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End the Ethanol Rip-Off

nytimes.com

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Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#71

Post by Gustomaximus »

lutorm wrote: post #32
Qwertious wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you expand on this claim? I figure there is some word play here around 'gasoline' and 'fuel' definitions, otherwise logic dictates this doesn't meet basic logic. E.g. diesel isn't included in gasoline but is in fuel used to power trucks/machines etc. I'm curious if this is an interesting fact, or wordplay to make something sound interesting.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#72

Post by rhino369 »

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…

It's not caused by the direct subsidies. Things like ethanol requirements in gas and the HFCS favoritism drive up the cost of the food. Ethanol by increasing demand for corn. The reason America uses corn syrup is because the government has a high tariff on cane sugar imports.

So America pays twice the global rate for sugar.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#73

Post by bottled_poe »

eastbayjake wrote: post #35
pedalpete wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comment provides so much insight into an issue I know very little about. Just thought an up vote was not enough here. Thank you.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#74

Post by vpeters25 »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #42
ufo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For some odd reason the manufacturer of my lawn mower warns me not to use more than 10% Ethanol content fuel, or else my warranty is void. I'll assume it was to save about a dollar or two on gaskets and o-rings.

My lawnmower sat unused for about 4 years in a shed. Last year I tried to use it and gas leaked all around it. The ethanol left in the tank had eaten out all the little plastic pieces and seals in the ignition system.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#75

Post by PythonicAlpha »

troubled5 wrote: post #68
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #49

The whole ethanol story is a weird one. In the EU ethanol was (and still is) promoted as "environment friendly". Facts are against it. There are plenty of studies, that ethanol is doing more harm to environment than it helps. The reason is, that conventional thinking that "corn growing reduces CO2" is just to simple. You must take into account all factors and also damages that are made by the ethanol production. And…

Ethanol is "environment friendly" when compared to gasoline, the latter having no good environmental aspects making it a bit of a low standard to beat. The fact that rain forests are destroyed for corn plantations is probably independent of ethanol consumption, the ethanol driven investment mostly just increasing the existing rate at which deforestation happens. Corn is not only used for ethanol after all.

We can argue right and left here. Fact is, that there are multiple studies (somebody also cited some here) come to the result that ethanol when every effect is taken into account is worse than mineral oil for the environment -- and who says different, is most likely paid by the ethanol lobbies.

And to your "rain forests are destroyed anyway"-argument: You argue without any proof just by guessing. (BTW: rain forests where only one example, in fact, I don't know what areas are destroyed by fuel plants, but fact is, that there are areas destroyed and they are mono-cultures that grossly harm nature).

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#76

Post by GhotiFish »

HNaTTY wrote: post #58
lutorm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't make any sense.

It's a confusion of the concepts "Expenses" "Profits" and "Revenue"

say you have 100 barrels of revenue, but you must expend 60 barrels to get the 100 barrels, then you have 40 barrels of profit.

you consume more barrels than you produce. See?

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#77

Post by jonah »

TylerE wrote: post #21
post_break wrote: post #15

As someone who runs E85 because it's essentially race gas for about $1.25 a gallon, I'm conflicted.

E85 is SO far from "essentially race gas". It has much LOWER energy density than non-ethanol gas. It takes 1.39 gallons of E85 to have the same energy as 1 gallon of conventional dino juice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent The only way to get more power with E85 is to have some sort of extreme engine running INSANE amounts of turbo boost, like the Koenesegg CCXR. In a normal street car any lev…

Here's the first dyno chart I could come across. 93 octane vs E85 in a supercharged Audi S4. (+27whp +31wtq) (They did say they had to use a higher-flowing fuel pump to handle the increased fuel usage.)

http://solomotorsportsnet@solomotorsports.net/images/B8%20ST...

Other cars get even greater gains when tuned for ethanol.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#78

Post by shirro »

shard972 wrote: post #54
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. Then why on earth is the Australian government making us put this shit in our cars unless we want to buy 100% premium fuel.

Only the sugar cane growing states and the politicians bought by the cane sugar industry. You can buy fuel with ethanol in the other states at shitty "discount" outlets but many people avoid it. The major outlets generally don't sell it. It has lower energy density so you aren't getting better value, and while every modern car here is designed to run it in theory hardly any manufacturers recommend it.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#79

Post by yason »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #31
D_Alex wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Hunger has never been a problem of production in particular but of distribution. For decades, there's been plenty of food for everyone on this planet; it just hasn't been distributed, by politics or by markets, evenly and probably won't be in any time soon.

It doesn't necessarily mean growing vegetation to produce ethanol fuel is a good thing but not doing so wouldn't make things effectively better either. On the other hand, at least the process is renewable unlike fossil fuels. On the other hand, it would make sense to grow this biofuel only in places where the environment is optimal for the most aggressively ethanol-producing plants.

The bigger problem is the demand for fuel. You could build cities where you don't need millions of people to consume fuel in order to merely get by their ordinary days moving between work, shopping groceries, and home. Unfortunately, those cities don't seem to be built until fuel prices get high enough that it's cheaper to abandon suburbia and rebuild the city based on walking and public transit.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#80

Post by [deleted] »

shard972 wrote: post #54
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. Then why on earth is the Australian government making us put this shit in our cars unless we want to buy 100% premium fuel.

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