The Mustache of Understanding brings us another variant of the Brazil is awesome! story, and commits the standard two errors:
- He conflates corn-based and cellulosic ethanol, failing to note that Brazil uses the latter and we the former.
- He makes no mention of the fact that Brazil's per-capita energy use is about an eighth of ours (1,064 vs. 7,921 kgoe per-person-per-year, as of 2001).
These facts are relevant to an assessment of Brazil's success with biofuels, no?
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Robert Delfs Posted 10:25 pm
15 Sep 2006
The vast gap between the US and Brazil's per-capita energy use would be relevant to an argument that expanding ethanol production would make the US more energy independent - the assertion that you and Robert Rapier debunked in the "Brazil is awesome" item last June. But Friedman never says this, or even mentions energy independence, at least not in the version of his column I read.
As a citizen (and occasional consumer), I am concerned about US energy independence, but as an environmentalist (JS please take note), I'm basically indifferent. The atmospheric effects of the 5.8 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted by the US each year (2002 data) don't change according to how much (or little) of the fossil fuels which generated it are imported in the US or domestically produced.
If (as Friedman claims) Brazil has replaced 40% of its gasoline consumption with ethanol, then Brazil's carbon emissions may indeed have been reduced, as long as total fuel consumption did not rise enough higher than the level under a no-ethanol regime enough to cancel out the effect, which seems unlikely.
Regarding the the difference between "corn-based and cellulosic" ethanol, I wish I understood what Friedman's "error" and the point you're trying to make might be, but I don't.
As I understand it, cellulosic conversion technologies (allowing conversion to ethanol from cellulose biomass to ethanol) would be a boon for producers of sugar-cane based ethanol (making it possible to utilize bagasse) and corn-based ethanol (who could then utilize stalks and leaves). Friedman states that Brazil expects a breakthrough in cellulosic conversion technology that would more than double the volume of ethanol that could be extracted from a single sugar stalk within five years, so Brazil's program may be ahead of US efforts to develop corn cellulosic conversion processes. (The Department of Energy says here that cellulosic conversion technology would reduce the cost of producing ethanol from corn by as much as $0.60 a gallon by 2015.)
In any case, I'm not aware that Brazil is producing any cellulosic ethanol in commercial volumes today. Even if it were, how does that refute any of the points or arguments that Friedman makes in this column.
Biodiversivist noted in June that the US doesn't produce much cane sugar, which is true, and the reason why the huge US tariffs imposed on cane sugar (and cane sugar-based ethanol!) are so grotesque. Are we trying to protect US "ethanol independence"? Right.
Back in the beginning, during the Kennedy administration, the steep tariffs on imported sugar car were ostensibly intended in part to punish Cuba, but their main effect was to reward beet sugar producers in Louisiana with monopolistic access to the US sweetener market.
Nobody foresaw that US agribusiness would figure out a way to use the punitive tariffs against poor tropical cane sugar producers as the basis for a new industry producing high-fructose corn syrup and putting it in everything you and every other American eats, drinks, wears, or rides in. (Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma is very good material on how corn grew to be the ultimate agri-industrial commodity.)
None of this was very pleasant for the world's cane sugar exporters, who were generally located in the tropics, non-OPEC members, and poor.
One particularly unfortunate victim was the Philippines, which had no other serious commodity for export except copra and palm oil. The wasn't really the Pilipinos' fault. The islands had been a US colony since 1898, and diversifying the islands' plantation-based quasi-feudal economy had never been a priority for its American overseeers.
Cutting the Philippines off from the US sweetener market was doubly tacky, given the bitter price that the Pilipinos paid for being part of America during World War II (and continue to pay in other ways today). But hperhaps they were lucky. Had the US oil majors ever perceived the Philippine and its sugar cane fields as a pontential future competitor to gasoline made from fossil fuels, I'm sure things would have gone worse.
Robert Delfs
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wedjr Posted 10:44 pm
15 Sep 2006
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David Roberts Posted 5:42 am
16 Sep 2006
But Friedman is nothing if not the repository of conventional wisdom. And there's a certain strain of conventional wisdom growing in D.C. right now that says:
Brazil has gained energy independence via ethanol.
Thus, ethanol rulez.
I see Friedman's column as an attempt to glom onto and burnish that basic notion.
But the notion is wrong. Brazil has copious sugarcane; we have copious corn. Brazil uses very little per-capita energy and has far fewer cars per capita. If we tried to match the percentages Brazil has achieved ... well, we couldn't. But in the attempt, we would utterly ravage our landscape with fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, completely destroy what's left of our water quality, and further cement the power, size, and control of agribiz giants.
We need to shift quickly to cellulosic ethanol (and, eventually, electricity) to fuel our cars, and more importantly, we need to use less energy. We need to drive less. That's what you never hear in these columns about Brazil, only the pleasing illusion that we can keep on keepin' on because, hey, look, Brazil did!
www.grist.org
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Robert Delfs Posted 10:13 am
16 Sep 2006
Re-reading his column, I noticed that he does write in the last paragraph that shifting to more ethanol in fuel could "strengthen democrats in our hemisphere and weaken the petrocrats in the Middle East." Perhaps this could be construed as an implicit reference to energy independence, and one that I missed in my first read through, but ...
I do agree with Friedman that more ethanol fuel pumps, making new cars flex-fuel capable and cutting the punitive import tariff would boost the ethanol industry, and that this in turn would focus more R&D dollars and attention on cellulosic conversion technology to make this happen sooner rather than later - something that you might also agree would be a good thing.
Robert Delfs
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:32 am
16 Sep 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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