasecar founder Justin Carven.
- Richard Branson chats about embracing ethanol and slashing airplane emissions.
- Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla chats about the promise of ethanol.
- Biofuel pioneer Lee Lynd points the way toward a "carbohydrate economy."
- An interview with Missouri farmer and ethanol co-op member Brian Miles.
- A biodiesel entrepreneur in Argentina spreads seeds of wisdom.
- Grains become fuel at the world's first cellulosic ethanol demo plant.
- An interview with Mary Beth Stanek, General Motors energy director.
- Find out which cars can run on ethanol and biodiesel.
- All the resources you need to hop on the biofuels bandwagon.
- A handy biofuels glossary, and videos to boot.
- The what, where, and why of E85 ethanol.
- A lighthearted look at biofuels through time.
- The strangest biofuel sources you've never heard of.
- The top 10 reasons to give a hoot about biofuels.
- Check out the latest entries in the celeb-biofuels biz.
To add a link to this series from your website or blog, save the following image and link it to: http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/04/biofuels/
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MiscanthusMiscanthus is another grass similar to switchgrass this guy..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5702888891289509...
(Long video I don't remember where)
Thinks it is a much better option than Switchgrass I think
Just wanted to mention Miscanthus
The numbers on biofuelMontenegro's article is useful, but misses a major point -- there is no free lunch.
If you use switchgrass, or anthing else growing to create fuel, especially if you use the residual lignin for combustion, you are depleting the soil at an incredible rate. Yields will shortly fall dramatically unless tremendous energy inputs are used to maintain soil fertility.....so you're back to square 1 or zero.
Second, when she talks of 93% more energy out than in, thats and energy return of less than 2:1. Petroleum yields 20:1, even now on the cusp of peak oil. If we restructured society to use perhaps 5% of the fuel we do now for vehicles, and none for heating or industrial processes, biofuel sources might make sense.
BiofuelThere is an alternative to Biodiesel that you have not researched. This biofueldoes not use methanol which is harmful to your engine and allows a greater mixture volume of organic matter in the fuel which produces less emissions. It is called Viesel.
biofuels GOP twistConsumer Reports Oct 06 article entitled the ethonol myth shows how GOP math in Federal regulations allows GM to say a two-wheel drive Tahoe normally rated at 21 mpg, because it is built to run on E85, is EPA rated at 35 mpg! That report also compared actual mpg, acceleration, and emissions with E-85 and gasoline in their Tahoe. For GM buying regulations is cheaper than developing true hybrids. My 05 Prius (for which I waited 11 months) averages in the upper 40s mpg, but developing their hybrid system cost Toyota lots of dollars.
Slash and BurnYou make a good point -- during the period that man gobbled oil without restraint, it was also the time when the comfort and civilization of man increased the most.
Yet, no one seems to get the point. It's not about trying to keep a constant source of oil. It's about making sure that the physicist driving his car to the anti-matter reactor at CERN, has enough gas to get to a meeting, so he can have an insight in 2035 about a whole new generation of energy.
If that doesn't happen, then we may have 1000 years left, or 100, but we won't have 100,000 and beyond.
You Read It Here First
need to account for PHEVsBiofuels can't be expected to provide more than about 10% of our fuel needs, due to limitations of sustainable agriculture in this country.
That said, you didn't even mention the most efficiently produced biofuel: renewable methane. With a given amount of biomass, one can produce about twice the fuel (from the standpoint of energy content) in the form of methane than one can in producing ethanol. And the leftover byproduct is valuable fertilizer, as much of the nitrogen is retained in it. This is compared with ethanol, every drop of which much be essentially boiled from water to purify it adequately for use.
PHEVs (pluggable hybrid electric vehicles) are needed to fill in the large the gap for our country to become independent of oil. PHEVs make efficient use of electric energy to much of our transportation energy needs. PHEVs, plus some biofuel, plus some synthesized fuel (solar/wind electric to hydrogen to methane) can take us to the 100% replacement that is desired and will eventually be required.
Nice piece MaywaSome notes:
Making biodiesel from algae is analogous to making ethanol from cellulose. Both technologies hold great promise but neither has been proven economically feasible.
The following two sentences sound contradictory:
Also note that this is for soy biodiesel. Palm oil biodiesel is far more CO2 neutral but about 100% more destructive of biodiversity, which makes it worse from a global warming perspective because further production of palm oil will require destroying remaining carbon sinks (the destruction of which presently accounts for about 20% of all global warming).
Note also that these standards will bring cars that burn regular diesel up to par with gasoline cars. In other words, one of the biggest reasons to use biodiesel (less pollution) will be mooted. That will leave energy independence and reduced CO2 as the remaining arguments. But, since we can only replace half of a percent of our diesel (as you point out) the energy independence argument is a farce and should be tossed. That leaves one argument for its use. It produces less CO2. But, is that 78% less or 41%? ...read more
Ethanol the new eco-diversionI rented and drove a GM EV1 oil-free, zero-emission, highway-capable battery electric vehicle (EV) almost seven years ago. It was fast, comfortable and practical for a visit to Los Angeles (with its hundreds of free recharging parking spots.)
Hundreds of people still drive practical EVs such as the Toyota RAV4 EV, one of the few survivors of the great major-automaker EV crushfest a few years back. Tesla is making sports EVs now; Commuter Cars sells its fast Tango EV and another practical highway EV debuts next week in Santa Monica.
Almost half of the RAV4 EV drivers charge them from home solar installations for truly zero-emission driving. All the noise about ethanol (replacing the now-debunked hydrogen hype)serves to distract Americans from the promise of EVs that can be built right now.
BiofuelsThe 3 pieces under Fill 'er up have some very useful information, but two significant points are overlooked:
the focus is entirely on fuel, but the fuel is supposed to run something, like cars and trucks. They do not come out of thin air, but use other nonrenewable materials that, like oil, are on depletion curves. Manufacturing the vehicles also takes lots of energy.
we cannot hope to replace significant amounts of fossil fuels with biofuels, NRDC notwithstanding. NRDC's scheme calls for a lot of rich folks who can afford 50+mpg cars and "smart growth" has to supplant many thousands of acres of dumb growth already on the land.
Corn ethanol is, as noted in your pieces, a nonstarter for serious inroads on oil. The entire 2005 U.S. corn crop devoted to ethanol would replace only 3% of our current gas consumption.
biofuels Use of land vs driling in the Artic for nIn the article on the the numbers related to biofuels, the suthor calmly says that a "reasonable" chunck of land could produce108 billion gallons of biofuel.. Thats the equivalent of 4.9 million barrels per day of oil production. But it would take 250 acres of land. A reasonable chunk! Comparewd to the 80 million acrwes in corn today, where is all this farm land, water and fertilizer coming from. Also it takes at best 75% of that amount of fuel to produce the end resule meaning there is at best 1.3 net barrels of biofuel produced, and at a 70% energy production of oil that's less than 1 million barreels per day of oil replaced.
We cold get that amount of ol from the use of less than a thousand acres in the Artic reserve. Which is mnore earth friendly. 250 acres in switchgrass production with all of its fertilizer use, need for water,emissions from equipment and bio generation palnts and destruction off open grassing lands or 1,000 acres out of a 100,000 acre in Alaska.