IMO ethanol as produced nowadays is "feely green" as opposed to actually green. First, the idea of taking a food crop (corn) and making it into a motor fuel is stupid.
IMO, crops are crops, and renewable is renewable. Supply and demand dictate a crop's value. If it's more valuable as ethanol (and don't forget ethanol is a byproduct of corn processing; there are other end products as well, including food) than as food, why not? I've seen stoves that burn corn for home heating.
Second, with current production methods it takes more petro fuels to farm the corn and refine the ethanol than the amount of ethanol produced.
Old data, and suspect at that. More recent studies show a 38 percent energy gain, not a net loss. Don't forget the ethanol and petroleum industries are not friends, re the politics you mentioned. There is a fair bit of mis/disinformation floating around about ethanol fuel.
Of course the subsidies make it all work and the farmers love it. But don't imagine that you are actually reducing our dependence on oil.
Subsidies are also paying farmers to NOT grow corn. This seems to be a little better/more productive use of tax money. And a certain amount of the subsidy resides in tax abatements. I'm not one of the folks drumming for tax relief, but when we've come to view not taxing an item as the equivalence of subsidy, well, sometimes I think that conservatives (as opposed to the neocons now holding the government hostage) might have a point.
My buying ethanol stimulates demand just a little tiny bit more, and helps pay down the cost of developing new technologies like cellulosic ethanol production (which is actually on line now). The cost of developing tar sands like those in Wyoming and Alberta is coming down too, and that's the same technology the Germans were using in WWII. Those reserves dwarf anything in the Middle East. Significant environmental degradation, probably, but it makes things like drilling ANWR unnecessary too.
And
Cellulosic ethanol from waste plant material will be a whole nother story. But that's a few years off at best, for mostly political reasons.
Cellulosic looks pretty good. Given that there's a 20-25K BTU/gal net gain in corn-to-ethanol distillation, cellulosic (enzymatic hydrolysis) is promising 60K BTU/gal gain. But acid hydrolysis using municipal solid waste looks to be a little more near-term. Either way, ethanol has lots of other benefits, including keeping MTBE out of the water supply, and reducing greenhouse gases a bit. Given that petroleum fuel will continue to rise in cost and ethanol will continue to decline in cost, it sure looks like the direction things are going to me.
At any rate, it's nice to have the option. A guy on the E85 forum has converted his CB750 to E85 use. There are a few other performance-oriented folks there posting dyno charts with their mods.
IMO, crops are crops, and renewable is renewable. Supply and demand dictate a crop's value. If it's more valuable as ethanol (and don't forget ethanol is a byproduct of corn processing; there are other end products as well, including food) than as food, why not? I've seen stoves that burn corn for home heating.
Second, with current production methods it takes more petro fuels to farm the corn and refine the ethanol than the amount of ethanol produced.
Old data, and suspect at that. More recent studies show a 38 percent energy gain, not a net loss. Don't forget the ethanol and petroleum industries are not friends, re the politics you mentioned. There is a fair bit of mis/disinformation floating around about ethanol fuel.
Of course the subsidies make it all work and the farmers love it. But don't imagine that you are actually reducing our dependence on oil.
Subsidies are also paying farmers to NOT grow corn. This seems to be a little better/more productive use of tax money. And a certain amount of the subsidy resides in tax abatements. I'm not one of the folks drumming for tax relief, but when we've come to view not taxing an item as the equivalence of subsidy, well, sometimes I think that conservatives (as opposed to the neocons now holding the government hostage) might have a point.
My buying ethanol stimulates demand just a little tiny bit more, and helps pay down the cost of developing new technologies like cellulosic ethanol production (which is actually on line now). The cost of developing tar sands like those in Wyoming and Alberta is coming down too, and that's the same technology the Germans were using in WWII. Those reserves dwarf anything in the Middle East. Significant environmental degradation, probably, but it makes things like drilling ANWR unnecessary too.
And
Cellulosic ethanol from waste plant material will be a whole nother story. But that's a few years off at best, for mostly political reasons.
Cellulosic looks pretty good. Given that there's a 20-25K BTU/gal net gain in corn-to-ethanol distillation, cellulosic (enzymatic hydrolysis) is promising 60K BTU/gal gain. But acid hydrolysis using municipal solid waste looks to be a little more near-term. Either way, ethanol has lots of other benefits, including keeping MTBE out of the water supply, and reducing greenhouse gases a bit. Given that petroleum fuel will continue to rise in cost and ethanol will continue to decline in cost, it sure looks like the direction things are going to me.
At any rate, it's nice to have the option. A guy on the E85 forum has converted his CB750 to E85 use. There are a few other performance-oriented folks there posting dyno charts with their mods.
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