Food Vs. Fuel: Growing Grain for Food Is More Energy Efficient

ScienceDaily — Using productive farmland to grow crops for food instead of fuel is more energy efficient, Michigan State University scientists concluded, after analyzing 17 years' worth of data to help settle the food versus fuel debate.

"It's 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel," said Ilya Gelfand, an MSU postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study.

"The ideal is to grow corn for food, then leave half the leftover stalks and leaves on the field for soil conservation and produce cellulosic ethanol with the other half."

VIA - TOD

US ethanol sector faces grim prospects-USDA

After trillions on taxpayer subsidizes....

 

Hard times have hit the once-robust U.S. ethanol sector amid the economic recession, with as much as 15 percent of production capacity likely standing idle, USDA chief economist Joseph Glauber said on Thursday. It was a sobering assessment of the fledging industry that was once bursting with optimism and financial gains as the country issued mandates on using the renewable fuel...

 

The Energy Information Administration, the U.S. government's top energy forecasting agency, earlier this month cut its estimate for world oil demand in 2009 by 400,000 barrels per day, citing the slower global economy. The EIA predicted that world oil demand this year would fall by 1.17 million bpd from 2008 to 84.70 million. That would be down from peak demand of 85.9 million bpd in 2007.

 

But hold on, we will still 'stick to taxpayers & food sectors'

Glauber said that rising mandates for ethanol use are expected to support corn demand and prices in the 2009/10 marketing year that begins Sept. 1. He said mandated ethanol use rises from 10.5 billion gallons in 2009 to 12 billion in 2010.  On a crop-year basis, that translates into about 11.5 billion gallons of ethanol demand in 2009/10, he said, adding that that would mean a 14-percent hike in corn used to produce the biofuel. At a projected 4.1 billion bushels, ethanol use will account for 33 percent of expected corn use in 2009/10, up from a forecast of 30 percent the current marketing year.

Ethanol Lawsuit Proceeds

FROM csnews -  Suit claims that companies at fault for not warning boat owners that gas can damage engines, fuel tanks

 

A Florida lawsuit against six oil companies that alleges negligence for failing to warn boat owners of potential harm from ethanol-blended gasoline, survived a motion to dismiss from the defendants, NaplesNews.com reported.

 

The next step is pursuing certification to become a class-action lawsuit, said plaintiff attorney Jeffrey Ostrow in Fort Lauderdale.

 

The intent is to represent all Florida boat owners who have used ethanol-blended fuel and those whose boats have been damaged by ethanol added in fuel, Ostrow said. He filed the lawsuit in August 2008 says the oil companies have been negligent by not providing warnings to boat owners that ethanol additive can corrode fiberglass fuel tanks and require the tanks to be replaced, and secondly, that phased separation of ethanol from gasoline can cause engine damage.

 

The goal with a class-action lawsuit is reimbursement to boat owners for repairs and to require a warning label on fuel pumps alerting boaters not to use ethanol-blended gasoline or consult with a boat mechanic, Ostrow said.

 

U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga issued an order Tuesday allowing the complaint to move forward on one count of negligence that the oil manufacturers have failed to warn boat owners of the potential harm of ethanol-blended gasoline. During earlier proceedings, the plaintiff’s attorney agreed to drop two other counts that the oil companies intentionally concealed potential harm of ethanol in gasoline and that such violated Florida’s deceptive and unfair trade law.

 

At issue is a state law adopted in spring 2008 that all gasoline sold in the state contain 10 percent ethanol, called E10, by the end of 2010 as part of conservation measures. Two exemptions were included allowing ethanol-free gas to be sold for airplanes and boats. About a half dozen other states require ethanol additives in gasoline.

 

For once I'm actually on the side of the oil companies. Gov. insisted requiring ethanol in all the gas, and thats what we got. I think its completely stupid and uncalled for to expect refiners and suppliers to have to double their storage and shipping capacity in order to keep ethanol and exempt gas separate. Complete waste of resources... read full here

76% of Federal Renewable Energy Support Went to Ethanol in 2007

From: Environmental Working Group [VIA Treehugger (image: EWG)]

Considering that the incoming Obama administration’s energy policy looks to favor second generation biofuels, wind, solar and geothermal power to a greater degree than previous policy, these statistics cited by the Environmental Working Group as much a reminder of things past as much as a warning on how not to do things in the future. Nonetheless, it is useful to, as the EWG puts it, “take a hard, clear-eyed look at...corn-based ethanol’s stranglehold on federal renewable energy tax credits and subsidies. This how things looked in 2007:

Ethanol Got $3 Billion in 2007
According to data EWG dragged up from EIA information released in April of 2008, in 2007 the ethanol industry received $3 billion in federal tax credits, which biodiesel received $180 million, and solar, wind and geothermal combined received $750 million. For those keen on percentages, that’s 76% for ethanol and 19% for solar, wind and geothermal.

America Can Do Better
Saying that “America can do better” and citing oft-heard reasons for corn-based ethanol not being all it was once claimed to be (limited potential for offsetting meaningful amounts of fossil fuels, dubious carbon emission reduction claims), the EWG is calling for politicians to 1) “phase out tax credits for corn ethanol and subsidize biofuels only if they show clear promise to meet strict climate and environmental protection standards;” and 2) “rebalance the US renewable energy and energy conservation portfolio to favor options that do the most to reduce fossil fuel use, safeguard the environment, spur more widely-shared economic development and increase energy security.”

While I'm right there with EWG in thinking that the US would do well to put corn ethanol behind it, move forward to better sources of renewable energy and concentrate even more on energy conservation, and stop being so beholden to Big Corn in general—so right on for the EWG in what they are advocating—is anyone else a bit tired of all the recommendations for what Barack Obama should or should not do? Let's all give the man until February 1 to get innaugurated and settle in to his new abode before again telling him what he ought to be doing.

The changes we need to make sustainable energy a reality:

• Phase out tax credits for corn ethanol and subsidize other biofuels only if they show clear promise to meet strict climate and environmental protection standards.
• Rebalance the U.S. renewable energy and energy conservation portfolio to favor options that do the most to reduce fossil fuel use, safeguard the environment, spur more widely-shared economic development and increase energy security.

More: Environmental Working Group

Obama, Vilsack and Salazar: The Ethanol Scammers' Dream Team

Robert Bryce - Over the past few weeks, Obama’s delusions about ethanol have become even more pronounced. On December 16, Stephen Power of the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama’s transition team has been talking to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) -- the trade group funded by the corn ethanol producers -- about a bailout for the ethanol industry. Two days later, Obama announced that the former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, would be the next Secretary of Agriculture and that Colorado Senator Ken Salazar would be the next Secretary of Interior. Announcing the selection, Obama said Vilsack and Salazar would be part of the “team we need” to strengthen rural America, create “green jobs” and “to free our nation from its dependence on oil.”

 

The fact that Obama continues to repeat this line about “dependence on oil” shows a near-complete ignorance of the scale of America’s energy needs. The U.S. currently has about 251 million registered motor vehicles, 8,200 commercial aircraft, 224,000 general aviation aircraft, and 12.7 million recreational boats. And nearly every one of those machines runs on oil.

 

Vilsack and Salazar are long-time biofuels boosters. While governor of Iowa -- America’s biggest corn and corn ethanol, producing state – Vilsack promoted corn ethanol production and “cellulosic” ethanol which can be made from various plant sources. During his run for the White House, which ended in early 2007 when his campaign ran out of money, Vilsack said he wanted to have the US producing 60 billion gallons of renewable fuel per year by 2030. (Current US production, nearly all of it from corn ethanol, is about 10 billion gallons.)

 

Both Vilsack and Salazar have been strong proponents of cellulosic ethanol. And they continue to support cellulosic ethanol even though the commercial viability of the fuel continues to be doubtful. Rapier points out that in February 2007, the federal government handed out $385 million in grants to six cellulosic ethanol projects. But today, only one commercial plant is actually under construction, and that project, owned by Georgia-based Range Fuels, has been delayed.

 

Fine. Let’s look at the numbers for cellulosic ethanol.

 

Let’s assume that the U.S. wants to replace 10 percent of its oil use (by volume) with cellulosic ethanol. The US consumes about 320 billion gallons of oil per year. New ethanol companies like Coskata and Syntec are claiming that they can produce about 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass, which is also about the same yield that can be garnered by using grain as a feedstock.

 

The math is straightforward: to produce 32 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol would require the annual harvest and transport of 320 million tons of biomass. Assuming each trailer holds 15 tons of biomass, that volume of biomass would fill 21.44 million semi-trailer loads. If we further assume that each trailer is 48 feet long, the column of trailers holding that quantity of feedstock would stretch almost 195,000 miles – that’s nearly the distance from the earth to the moon.

 

The corn ethanol industry is a scam. Cellulosic ethanol is a sham. And yet Obama and his appointees continue to promote the false notion that these fuels are the answer to America’s energy challenge.

 

Obama’s right. We do need change, particularly in our energy discussion... Read more via the Energy Tribune  (Graphic by Seth Myers)

10 Biggest Cleantech Disappointments of 2008

Earth2techgives it's biggest cleantech disappointments of 2008 :

1) Tesla Hits A Wall: The startup started to run low on cash — reportedly at one point as little as $9 million

2) EEStor Delays Some More: We were waiting for mid-2008, then late the startup and its partner say the big unveiling won't come till 2009.

3) T. Boone Derailed: Oil baron turned wind power advocate T. Boone Pickens used his $58 million PR campaign this year to create a lot of hope and support for clean power. Then the economy tanked. Pickens told us that the debt markets in particular took the wind out of his sails.

4) Wave Power Plan Gets Washed Away: Canadian company Finavera Renewables saw its plans to install a 2MW wave power project in California waters wash out to sea when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) denied its application.

5) The Clean Coal Lobby Gets Dirty: A report from the think tank the Center for American Progress finds coal companies have only spent $3.5 billion over the past several years investing in R&D for carbon capture and sequestration, the most promising technology for reducing emissions from coal power — just 1/17th of the coal industry's profits in 2007 alone, according to the group.

6) Corn Ethanol Industry Still Asking for Aid: Corn-based ethanol companies had a rough year: Corn prices spiked, the industry faced political and public backlash, and margins on ethanol narrowed, forcing companies like VeraSun to file for bankruptcy. Most recently, the corn ethanol lobby asked for $1 billion in short-term credit from the government and as much as $50 billion in loan guarantees. The lobby claims it's not a bailout, but the industry isn't sustainable

7) GM Still Featuring Bob Lutz: The U.S. automaker with one of the most promising electric cars in the pipeline is still employing an exec that publicly disputes the carbon theory of global warming. GM has managed to convince the government it needs a bailout, which requires it to prove it can be financially viable and meet current emissions laws

8) UK Wind Plans Blowing Away: The UK looks to be facing an uphill climb when it comes to meeting its wind power targets. The government has a plan to supply a third of its electricity from wind by 2020, but both Royal Dutch Shell and BP have pulled their offshore wind projects investments in the region as reports suggest the goal is far too aggressive.

9) It's Gonna Be A Lot Harder Than We Thought:  The research, from the University of Colorado at Boulder and McGill University in Montreal, says Beyond problems with wind power, scientists and politicians have realized that meeting existing carbon reduction goals won't be enough clean technology is needed.

10) Administration:  The incoming administration's commitment to a modestly aggressive plan — $150 billion over 10 years in clean power

Move Over Ethanol - Sugar Into Gasoline Is Cheaper And Easier, Say Researchers

Old news from my blog, but important news for "media hyped on biuofuels"

From "new news" press release at scientificblogging.com

Chemical engineer Randy Cortright and his colleagues at Virent Energy Systems of Madison, Wisc., and researchers led by NSF-supported chemical engineer James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin at Madison are now announcing that sugars and carbohydrates can be processed like petroleum into the full suite of products that drive the fuel, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

The physical properties of Virent's Biogasoline product spontaneously separate from water. This requires very little energy for processing compared with the energy-intensive process of distillation required for ethanol purification.

 

The process Virent discovered in early 2006, and announced at the Growing the Bioeconomy conference sponsored by Iowa State University on Sept. 9, 2008, is the subject of patent applications published last week.

 

According to Dumesic, a key feature of the approach is that between the sugar or starch starter materials and the hydrocarbon end products, the chemicals go through an intermediate stage as an organic liquid composed of functional compounds.

 

"The intermediate compounds retain 95 percent of the energy of the biomass but only about 40 percent of the mass, and can be upgraded into different types of transportation fuels, such as gasoline, jet and diesel fuels," said Dumesic. "Importantly, the formation of this functional intermediate oil does not require the need for an external source of hydrogen," he added, since hydrogen comes from the slurry itself.

 

As part of a suite of second generation biofuel alternatives, green gasoline approaches like aqueous phase reforming are generating interest across the academic and industrial communities because they yield a product that is compatible with existing infrastructure, closer than many other alternatives in their net energy yield, and most importantly, can be crafted from plants grown in marginal soils, like switchgrass, or from agricultural waste.

 

While several years of further development will be needed to refine the process and scale it for production, the promise of gasoline and other petrochemicals from renewable plants has led to broad industrial interest.

 

Read full at scientificblogging.com

Ethanol is an ugly baby...

"Ethanol is an ugly baby, but it's our baby. I'm not against any fuel unless it's foreign."

-- oil billionaire and energy independence evangelist  T. Boone Pickens  (oh so gristy)

High Oil Prices? Blame Ethanol, OPEC Says

Kenneth Rapoza reports from Wall Street Journal

 

Ethanol is on the ropes because of the food versus fuel debate, but now a new heavyweight just stepped into the ring and this one has got some really big guns.

OPEC president Chakib Khelil has a new culprit for the rising cost of oil–ethanol. Mr. Khelil says about 40% of the recent rise in oil prices can be chalked up to ethanol, which accounts for about 1% of the world’s transportation fuel. The other 60%, apparently, is due to a weak dollar and “geopolitical worries.”

 

The problem: OPEC’s boss doesn’t lay out the logic explaining why ethanol blended into gasoline is to blame for high oil prices.

 

Suddenly, ethanol producers are getting hit from all sides–food and fuel. Ethanol lobbies made their pitch to G-8 leaders earlier this month, pleading with under-fire world leaders not to scrap ethanol programs in light of rising alarm that ethanol and biofuels are to blame for high food prices. Ethanol producers got no favors Wednesday with a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based rich-country club, which said biofuels do contribute to rising food prices. The OECD urged governments to pour subsidies into energy efficiency, instead.

 

Those outside attacks are helping paper over internal differences between the big ethanol lobbies, most notably Brazil’s longtime desire to knock down U.S. tariffs on imports of Brazilian ethanol. Brazil (and some congressmen) figure more Brazilian ethanol means cheaper gas. U.S. ethanol producers like the $0.54 per gallon tariff just fine.

 

Knowing Brazilian sugarcane ethanol reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 90%  compared with regular fossil fuels.

---

Haase's EASY answer - Lift tariff on Brazil and STOP subsidizing fuel from food sources (DAhhh)

ETHANOL (”moonshine”, “white lightnin’”) is NOT BIODIESEL

From OILGAE TEST DRIVE: Algae Power Hits the Road

....DO NOT CONFUSE ETHANOL ("moonshine", "white lightnin'") with BIODIESEL (derived from fatty oils, mainly from plants like soybeans, mustard seed, palm oil, waste cooking oil from restaurants, and about 115 other species of plants, but also animal fats). Rudolf Diesel invented his engine in the late 19th century, and perfected in the early 20th century, to run on peanut oil. So-called "diesel" fuel, derived from third level fractionation of petroleum, was a later invention of Standard Oil et al, after Diesel mysteriously died in transit across the English Channel, from France, on the eve of WWI. Biodiesel is derived from a much more energy efficient process than ethanol, and can be used DIRECTLY in diesel buses, trucks, trains and ships without having to modify the diesel engines. Over 40% of the passenger cars in Europe are more efficient diesel, and also has a more active biodiesel retail industry.

The problems we all face with the rapid growth of the biofuels industry, driven by the multinationals like ADM and Cargill, is that they are willing to sacrifice large tracts of viable food farmland, rainforest and other habitat, releasing additional CO2 into the atmosphere with burnoffs, and heavy use of petroleum-based fertilizers, for the sake of short-term speculative profit. This is NOT sustainable. Our co-op and other affiliated organizations are involved in the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance, to promote the development of so-called second-tier biofuels, such as Solazyme's cellulosic sugar-based, intensive algae farming, which are far less dependent on food-based sources of oil and sugar, and much more energy-balanced. Google any of these names to get more info. Also check out the National Biodiesel Board website, http://www.nbb.org


Bio-diesel and synthetic-diesel are much better choices - however for the immediate future because a majority of the passenger cars, commercial trucks, construction equipment and military vehicles run on diesel and could run on bio/syn-diesel with no modifications (and run better and longer due to their superior lubrication over petroleum based diesel).

Algae based diesel could be a big player if a plan could be executed that utilized 3 existing factors that are currently problems for us:
1. The extreme amount of runoff from farms going down the Mississippi river creates large growths of algae in the Gulf of Mexico on an annual basis
2. Large amounts of trash are dumped annually into the ocean because we don’t have enough landfills for the amount of trash we produce
3. The commercial fishing industry is in decline due to more dead zones reducing catches.

Does anyone else see a possible solution through the use of open water algae farms?

We could utilize the run off that creates dead zones in the gulf to help solve our energy needs and restore some fishing industries. Where does the trash come in? Certain algae love to eat our trash. You just have to find one that does makes a good bio diesel too!

Offshore bio-diesel algae farms could be initiated with very little startup cost. Production would also help revitalize the gulf coast which already has the infrastructure in place for oil production and processing. As I recall, don’t they have a history of sugar production down there too? Cane based alcohol would be better than paying not to grow sugar (ref: tariffs and world sugar production).

Seems like the U.S. has been paying attention to the wrong gulf region of this planet.

E-85 reduces Mileage 25% , according to AAA...

AAA now calculates a price for E-85 to adjust for its energy content. The national average pump price for the fuel on Thursday was $2.91 per gallon; regular gasoline was $3.56. But adjusted for its energy content, the price for E-85 jumps to $3.83, or 27 cents more than regular.

E-85 blend gasoline, with 85% ethanol gets much worse mileage. But vehicles need some fairly special minor special equipment to be able to operate with it. General Motors is betting heavily on "flex fuel" vehicles to sustain its green street cred. But now, with the rise in price for corn and other commodities, even with federal subsidies, it is turning out that fuel costs rise when motorists purchase both ethanol blends.

Aside from all the other little problems associated with ethanol production, gasoline blends using ethanol actually cost motorists more, even when the blend is cheaper per gallon.

Over the course of a year, that amounts to an extra 300 gallons of E-85 to go the same distance as when using conventional gas. That means an average household, when the total cost of conventional gas and E-85 are compared, would spend nearly $100 more per year for E-85.

The Kansas City Star explains:

ANOTHER ETHANOL VICTIM: DUCKS & PHEASANTS

COMMON DREAMS Out on the farm, the ducks and pheasants are losing ground. Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government's biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. They are spurning guaranteed annual payments for a chance to cash in on the boom in wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. Last fall, they took back as many acres as are in and combined.

Environmental and hunting groups are warning that years of progress could soon be lost, particularly with the native prairie in the. But a broad coalition of baking, poultry, snack food, ethanol and livestock groups say bigger harvests are a more important priority than habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife. They want the government to ease restrictions on the preserved land, which would encourage many more farmers to think beyond conservation. . . Born nearly 25 years ago in an era of abundance, the Conservation Reserve Program is having a rough transition to the age of scarcity. Its 35 million acres - about 8 percent of the cropland in the country - are the big prize in this brawl.

CORN fuel up to 423 times more carbon emissions than fossil fuels?

Recent reports, though, have led to a growing concern that ethanol might simply be a faster way of digging an environmental grave.

According to a piece in Science magazine, experts from Princeton and the Nature Conservancy have focused on serious problems associated with the rising use of ethanol. First and foremost, they said, clearing the vast tracts of land necessary for growing corn can result in anywhere from 17 times to 423 times more carbon emissions annually than are saved by burning biofuels rather than fossil fuels.

There are some caveats to these objections: For instance, the exact emissions numbers are by no means agreed upon, and cellulosic ethanol could be made from switchgrass or other plants, which can grow almost anywhere and would not increase the price of corn.

The more that ethanol supporters claim to have answers, though, the more skeptics seem to have questions. Water use has become a political hot potato in the western United States, which has been hit not only by drought but by water-rights disputes; one undeniable fact is that ethanol production soaks up massive amounts of water. One example: In Colorado, the North Fork of the heavily drained Republican River has shortened by 10 miles in just 20 years, and unchecked irrigation has drained the major aquifers in the area to dangerously low levels. The water table for the area sits 100 feet lower than it did 30 years ago, according to Newsweek.

Even Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson has turned around on his previous ethanol enthusiasm, recently telling the BBC that he "regrets his investment in biofuels on environmental and economic grounds" after investing nearly $400 million in the field two years ago.

Biofuels Might Prove Worse Than CO2 (The Sunday Independent)
Ethanol Boom Saps Water (Newsweek)

Read more from the source "The Dark Side of Ethanol"

ETHANOL is not the answer future fuel needs... AU

Ethanol Fuel is not so Green to The Australian Department of Parliamentary Services who has released a research paper on "The economic effects of an ethanol mandate". Published on 22 January 2008, it is available from the Parliamentary Library website.

Paul Syvret, in the Brisbane Courier Mail article Ethanol fuel is not so green, expressed his view on ethanol and summed up the paper by saying:

ETHANOL is not the answer for Australia's future fuel needs.

E10 Ethanol, it ruins your gas mileage...

"As far as I'm concerned, they may as well put water in the gas," Atkeson said.

When Atkeson first purchased his car, which uses gasoline and then electric power harnessed from the car's brake system to increase fuel mileage, he said he routinely got in excess of 50 miles per gallon. Recently he said his fuel economy has dropped to approximately 40 mpg on the highway and 35 mpg in the city.

"It just doesn't burn the same. I know Honda does not recommend burning that type of fuel in their vehicles, simply because they know it's going to drop the gas mileage. It doesn't combust the same," Guadagnino said.

 

How much energy?

Most automobiles and trucks in the United States are able to run on E10 fuel, but the fuel contains less energy than gasoline. According to the EIA, a gallon of gasoline has approximately 122,169 British thermal units of energy, compared with 83,333 Btu per gallon of ethanol.

Using EIA numbers, an approximate gallon of E10 gasoline should have about 118,285 Btu, 3.2 percent less than regular unleaded gasoline. How that affects fuel mileage in various model cars is disputed by proponents and opponents of ethanol production and consumers of the product.

According to the Renewable Fuels Association, the trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry, fuel injected cars may experience a decrease of approximately 2 percent in fuel economy using E10.

Read more from The Daily Gazette

 

Also see more posts on the EthanolHoax

 

Ethanol: A bad idea hits Colorado's gas pumps

Economic and environmental studies consistently criticize corn-based ethanol because increased demand for the fuel can push up prices for food with corn ingredients and because its production is so energy-intensive. According to Scientific American, the energy balance for corn ethanol is at most 1.3-to-1, meaning that its output of energy is only 30 percent greater than the energy it took to produce and ship it. Since ethanol can bond with condensed water in pipelines, it must be shipped by diesel trucks or trains.

 

Read full here

California has taken a wrong turn in reducing greenhouse gases by allowing corn-based ethanol into vehicle gas tanks

And the profits and Tax money are booming from it!

While California is heralded as a world leader in addressing climate change, An analysis by O'Hare and Alexander Farrell, U.C. Berkeley professor of energy and resources, showed that on account of land-use changes stimulated by greater use of ethanol in motor fuel, "the carbon intensity of California's gasoline" already has risen between 3 percent and 33 percent.

Ethanol can be expected to add more global warming gases in the years ahead as the percentage of ethanol in gasoline climbs, according to scientists.

The analysis comes after California lifted the cap on the ethanol content of gasoline from 6 percent to 10 percent last year in preparation for a low carbon fuel standard. The strategy is aimed at cutting the carbon intensity of motor fuel by 10 percent by 2020.

"All the numbers we've seen so far go the wrong way," said Michael O'Hare, U.C. Berkeley professor of public policy. "It looks like these numbers are pretty big."

"There are things that happen that you can't see," he said.

In a January 12 memorandum to the Air Board outlining their findings, O'Hare and Farrell wrote that shifting one acre of farmland from food production to growing corn for ethanol ripples throughout world agricultural markets. It can result in forest being cut down half way around the world for planting replacement corn for food. Then the forest no longer removes carbon from the atmosphere, but instead decays and releases carbon to the air.

"The analysis suggests that indirect greenhouse gas emissions are larger than direct [ones] due to the large amounts of carbon stored in ecosystems of all sorts," according to the analysis.

The miscalculation in part stems from the so-called GREET model, which the state relied on to make judgments about the life cycle carbon emissions attributable to various fuels, the analysis notes. That model does not account for indirect land-use changes when crops are turned into fuel. As a result, for instance, it underestimates the amount of carbon emissions caused when ethanol is made out of corn grown on conservation reserve program lands--usually fragile areas prone to soil erosion--by 155 times.

Read full here

U.S. Gas consumption and our Hydrogen Future

Westerners not only have far more cars, but the distances they drive are also 3–4 times longer on average than those of Indians and Chinese. The United States alone—where monster SUVs roam and driving is considered a birthright— Fuel economy has stagnated for a quarter-century as cars grew larger, heavier, and more muscular. In New York, a Nano might be mistaken for a golf cart.

The way to a sustainable future will not be by denying people what they want (and clearly need), but by providing equally attractive alternatives that are less damaging.


Also:

Finally, CA Hydrogen Highway effort passed away.

These recent headlines from EVWorldwire tell the recent story:

• Has California’s Hydrogen Highway Run ‘Out of Gas’?
• It’s a bumpy ride on the Hydrogen Highway
• California officials try to save plan for hydrogen highway

Let’s hope the next one is: An End to Energy Subsidies

After all, there is nothing wrong with hydrogen as a molecule. It was just foolish policy of picking future technologies that led us down this road to waste (and false hopes).

The simpler answer, and the one that allows all innovators to play equally, is to tax fossil fuels and let the market sort it out.

Also see:

• Climate Progress Dehypes Hydrogen Again
• The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate
• Hydrogen highway hits dead end
• hydrogen fuel car is dead: analyst

-- but if I've said it once ..

Some image and info from:
Read more via celsias.com & AutoblogGreen

SUV filling up with ethanol would use enough grain to feed the average person for one year.

More of US Grain Crop to be Consumed by Family Car

Tom Doggett of Reuters News Explains - Almost a third of the US grain crop next year may be diverted from the family dinner table to the family car as fuel, putting upward pressure on food prices, a leading expert warned on Tuesday.

Grain prices are near record levels as the United States produces more ethanol, now made mostly from corn, to blend with gasoline and stretch available motor fuel supplies.
Farmers, hoping to cash in, are expected to grow 30 percent of next year's grain crop for ethanol use as more refineries that process corn into fuel come online...

"The price of grain is now tied to the price of oil," As a result prices will go up for poultry, beef and pork as well as dairy products because corn is the number one animal feed for farmers.

"Our refrigerators are stuffed with corn," Brown said. For example, feed prices make up about 40 percent of the cost of poultry alone, he said.

The pressure on food prices from ethanol will only get worse as the new energy law passed last month requires US ethanol production to soar from about 9 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

"What we see are cars beginning to compete with people for world grain supplies," "We could see a consumer revolt in this country." Read more via Reuters...

The GOOD Ethanol news from G.M. could not of come sooner:

General Motors Corp. is planning on making biofuel with garbage at a cost of
less than a dollar a gallon

US Food Inflation Parallels 70s on Ethanol Boom

REUTERS  - Rising US food inflation, now a 25-year high, is reminiscent of the 1970s and will continue for the next five years due to growing world economies, increased food demand and a sharp expansion of corn-based ethanol production, a top food economist said Friday.

"What happened in the early '70s and what is happening today is that we have moved food input price to a new plateau. Ultimately, the consumer is going to have to absorb those increased costs," said Bill Lapp...

 

Futures prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, the benchmark for commodity grain and soy markets, have risen to multi-year highs this year. Wheat hit an all-time high of US$9.81-3/4 a bushel just on Friday. Soybeans on Friday reached over US$11.60 a bushel, a price not seen since 1973, and corn rose to US$4.37-1/4 in February, the highest level in a decade.

 

"The underpinnings for the higher commodity prices are world economic growth, a weak dollar and increased use of our corn crop for the production of ethanol," Lapp told Reuters in an interview.

 

While most of the US corn crop, or 43 percent is fed to livestock to produce meat, dairy products and eggs, an increasing percentage is being used to produce ethanol. Twenty-four percent of this year's corn crop will be turned into ethanol, up from just 14 percent two years ago.

 

Read more linked here

 

 

 

 

Picture VIA-http://groovygreen.com