Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

End the Ethanol Rip-Off

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 155 posts

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#31

Post by fennecfoxen »

D_Alex wrote: post #23
guscost wrote: post #2

I'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. Here's a good resource if you're looking for ethanol-free gas in the US and Canada: http://pure-gas.org

> It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. OTOH, ten years ago, the prices for farm products were so low that farmers in countries with no farm subsidies could not make ends meet. The biofuel industry has at least had the benefit of making the lot of farmers in such countries - who…

Are there more poor people in the world who are farmers who benefit from this, or are there more poor people who purchase food who will suffer or starve?

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#32

Post by lutorm »

Qwertious wrote: post #26
analog31 wrote: post #3

A chemist told me that ethanol is actually cheaper to produce directly from petroleum, than via corn. I'm not sure he meant oil or natural gas. The ethanol subsidies are strictly for corn based.

I've heard that ethanol production actually uses more fuel than it produces, so you'd be better off just not producing it and using the fuel directly. On the other hand, it allows oil companies to pretend they're doing something about climate change (without changing any of their infrastructure) and it gives farmers more money, so you'd have to take on the oil lobby AND the farming lobby to get rid of it.

The "uses more fuel than it produces" argument is a bit of a red herring. Gasoline also "uses more fuel than it produces", because it takes a substantial amount of fuel to bring one gallon of gas out of the ground, refine it, and truck it out to the pump.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#33

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

lutorm wrote: post #24
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not good for plastic gas tanks either.

Since ethanol has been a part of fuel for many decades, the vast majority of auto parts today are fine with ethanol. There are exceptions, like the Ducati gas tanks, but by and large ethanol is not a problem in any fuel-injected vehicle.

Triumph has had the same problem with their plastic tanks and have somehow managed to avoid a recall like Ducati did. It doesn't help that European vehicles aren't designed to account for an alien fuel.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#34

Post by jmspring »

Vaguely unrelated, but petroleum politics, especially between the US And Europe are weird. I've got a diesel VW, I get roughly 40MPG, and my car has 3 catalytic converters in it. I live in California.

Last year, my wife and I rented a diesel 7 series while in Europe (a minor upgrade to the car we had reserved). 70% of our driving was non-Autobahn, but still a lot in the 120kph range, with some traffic. 30% Autobahn, having fun. A larger car, a larger engine, comparable mix of driving to what I do at home, yet still roughly got 37MPH. Smaller diesel cars, we've started way north of what I get in my Jetta for even faster driving.

Europe seems to have cleaner diesel (and air) yet fewer contraptions in their cars (compared to CA) and comparable or even larger cars there meet or exceed lesser cars here.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#35

Post by eastbayjake »

pedalpete wrote: post #5
guscost wrote: post #2

I'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. Here's a good resource if you're looking for ethanol-free gas in the US and Canada: http://pure-gas.org

I've always wondered about this argument in an environment suffering from an obesity epidemic, often blamed on another corn product, high-fructose corn syrup. Having lived in many different countries, the cost of food in the US is incredibly low. I assume (and have heard) this is mostly a result of subsidies to farmers. All the while, US exports of 'corn based products', which I assume is also corn, has continued to…

I'm hopeful that normalized relations with Cuba will be the end of our crazy corn subsidies. If you want to make ethanol, sugarcane is 7x more energy efficient in producing ethanol compared to corn, and you can produce twice as much ethanol from an acre of sugarcane as an acre of corn[1]. And if you want to sweeten food and beverages, the same energy efficiency applies to cane sugar harvesting: you can get more sugar with less harvesting energy per acre of sugarcane than corn. (Although there's little science supporting cane sugar being healthier than high-fructose corn syrup.)

It seems like the Cuba detente has broken a constituent stalemate in Congress: a small group of Florida sugarcane farmers corner the market on US cane sugar and no one has wanted to normalize relations and import sugarcane from Cuba because of those farmers' political clout, even though our countries' comparative advantage should dictate growing sugarcane in poor, developing Cuba and exporting it for food and ethanol use in the US.[2] There's been a gentlemen's agreement among senators that props up these farm subsidies because no one wants to rock the boat and jeopardize their own state's subsidies, but California is pushing back as our farmers get hammered by drought and Florida now has little to lose for opposing Midwestern farmers' lucrative corn subsidies.

[1] https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/...

[2] http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tast...

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#36

Post by ufo »

soylentcola wrote: post #6
guscost wrote: post #2

I'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. Here's a good resource if you're looking for ethanol-free gas in the US and Canada: http://pure-gas.org

Not to mention that it's essentially impossible to find non-ethanol fuel nearby to put in my motorcycle. It's not exactly the best thing for carbureted engines. I understand that I'm in the minority and I wouldn't expect an otherwise sensible policy to change on behalf of people who commute on motorcycles and scooters but I wouldn't complain if it became easier to avoid.

I'm not a car expert but I remember hearing somewhere that it depends on how the engine is manufactured. Here in Brazil the car engines are engineered to withstand high alcohol contents and there are even cars with "flex-fuel" technology that can handle any mixture from 100% gasoline to 100% ethanol.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#38

Post by pbreit »

Sounds like the perfect tax: driving is discouraged, cash flows to production instead of the government and it's (slightly) environmentally-friendly.

And if we're getting into the details, how do we allocate the trillions of dollars spent on the Middle East?

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#40

Post by leetrout »

pbreit wrote: post #39
imsofuture wrote: post #37

Plus, ethanol is bad in cold weather climates. As I understand it, it can phase separate and put a bunch of water in your tank (basically).

The opposite: ethanol serves as a gas-line antifreeze.

Ethanol most certainly causes fuel to capture and retain more moisture.

Not sure about any antifreeze properties but on the whole it's not good for small carbureted engines.

Post reply on HN