HA! That's right by my house. I've even fueled up there before.

Umm, would this be a good time to bring up that I've heard it takes more total energy to make ethanol than it generates?

Flame away....

No flame, Carl, just the warm glow of truth.

You heard wrong, or more correctly, you heard only part of the story. When the same measures are applied to gasoline, gas is a net energy looser as well.

Our interest in E85 is clean air, not BTUs. See our site and find out why Minnesota has more E85 (204 stations) and cheaper E85 than anywhere else in USA.

I am not an apologist for Big Oil (even though I work for them) but gasoline is NOT a net energy loser. Here is what I just sent to one of the authors of the USDA study making that claim:

First, it is well-known that the EROI of getting crude oil out of the ground is about 10 to 1. A barrel of oil contains about 6 MMBTU, so it will take 0.6 MMBTU to get that barrel out of the ground. Processing that barrel also takes about 10% of the energy contained within the oil, or another 0.6 MMBTU. I think this is what you show in your GREET model, and is also consistent with my knowledge of refineries. Almost all of the BTU value in a barrel of oil gets converted into useful products. The BTU inputs for transportation of the oil and gasoline are very small compared to those for extraction and refining of the oil. The bottom line is that we have inputs of about 1.2 MMBTU to get products out worth 6 MMBTU. Or, to put it on a 1 MMBTU basis, we input 0.2 MMBTU to produce 1 MMBTU of fossil fuels, NOT 1.23 MMBTU as your slide indicates.

I have blogged a lot about the problems with grain-ethanol lately:

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/

There are lot of good arguments against reliance on fossil fuels, but energy balance is not one of them. As I showed above, when the entire process is considered, the balance of gasoline is about 5/1. For ethanol, it is 1.3/1 at best (which is very bad).

RR

Ethanol is a total joke.
Cornel and UC Berkley did studies and found it takes 29% more energy to make ethanol from corn than the ethanol contains. That includes the gas to run the tracktors and all.

No one would even think about ethanol if it wasn't for corn producer's lobbying to keep their $4 billion in subsidies.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_hassett&sid=aSVm3V6ipm8I

Add to that price the tax break and the lower gas mileage of ethanol and it becomes the most expensive fuel option, by far. People who think they are getting a bargain are being duped. They will end up back at the gas pump a lot more often if they use ethanol.

E85 would have to be a lot more than 30 cents a gallon less to be a bargain.

Because of its lower energy density, the equal value price point if E85 is 72% that of gasoline. If E85 costs more than 72% of what gasoline costs, you come out ahead buying gasoline.

In this case, with unleaded regular at $2.759, E85 should cost no more than $1.99 a gallon to be worth buying.

It is a mistake to price the fuels on a volumetric basis since that doesn't allow easy comparison of the energy the fuels deliver. In fact, it allows the ethanol industry to be misleading about what E85 really costs consumers -- and they do deliberately do that.

I wanna know when they are gonna make a car that runns offf of human fat! I mean, my body runs pretty well off of it and I don't remember making any bad emissions anytime lately. Plus, I could quit jogging and save my knees!!!!!

Since everyone is anti-E85, what are the other REALISTIC alternatives? Hybrids? Well I love the fact that most people by hybrids thinking they will get 50 miles to the gallon, when in fact, if the by hybrid with a V6 theyll only get 30 miles to the gallon. How does this help us at all? So, then you may say, well why dont we push for solar and wind power. How are you going to power a car with solar or wind...id love to see that work. While all of you are fighting over whats the best way to decrease our dependence on oil, which causes pollution and is a terrible drain on our natural resources, nothing gets done. Why cant we take a pragmatic, multi-step approach to find more efficient renewable fuels. Why do we have to find the silver bullet right away? If demand for E85 increases, there will be more money spent to find more efficient and cheaper ways to produce it...like using switch grass, which is a better source for ethanol. But, if we all bitch about ethanol and what renewable fuel to use, and E85 demand doesnt increase, I will bet you a lot of money, car and oil companies will say what theyve been saying since the 70s...there is no market for cars that run on renewable fuels, so we are not going to invest in it. The only way to get more efficient and cheaper renewable fuels is to show the big bad "market" its worth the investment. Otherwise it will never happen. And, right now E85 seems to be the best way to start showing we can ween ourselfs off oil and get the general public to adopt the use of renewable fuels. I would love to hear from all of you what a better solution...that is ready to go to market right now. And, dont even bring up hydrogen fuel cells, because its going to be another 10 years...at least before those cars are brought to the market. That would be another 10 years of polluting our earth. Please someone lay out a better option than E85, thats ready for prime time?

You can't deny the fact that E85 production is more detrimental to the environment and more supportive of oil dependence than simply running on conventional gasoline. Hybrids are the answer! Plug in hybrid cars could be made today and would get about 100 mpg. The auto manufacturers don't want to touch the plug in stigma though. Nuclear to make hydrogen is also much better idea than ethanol. If the corn lobby wasn't blinding the nation into thinking corn is the best way to make ethanol, then we would see that ethanol only makes sense for sugar cane producers like Venezuela.

--
editor note: Lets not confuse "corn ethanol" with "ethanol". See this.

I agree sugar based ehtanol is probably the best method for making E85 at the moment. However, the sugar cane industry is never going to let Congress lift the tariffs on imported sugar products from Brazil. So, until they do sugar based ethanol made in Brazil is too expensive. I don't agree with your comment that we're better off using conventional gasoline than E85. E85 is much better for the enviroment. Conventional gasoline creates more benzenne and MTBE fumes than E85. So, I'm not sure how you think buring gasoline is better for the enviroment.

--
editor note: LP is not 100% efficient either, though.. Finding it, production, transport, combustion, etc. Things are always complicated with energy.

What about a car that runs on methane? I produce enough to power my own car, I bet others could too. Yeah it smells bad, but we have more poop in this country than anything else. Instead of flushing it into the sewers, we could install toilets in our cars and crap straight into the tank. It would keep the water cleaner, open up space in everyone's house for a new linen closet and would leave gasoline for more important things, like Molotov cocktails.