I've only just seen this study by Tiffany A. Groode, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and not looked at it in detail, but several statements in the press release stand out:
Now a new MIT analysis shows that the energy balance is actually so close that several factors can easily change whether ethanol ends up a net energy winner or loser.
Regardless of the energy balance, replacing gasoline with corn-based ethanol does significantly reduce oil consumption because the biomass production and conversion process requires little petroleum.
Groode incorporated into her analysis the uncertainty associated with the values of many of the inputs. Using a methodology developed by a recent MIT graduate, she used not just one value for each key variable (such as the amount of fertilizer required), but rather a range of values along with the probability that each of those values would occur.
Based on her "most likely" outcomes, she concluded that traveling a kilometer using ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline.
So why does the press release proclaim, "MIT ethanol analysis confirms benefits of biofuels"? Because cornstarch ethanol forms part of a continuum, you see:
Groode and Heywood now view the three ethanol sources [corn starch, corn stover, and switchgrass] as a continuum. In the future, cellulosic sources such as corn stover and ultimately switchgrass can provide large quantities of ethanol for widespread use as a transportation fuel. In the meantime, ethanol made from corn can provide some immediate benefits.
By consuming more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline??
"I view corn-based ethanol as a stepping-stone," said Groode. "People can buy flexible-fuel vehicles right now and get used to the idea that ethanol or E85 works in their car. If ethanol is produced from a more environmentally friendly source in the future, we'll be ready for it."
Here we go again. As I have argued elsewhere on these pages, that kind of logic is specious. One could just as well make a case that subsidies to gasoline (since gasoline will continue to be blended with ethanol for many years to come) or spark-combustion engines (which are required for cars to run on ethanol) would help in the construction of a bridge to that elusive, switchgrass-based ethanol future.
Setting aside the pros and cons of such a future, normally the value of a "stepping stone" is the gap it allows one to cross. But if the time it takes people to "get used to the idea that ethanol or E85 works in their car" can be counted in months, whereas the era of subsidized cornstarch-based ethanol production can be counted in years, if not decades -- especially if the 51 cent/gallon federal volumetric ethanol excise tax credit and the 54 cent/gallon import tariff on ethanol are made permanent, as has been proposed in at least one bill before Congress -- then that stepping stone is more likely serving as a great big doorstop.
Comments
View as Flat
Whiskerfish Posted 6:32 am
12 Jan 2007
Whiskerfish
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GreenEngineer Posted 6:40 am
12 Jan 2007
From a technical point of view, this is a provably false position. Each material requires different processes and different technologies to convert to ethanol, with different challenges, different economics, and different expectations of yield. To suggest that making ethanol from fermented corn only differs from making it from enzyme-digested cellulose by a matter of degree is to completely ignore the technical realities. It's much more of a step-function than a continuum.
I would have expected better of MIT.
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Sam Wells Posted 7:13 am
12 Jan 2007
As one really sick-puppy expert pointed out to me, "making a case for ethanol is like eating your grandmother so as to save the family."
Sorry, that was gross but a direct quote, not mine.
Onward through the fog
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David Roberts Posted 8:08 am
12 Jan 2007
www.grist.org
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claxton6 Posted 8:58 am
12 Jan 2007
I didn't get the impression she was talking about those three being stepping stones among themselves, but among the consuming public, in terms of changing over all of the infrastructure that's built around just petroleum (3-grades plus diesel, plus two basic engine types, gas and diesel). That seems to me to be a different problem from the technology conversions needed to make the fuel, since those are relatively concentrated compared with the consumer side, which is relatively diverse and distributed.
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Sam Wells Posted 12:54 pm
12 Jan 2007
I can check around Austin if you want some of those cool old bumper stickers. /Sammie
Onward through the fog
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:39 pm
12 Jan 2007
"Viewing" corn ethanol as a stepping stone is one thing, proving it is another. Weak reasoning.
I find it pretty damn humorous that the argument over the energy balance of corn ethanol continues into its third decade.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 5:51 pm
12 Jan 2007
And yet, the Wolf, in the Brothers Grimm story, does not mind eating up Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, does he. And in Stephen Sondheim's re-telling of the story in "Into the Woods," the Wolf sings with joyful anticipation:
<<
Grandmother first, then Miss Plump...
What a delectable couple
Utter perfection
One brittle, one supple -
>>
And then, of course, turning to an anthropophagous genius from a different story-telling tradition, we can be confident that Dr. Hannibal Lecter would have some interesting menu suggestions.
Anyway, I am afraid I do not quite see how "making a case for ethanol is like eating your grandmother to save your family." Presumably, the premiss is that the production of ethanol would necessarily involve the removal or destruction of some essential life-bringing resource. But if so -- and I acknowledge at once that I could be misreading this -- , then the simile does not quite work, because grandmothers are not strictly essential in securing the succession of human lineages. (Sorry, SMLowry.) Anthropologists have observed that grandmothers are highly valuable members of their societies, in a number of ways, ranging from baby-sitting to the conveying of traditional wisdom. But as the modern Anglo-American model of the nuclear family makes clear, their presence is not absolutely required.
(But do not worry, SMLowry, I doubt anyone is going to eat you, any time soon. If anybody is going to get et first, it is second-class citizens like me ... )
On similes, and analogies: What a nasty blow it is to me, in my declining years, as I behold the decay of our civilization, bit by sorry bit, to hear that the SAT people have removed the analogies section! And not only that, but that their decision evoked celebrations and choruses of Hallelujah!, throughout the land, from young and old alike. But that was my favorite section; those questions were always so much fun ...
Anyway, back to eating Grandmother: Bruno Bettelheim, examining fairy stories through a psychoanalytic lens, gave a thought-provoking interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood's Wolf, to this effect: "So, who, really, is this gray-haired, long-toothed, dangerous, frightening man-eater, whom the innocent young girl finds lying beneath the covers of the bed of her Grandmother? Why, of course, he is none other than Grandfather."
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Whiskerfish Posted 1:38 am
13 Jan 2007
For the folks at MIT to rightfully claim that they are making a worthwhile contribution to anything by providing a 'stepping stone' for the public, they must show us compellingly that such a stepping stone is in fact needed. I don't think it is.
Cheers
Whiskerfish in a beautiful African afternoon
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amazingdrx Posted 2:45 am
13 Jan 2007
MIT invented the A123 battery, which is now going to be manufactuired in China.
Taxpayers support MIT, MIT sells the publicly funded reseach (corporations chime in with some cash for their own purposes as is the case with this ethanol propaganda, but the main funding is from taxpayers)results to a private company. That private company outsources the manufacturing and jobs. What is wrong with this scenario?
Taxpayers can't pay taxes without jobs. It's a vicious cycle of degradation that will eventually result in research that only benefits corporate monopoly power, any search for knowledge and innovation be damned.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:16 pm
13 Jan 2007
I thought that it was interesting that yet another institution (following Cornell U., Argonne National Laboratories, U of C Berkeley, U. of Minnesota) has put its oar into the "net energy from ethanol" debate.
I thought that whoever wrote the press release was stretching things by using a heading like "MIT analysis confirms benefits of biofuels", when in fact the analysis seemed to give a much more nuanced verdict, at least in respect of ethanol. The "benefits" cited -- the idea that cornstarch ethanol was a stepping stone to more environmentally friendly ethanol in the future -- seemed to arise from weakly reasoned opinion, not the analysis. In my opinion, it was not helpful to the debate for MIT to use such a headline, which is what then got picked up by the press and used by the industry to bolster their position.
I intentionally did not draw attention to the fact that the research was supported by BP, because I have great respect for the researchers at MIT and I do not think one should condemn them through guilt by association. As Sam Wells points out, "It is an honor to conduct any university research under any grant, and she [Tiffany Groode] deserves credit for that. Funds are as scarce as chicken's teeth these days ... ." I agree that it is curious that BP would want to support such research, but one should not jump from that to imply that they had any influence on the results.
Finally, as many of you may have seen, several respondents have given some good counter-arguments to the "stepping stone" hypothesis in their comments on the interview with Terry Tamminem.
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