Fish or Cut Bait
I won't look them up for you. You can find them--the reports in which the bubble poppers explain why the touted "hydrogen economy" isn't the long term answer to our looming energy crisis. So recently, there's an increased interest in biofuels--the use of land crops to supplement our rising demand for auto fuel. And here comes that pin, bursting yet another inflated hope for energy independence. I've put my hopes in both of these, and am sad to admit they look like fingers in the dike.
What's the problem with bio-conversion of crops? First, there's not enough to make a difference. If all the US's corn crop went into biofuel production, it would supply only about 7% of the country's needs--not to mention taking that much nutrition from our national breadbasket. But worse than that, it just isn't efficient. Corn, being the most efficient, is a net energy sink--more energy goes in than comes out of the process. Other bioresources like wood and grasses are even less productive of liquid fuel.
So where does the recent push come from? It sure sounds "alternative energy" friendly, and even the Republicans seem to be getting behind biofuels.
According to David Pimentel, Cornell University agriculturalist whom many regard as the world's leading authority on the energy content of biofuels and their effects on food and agriculture as a whole, the drive towards biofuels is mostly about money:
U. S. government subsidies mean that companies producing corn ethanol receive payments totaling $7 per bushel of corn processed. The corn farmers alas receive less than a 2-cent per bushel subsidy related to ethanol production.
We're a better species than this. We can get through this very difficult period ahead and leave the planet able to sustain its essential services compatible with both human and non-human survival. But if we do what we've always done, we'll get what we've always got. Something has to come along and rattle our cage so that people across all cultural and political realms GET IT, change their lives accordingly, and work together.
Will it take another, two or a dozen more, national or international disasters to get our attention? Has the debate about "is there a problem?" (about an oil crisis or global warming) reached a consensus agreement? Are we ready to move on to "so what can be done?" We may be almost to that point at last. More on this, soon.
Comments
Actually more recent studies conclude that, when you factor in energy credits for corn by-products created during the ethanol procuring process, you don't have a BTU loss of 22%, you have a BTU gain of 24%. The problem with corn ethanol is the environmental impact. Corn crops are tilled every year! If you think runoff in the Chesapeake Bay and Mississippi River is bad now, increase corn production even further to support the production of ethanol.
I'm reading various reports that Switchgrass is much more promising the previously thought. It's more efficient than corn ethanol and you don't have to till the earth, you get to keep a strong sod to control erosion, which is a good idea in and of itself.
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | May 30, 2006 6:38 AM
Sean, I'd be interested in seeing these stats re switchgrass and "corn byproducts" and how that is calculated. Got links?
Posted by: fred1st | May 30, 2006 6:54 AM
Some of it I heard on public radio about a month ago (re: switchgrass and ethanol). Here are some links:
http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf
Alot of the anti-corn-ethanol debate is based on 22 year old research. Recent agricultural university research is confronting this old data head on with new data that suggests we can experience a net gain in BTU with either alternative.
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | May 30, 2006 8:50 AM
i still prefer horses & my own 2 feet. luddite that i am.
here's an earth-shaker - last nite started reading a new book and lo & behold! the editor's introduction to "Mary's World" --a journal begun in 1860 by Mary Pringle of Charleston, SC states:[quote] "Unknown to most was the fact that the Pringles, like many other antebellum rice planters, were deeply in debt from living far beyond their means. That wasn't the worst of their problems. Sealed off in the self-imposed economic and intellectual cocoon that had evolved in South Carolina in the 1850s, the Pringles had little warning that an approaching war would soon rip apart their family, free their slaves, destroy their ability to make a living as they always had, and render their social class extinct."
hmm... i will refrain from making the obvious conclusionary statement. time will tell if today's ruling elite will meet a similar self-determination.
Posted by: susannah eanes | May 30, 2006 10:23 AM
Fred, I heard a story on NPR a couple of weeks ago that sounded promising Canadian Dreams of Ethanol Distilled from Grass. The company in the broadcast was Iogen Corporation. While I can't speak for the science or the economics, If you look at who is investing you have to wonder if they are not on to something.
I really liked their plan for locally sized refinery/processing plants making biofuel from locally grown agricultural byproducts (the test plant they are running is using wheat straw as a raw material) to produce fuel for the local economy. Almost sounds sustainable...but then that is the marketing point, right?
I wonder if anyone has checked into the feasibility of using tobacco as a raw material...put some of those small tobacco farmers back to work maybe?
Posted by: Gary Boyd | May 30, 2006 11:18 AM
I am fairly certain that ethanol made from sugar is significantly more energy efficient than ethanol made from corn. Too bad we don't have a domestic sugar industry to lobby for that side of the equation.
Not that W's minions would ever let us trade the House of Saud for Fidel Castro...
Posted by: ronbailey | May 30, 2006 2:49 PM
The bio-fuels are all forms of stored solar energy. We need to get away from the x degrees of separation from the source and focus on solar. The big knock on solar, among others, is inconsistent energy production. Well, the real issue is energy storage so that usage when needed is reliable. Bio-fuels are high cost, low tech solar panels.
Posted by: Carl | May 31, 2006 11:12 PM