Has anyone seen the ethonol commercials? They are produced by Gm...Ethonol lowers greenhouse gasses, gm has already produced hundreds of thousands of these vehicles. These are 'green vehicles.'

Explain ethonol to me...is this a solution to the gas/oil problem? It is a partial solution to environmental issues? I'd like to know more...not that i can afford a new gm car...but still.

B

Corn ethanol is stupid. It can't possibly replace oil and it may actually take more energy to produce than it provides. Switchgrass ethanol on the other hand, might make more sense though it too cannot replace oil. But at least switchgrass is not an annual crop, can be planted on ruined land, doesn't require any fertilizer, and can be harvested using existing haying equipment.

I love switchgrass, and am planting it on my land.

Powerful industrial lobbies such as Archer Daniels Midland already make incredible amounts of money off corn, and now they want to make more. They think that having Americans eat vast amounts of corn in the form of high-fructose corn syrup isn't enough. Now they want us to burn corn for fuel, too. It's more about their profit than the environment.

Also, if you read any book about the environmental problems of eating meat, you'll notice that one of them is the amount of agricultural chemicals used on crops not grown for human food is much higher than that used on crops grown for human food. So how much pesticide/herbicide do you think will be used on corn grown grown for ethanol?

Thirdly, corn is already one of the most commonly grown GMO crops. So depending how you feel about that...

It's not an answer, it's just a smoke screen...literally. Any combustible fuel will contribute some amount of air pollution, and will contribute to greenhouse gases. The real answer is that we simply have to burn less. A lot less.

PS: That said, I'll allow that it could potentially be a valid stepping stone to wean us off fossil fuels. But no, simply switching from petroleum to bio-ethanol isn't a solution, it's just a new problem.

Ethanol is grain alcohol, usually produced from corn but can be produced from pretty much any starchy source. I just saw an article about Florida opening a plant to produce ethanol from oranges. You make it like pretty much any other distilled alcohol. Right now around 10% of our gasoline is ethanol. Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline and is renewable. Plus, because it is renewable it theoretically should take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it produces when burned. However, from what I've heard, we currently don't have enough farmland to produce enough ethanol that the U.S. would require to drive all our cars around. I think this used with other renewable fuel sorces like biodiesel could put an enormous dent in our dependence on fossil fuels. Here's an article on ethanol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol
~Wonder :beer:

Plus, because it is renewable it theoretically should take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it produces when burned.

This is true only if you use carbon sequestering crops such as prairie grasses and possibly trees. If you use annual crops, no.

Tess is absolutely right corn ethanol is going to get most of the attention, subsidies, etc because it can make the most money for ADM and Monsanto.

:spew:

It's still better than fossil fuels. It burns cleaner, has a higher oxygen content, removes more CO2 from the environment than gasoline, and even after you remove the starch from the corn, you still have a nutritious protein rich food source, be it for animals or humans. I'm not saying it's not without it's problems and it probably won't quench the country's or the world's thirst for energy. We weren't meant to zoom across the world overnight in this stage of humanity's development. And I'm sorry, but I don't need starfruit at my local grocery store, so we don't need to drive it all the way from Florida. I think the only way we're going to solve our energy crisis is to stop using so damn much of it. But until the world learns, any renewable energy source is better than fossil fuels, in my opinion at least.
~Wonder ;)

But not corn ethanol! For the reasons given above! It isn't "better than fossil fuel" because it may take as much fossil fuel to produce it as it replaces, therefore having a net gain of nothing!

Argh!

Oh, no, there's not a net gain of nothing, Ludi! The net gain is money into the mega-corporation's pockets! :shifty:

Who's your source on this? I see a 1:1.67 ratio of energy in versus energy out. Found here: http://www.iowacorn.org/ethanol/documents/energy_balance_003.pdf
~Wonder :)

I'll be finding that reference for you, in the meantime, what about the extremely destructive effects of growing corn on the environment ? What about the extra CO2 produced by annual plow agriculture? Will this corn be grown using no-herbicide no-till methods? (I can guarantee you it won't be) You still need to dump tons of chemical fertilizers on that corn to get it to grow, is that factored into the equation?

'In January 2005, however, Tad W. Patzek of University of California, Berkeley, published a
new and very comprehensive study that concludes that "ethanol production from corn is a fossil energy losing proposition, even if the energy costs of environmental damage are neglected …" Patzek concludes that in direct fossil fuel input compared to ethanol output only 9 units of energy are produced for each 10 units of input. Moreover, he does an extensive examination of the other impacts and their energy costs and concludes that the data proves "beyond any reasonable doubt that the industrial corn-ethanol cycle accelerates the irrevocable depletion of natural resources: fossil fuels, minerals, top soil, surface and subsurface water, and air, while creating wide-spread environmental damage throughout the continental United States."'

http://peaceworks.missouri.org/monitor/2005/spring-summer/13.html


I would expect the very powerful (very very very powerful) Iowa corn lobby to support corn ethanol with vigor!

More on switchgrass:

"New Ethanol Study

A new report by UC Berkley analyzes six studies of the energy efficiency of ethanol, adjusted all of the studies to consistent system boundaries for comparison and based on the current state of ethanol production recalculated the values for corn ethanol and used a "realistic scenario" conditions to calculate the energy to produce cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass. The study found that the net energy ratio (energy out/energy in) is 1.2 for ethanol produced from corn and 8.3 for cellulosic ethanol produced from switchgrass. The net energy value (energy out-energy in) was calculated to be 4.5 MJ/liter for corn ethanol and 22.8 MJ/liter for cellulosic ethanol. In terms of environmental impact corn ethanol decreases greenhouse gases only 14% when compared to gasoline, while cellulosic ethanol has a much greater reduction of 88% . They also pointed out, as have others, that it takes less energy to produce ethanol than it does to produce gasoline."

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/02/new_ethanol_stu.html


Take that, corn ethanol!

Go switchgrass!

I see it as a waste of perfectly good booze.

This has been very interesting, thank you.

I just saw a couple of these commercials for the first time -

I noticed that the target audience for the commercials (judging by the actors) is a 20 - early 30 something crowd that likes to drive bigs trucks and SUVs. I didn't get a count, but there was a number of quick clips of ONLY these large GM vehicles being "gassed up" at the pumps with . The feel-good statement was that they were all "ethanol-ready," which I see as nothing but a ploy to make people feel they can buy one of their gas-guzzlers and still be environmental stewards.

I'm got no doubt that companies like ADM, as others have already mentioned, are also pushing this lobby.

I also suspect that these vehicles, regardless of whether they ever burn ethanol or not, help GM meet their alternative vehicle sales quotas. I'm gonna check into that and I'll post what I find.

Go switchgrass!

I have to agree with Ludi and the anti-ethanol lobby.

Ethanol is like Hybrid Vehicles, merely a moral salve for people who choose to only see what they want. The net energy of a lot of activities creates a negative balance.

I also have to agree with ctbwonder, also. We don't really need to truck in fresh fruit and vegetables daily from every corner of the Earth.

Brazil switched to ethanol back in the early 1980s

The feel-good statement was that they were all "ethanol-ready," which I see as nothing but a ploy to make people feel they can buy one of their gas-guzzlers and still be environmental stewards.I think they were trying to show a "normal" vehicle going to a normal fueling station, because they didn't want people to have the misconception that it was some weird far off technology or required you to own an exotic hippymobile.

Brazil switched to ethanol back in the early 1980sand switched off of it later as petrol prices stabilized and ethanol subsidies were eased down. Brazil doesn't use that much ethanol today and they were making it from more efficient sugarcane, that's because it's a failure and an exotic agricorp subsidy as well as farmer welfare. But new methods of generating ethanol, cellulosic ethanol has much more potential.

I really don't understand the whole ethanol from corn craze. The bottom line of oil running out: nothing will replace it. We will probably have to change our economy and our way of life to cope, and the society in which most people can live in mini-mansions and drive huge SUVs will be gone. People are dying to find an alternative for oil but there simply isn't one, and in most cases the infrastructure isn't there for an alternative to even partially replace oil, yet alone replace it entirely and allow us to keep living in the same way. I think its great that alternatives are being explored, but ethanol is probably not a viable option, since we don't have anywhere near the crop area to grow enough corn to power all the vehicles in the U.S. today- in fact, we would need 25% more land if we grew NO food. So I just don't see how this is going to work.

Brazil switched to ethanol back in the early 1980s


Yes, and they are destroying the Amazon to do so. Brazil is a bad, bad, bad example.

Just bad.

yea. ethanol isn't perfect but what are the alternatives, electric cars powered by nuclear energy a la france?

Some people think nukes would be good.

I'm not aware that France runs on electric cars. I assume they run on petrol like everyone else.

I'm in favor of powering down and relying on sustainable alternative energy, including responsible use of ethanol. Choosing something destructive just because it is slightly less bad than some other destructive choice doesn't seem very responsible to me.

france does run gas but they've made a strong commitment to nuclear energy unlike US so we'll see what happens.

France doesn't know what it will do with its long term nuke waste...but they're researching it...

but that's for a nuke thread, not this one. :)