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End the Ethanol Rip-Off

nytimes.com

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Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#121

Post by maxerickson »

SixSigma wrote: post #102
lutorm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.

Additional craziness, the subsidy means it's cheaper to buy corn than grow it! Thus making mixed agriculture farms rarer. So instead of using cow slurry to fertilise crops the US uses oil based fertiliser and has millions of gallons of cow slurry in lagoons.

I'm under the impression that the great majority of manure ends up spread on fields or sold to consumers. I guess you aren't saying it is being stored in lagoons forever, where does it go after sitting in a lagoon if it is not used as an amendment?

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#122

Post by parasubvert »

modoc wrote: post #118
lutorm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Race gas" is commonly understood to refer to octane number. E85 is 94-96 octane, according to wikipedia, which enables you to run higher compression or higher boost. The fact that it has lower energy density just means you burn more of it, so your tank runs out faster. It has nothing to do with the power you can get out of the engine.

If E85 has ~40% less energy in it per volume/weight, then you'd need to be pushing ~40% MORE fuel in the same timeframe to break even on power, right? So you'd need the octane jump from 91/93 to to 94-96 to allow you to run enough extra boost to burn 40% more fuel per cycle. Assuming your turbo/supercharger can deliver 40% more pressure without a big drop in efficiency. And you need your fuel injectors and fuel pump…

E85 tunes are common (and the numbers amazing) on various turbo car forms - cars like the Evo generally have a rich aftermarket that can handle such a setup. Fuel economy is the last thing on their mind....

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#123

Post by maxerickson »

lutorm wrote: post #14
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

The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.

Ethanol accounts for a large share of US corn consumption:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/521847/cornuse.jpg

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx

The chart is hard to read exact numbers from, there is a table available at the second link. 2008 was the last year that feed accounted for more than 1/2 of corn use (it still accounts for nearly 1/2 today, I'm not trying to be pedantic there, just adding information).

Ethanol is clearly a big enough portion of consumption to be impacting the price of corn used for food, which isn't the same thing as burning edible food, but it's a reason to carefully consider what incentives are created by various government programs.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#124

Post by swah »

dataker wrote: post #9
swah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Brazil, the amount of mandatory ethanol in gas was raised to 27%, to stimulate ethanol producers.

Brazil uses sugar cane, so the process is more efficient than in the US

What about the environmental impact comparting to the US method?

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#125

Post by snowwrestler »

IgorPartola wrote: post #113
snowwrestler wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of global warming, all that matters is the net contribution of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels to the atmosphere. The reason oil companies object to the Renewable Fuel Standard is that it results in lower net usage of oil. If it resulted in higher net oil usage, they wouldn't oppose it. So that answers your question.

No, that isn't all that matters. I outlined the other factors that matter in my original comment. Wouldn't you agree that fracking also contributes to global warming? Or that fermenting corn does? What matters is the net total. If all that mattered was CO2 from oil, it would be an easy problem: get rid of oil, use ethanol. Thing is CO2 is the same, whether it comes from oil, ethanol, coal burning power plants, or cow…

If we got rid of oil and used ethanol for everything, we would indeed solve global warming because we would be fixing as much carbon as we release every year.

Edit: Not totally solve of course because that doesn't do anything about coal and natural gas emissions.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#126

Post by coob »

qq66 wrote: post #45
bane wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does the production of corn ethanol really increase food prices? It might be hard to determine. But here's an anecdote, the price of short ribs has dramatically gone up. My wife is Korean, so short ribs (galbi) are a favorite dish. We used to be able to buy several pounds of ribs, a huge pile of them, for $20-30. They were so cheap, and there were so many of them, and the way they were packaged was in such large pa…

Beef prices have gone up a LOT in recent years, but ethanol-related corn price increases is only a part of the reason. Slightly increased domestic demand due to economic recovery, as well as very large increases in foreign demand due to economic development, combined with the fact that supply was trimmed back during the recession, are also big parts of the equation.

Here's a chart of beef prices over the last 10 years:

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=beef&months...

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#127

Post by lukifer »

maratd wrote: post #82
hueving wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't enough grass to 'let the cows eat' while sustaining affordability for lower income people. That's why they switched to corn, much better density of calories.

> There isn't enough grass to 'let the cows eat' while sustaining affordability for lower income people. I'm pretty sure there's no shortage of grass. If we turn some of those corn fields into grazing fields, there would be even more grass. The reason they use corn is because it fattens up the cow much faster and to a far greater degree. So yeah, switching to grass will increase the price of beef on a per pound basis…

This is already happening; I can now find labeled grass-fed beef at regular groceries as well as Whole Foods. It's expensive enough, though, that it's still relatively niche in terms of volume, especially after factoring in fast food and Sysco restaurants.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#128

Post by lukifer »

malandrew wrote: post #88
curun1r wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, as a result, we've created the nightmare situation where we fill the animals we eat with antibiotics since we feed them foods that they're not adapted to eat. Not only are we helping to create antibiotic-resistant superbugs but the antibiotics in food also reduce the beneficial gut bacteria that we need to be healthy. There was a time when people didn't eat meat with every meal...many people believe it's actuall…

I would imagine that the antibiotics in cattle issue is far more closely related to factory farming in confined quarters than anything to do with what kind of food they are primarily eating.

The two are not mutually exclusive; each carries a significant tax on the animal's health and immune system.

Humans are fairly unique in our dietary flexibility; most other animals are evolutionarily adapted to a narrow range of foods. Corn provides caloric energy, but little more; a cow needs to eat grass, and move around, in order to be healthy.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#129

Post by VLM »

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.

The best way to explain it is by analogy.

Diesel engines originally were developed to burn peanut oil. So lets run the peanut farm on locally grown peanut oil.

Lets say the tractors and trucks take 100 barrels of peanut oil per year to run. Oh fertilizers and poisons and all that petroleum derived stuff take oil too, but whatever, we'll imagine the total energy cost of running a farm is 100 barrel equivalent of peanut oil. Sure some of the 100 barrels equivalent is the UPS dude pumping diesel into his brown truck to drive out and drop off your herbicide or seed or whatever. And the power plant is shoveling some energy in the form of coal to make the electricity to run the irrigation pumps. Still, ignore the details and stick with me on the big pix, "doing farmin for a year" takes 100 barrels of energy.

If your farm averages 101 or more barrels of peanut oil production, you win, and get to sell at least 1 barrel a year (or more) for profit, or more likely debt service and taxes, whatever. At least next year on average you'll have a stockpile of 100 barrels needed to run the farm next year. You have a magic perpetual motion machine that turns sunlight into a trickle of peanut oil as long as the soil doesn't wash away and the sun keeps on shining. Cool.

If your farm averages 99 or fewer barrels of peanut oil production per year, then aside from massive government intervention you'll never get to sell any peanut oil on the open market, and even worse, you'll have to buy at least 1 barrel per year of crude oil to continue to operate your farm. This farm eats oil well pumped crude oil and outputs, well, nothing at all, at least without massive central government control and regulation and subsidy, like having the .gov take my money at gunpoint to give you 50 barrels of crude oil in exchange for votes so you can sell 40 barrels of peanut oil to greenwash the market.

Guess which scenario describes actual ethanol operations? We would net conserve crude petroleum if we shut down ethanol production today. This would eliminate uncountable government provided socialized jobs, so you can guess the likelihood of that ever happening.

Re: End the Ethanol Rip-Off

#130

Post by burger_moon »

parasubvert wrote: post #120
freebullets wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually use it? Is there ever a reason to use it? It costs 5% less but is 25% less efficient.

Custom tuned turbos (eg. Evo and STi's) can get tremendous output on E85; that's the only use I've seen of it.

It's cheap race gas at about 105 octane. I had my previous car tuned for it. The only problem is that it is very inconsistent at the pump. You don't always get e85. Some times it's e80 other times it's e75. The blend is also dependent on the weather. In cold weather states you only get about 3 months of true e85, in the winter the pump has a blend of e60. For a regular commuter car it's not a big deal and is necessary to ensure it starts properly in cold weather but when talking about cars that need a specific stoich ratio it's critical. Best way around it is to buy a barrel of it lol.
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