Biofuel not worth it?

[substitute]

via ScienceDaily, from a new Cornell study. Everyone knows that the ethanol subsidy is just a farm subsidy, but it's sort of depressing to see data that makes biodiesel generally look like a net loss. If it takes more fossil fuel to produce the biodiesel than we get out of it, we're taking a step back.Ethanol And Biodiesel From Crops Not Worth The

Comments

[anonymous]

Two points:

1) A good portion of the conversion of biomass to biodiesel encapsulates the saponification (i.e., soap-making) process. People will always need soap, and therefore there will always be the soap-making industry. Smart biodieselers will offset some of the above cost by skimming off the soap industry, thus taking care of some of their by-products and cooking the numbers to sound less gloom and doom.

2) The advantage of biodiesel and ethanol is the clean output. The cost of scrubbing engine output should be factored into the cost of making fossil fuel. Alcohols, for example, burn much more cleanly than petroleum products. I've set my toilet on fire with grain alcohol and Zippo fluid to prove this. This is a hidden cost that is not included in the bottom line.

In short, these figures are semi-bunk.

bobbyisosceles

[substitute]

I disagree. The reason this is bad news is that biofuels won't decrease our use of or dependence on fossil fuels; in fact, they make things worse. That doesn't change the advantage of clean output, but if you have to use more oil to make biodiesel or ethanol than you would have otherwise, any pretense that we're using less resources evaporates. (Ha ha, evaporates.)

Biofuels are a great use for the excess soy and corn we have floating around due to our batshit insane subsidies, but unless these data are just factually wrong it's the opposite of a solution to oil dependence.

[8bit]

as a national solution to dependence on fossil fuels, biodiesel certainly fails, but on a more individual basis, biodiesel can make economic/ecological sense. and the fossil fuel usage here is an equivalency, you're not actually using x gallons of fossil fuels to produce the biodiesel, you're using the equivalent amount of wattage/electricity to produce it (at least with cooking oil biodiesel/transesterification, which is all i am really familiar with.. i know some processes actually utilize fossil fuels in the mixing or making of the fuel itself). i don't really get how anyone can tout it as any kind of energy solution on a large scale, though.

[substitute]

you're not actually using x gallons of fossil fuels to produce the biodiesel, you're using the equivalent amount of wattage/electricity to produce it

It's not just that you burn energy producing the biodiesel, but that agriculture itself is totally dependent on petroleum for fertilizer too. The engines that farm things are only part of the problem.

[threepunchstuff]

I remember on C-Span coverage of the New Hampshire primary, an old man cornered Howard Dean at a rally about his ethanol-boosting in Iowa. He said he was a chemical engineer and that everyone knew ethanol cost more energy than it produced. Dean ignored him. It's funny, every four years everyone who wants to be president cares a lot about ethanol for six months, then you never hear about it again.

[substitute]

Exactly, yeah. Ethanol talk is just code for corn farming subsidy talk.