January 30, 2006
WHO WILL TELL THE PETROPHILES?:
Ethanol Can Replace Gasoline With Big Energy Savings, Comparable Impact On Greenhouse Gases (University of California - Berkeley, 2006-01-27)
Putting ethanol instead of gasoline in your tank saves oil and is probably no worse for the environment than burning gasoline, according to a new analysis by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.The researchers note, however, that new technologies now in development promise to make ethanol a truly "green" fuel with significantly less environmental impact than gasoline.
The analysis, appearing in this week's issue of Science, attempts to settle the ongoing debate over whether ethanol is a good substitute for gasoline and thus can help lessen the country's reliance on foreign oil and support farmers in the bargain. The UC Berkeley study weighs these arguments against other studies claiming that it takes more energy to grow the corn to make ethanol than we get out of ethanol when we burn it.
Dan Kammen and Alex Farrell of the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, with their students Rich Plevin, Brian Turner and Andy Jones along with Michael O'Hare, a professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, deconstructed six separate high-profile studies of ethanol. They assessed the studies' assumptions and then reanalyzed each after correcting errors, inconsistencies and outdated information regarding the amount of energy used to grow corn and make ethanol, and the energy output in the form of fuel and corn byproducts.
Once these changes were made in the six studies, each yielded the same conclusion about energy: Producing ethanol from corn uses much less petroleum than producing gasoline.
Queer how the Right has made a fetish of oil. It seems almost purely a reaction the Left's psychosis about same.
MORE:
How to Beat the High Cost of Gasoline. Forever!: Stop dreaming about hydrogen. Ethanol is the answer to the energy dilemma. It's clean and green and runs in today's cars. And in a generation, it could replace gas. (Adam Lashinsky and Nelson D. Schwartz, January 24, 2006, FORTUNE Magazine)
You probably don't know it, but the answer to America's gasoline addiction could be under the hood of your car. More than five million Tauruses, Explorers, Stratuses, Suburbans, and other vehicles are already equipped with engines that can run on an energy source that costs less than gasoline, produces almost none of the emissions that cause global warming, and comes from the Midwest, not the Middle East.Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2006 8:10 PMThese lucky drivers need never pay for gasoline again--if only they could find this elusive fuel, called ethanol. Chemically, ethanol is identical to the grain alcohol you may have spiked the punch with in college. It also went into gasohol, that 1970s concoction that brings back memories of Jimmy Carter in a cardigan and outrageous subsidies from Washington. But while the chemistry is the same, the economics, technology, and politics of ethanol are profoundly different.
Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste. This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol. Whatever the source, burning ethanol instead of gasoline reduces carbon emissions by more than 80% while eliminating entirely the release of acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide. Even the cautious Department of Energy predicts that ethanol could put a 30% dent in America's gasoline consumption by 2030.
It's not a fetish, just skepticism about the alternatives. Of course, just today a friend in the oil industry convinced me that we have an effectively infinite supply of $30-$50 per barrel oil.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 30, 2006 8:20 PMThey have.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2006 8:25 PMThere isn't enough farm land in the US to plant enough corn to mske enough ethanol to surplant gasoline.
Posted by: Pete at January 30, 2006 8:50 PMSince when does any rational person believe anything that comes out of Berzerkly that's not backed up with actual, verifiable facts? (And even then, one that's not spun into a counter-clockwise vortex.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at January 30, 2006 9:20 PMI read the article; the price per gallon of ethanol was conspicuous by its absence, which leads me to question its value in replacing $50/bbl oil.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at January 30, 2006 9:34 PMif this be true then ethanol would be the leading crop in the USA. It isn't. QED
Posted by: anon at January 30, 2006 10:00 PMAh, the fetishists....
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2006 10:08 PMNo, not fetishists, just folks who can add and subtract with their shoes on. Even if it does save oil it probably does not save money, and that's the only thing that matters. Call us back when you can turn a profit on corn squeezins without a government subsidy or a stake in a liquor store and we'll talk.
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 30, 2006 11:29 PMWe've got money.
Posted by: oj at January 30, 2006 11:38 PMAnd you'll soon be parted from it.
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 30, 2006 11:40 PMThe study does not demonstrate good leverage for growing corn, brewing beer, distilling it into ethanol. The study, which is a meta-study not an original study shows a samll energy plus of bothering to undertake the whole effort. this is not a solution because even if the opptomistic studies are accepted, you are bassically traiding oil for ethanol and just making a little on the trade. It is not a solution for the countries energy problems.
Nuclear and Coal to Liquid they will be the solution.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 31, 2006 1:50 AMWe have corn, they have oil.
Posted by: oj at January 31, 2006 7:39 AMJust wait till you see the next study on Hemp! from Berkley, OJ It's the answer to all our energy dependency problems, dude. Haven't you heard? Plus.....ya' know.....
Posted by: John Resnick at January 31, 2006 9:03 AMJohn:
For sure we should be converting it to fuel--it would even help the drug war.
Posted by: oj at January 31, 2006 9:34 AMSince no one else has commented on the elephant in the room here, I will note that you are all talking of ethanol replacing oil when in fact there's no mention of that, only of ethanol replacing gasoline. OJ does his standard bait and switch in his first sentence but I'm surprised the rest of you didn't call him on that.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 31, 2006 10:03 AMBruce Cleaver: "I read the article; the price per gallon of ethanol was conspicuous by its absence, which leads me to question its value in replacing $50/bbl oil."
"Genencor says its enzymes have cut the cost of making a gallon of cellulosic ethanol from $5 five years ago to 20 cents today. Now refiners have to learn how to scale up production. Canada's Iogen is the furthest along in commercialization; another hopeful is BC International, a Dedham, Mass., company that's building a cellulosic ethanol plant in Louisiana."
Impressive, if it works out.
Posted by: Bill Woods at January 31, 2006 2:18 PM"Of course, just today a friend in the oil industry convinced me that we have an effectively infinite supply of $30-$50 per barrel oil." David, please define We.
Joe, Yes I'd much prefer to send money to the Midwest than to the Middle-East, Russia, Venezuela etc.
Robert, I agree coal and nuclear utilization are answers, but not exclusively. Additionally, they could be utilized to produce ethanol concurrently as in co-generation..
Apparently Brazil is having some success producing ethanol.
If we don't want to use current tax revenues to subsidize a new industry then let's start seriously taxing gasoline for the funds to do so. We've been subsidizing our entire transportation system nationally for decades.
"Of course, just today a friend in the oil industry convinced me that we have an effectively infinite supply of $30-$50 per barrel oil." David, please define We.
Joe, Yes I'd much prefer to send money to the Midwest than to the Middle-East, Russia, Venezuela etc.
Robert, I agree coal and nuclear utilization are answers, but not exclusively. Additionally they could be utilized to produce ethanol concurrently as in co-generation..
Apparently Brazil is having some success producing ethanol.
If we don't want to use current tax revenues to subsidize a new industry then let's start seriously taxing gasoline for the funds to do so. We've been subsidizing our entire transportation system nationally for decades.
Genecis: The United States.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 31, 2006 7:13 PMOnce we consider all the expenses associated with the Middle East - foreign aid, military bases, wars, etc. - and consider it an indirect subsidy of petroleum, then ethanol becomes much more attractive in price.
Even if the US does not have enough farmland to produce enough to replace gasoline (and we don't need 100% substitution), then all it means we go to nations like Canada, Argentina, and Mexico for more corn and wheat, not the noxious oil states. Still seems like a win.
Since we won't need to replace existing infrastructure to accomodate it, I don't see any drawbacks. If this hype is true, then commercially viable ethanol would be a godsend.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at February 1, 2006 1:41 PM