Lots Of Ethanol, And More on the Way
by Andrew Posner, Rhode Island, USA on 03.14.08
Ah ethanol, we're never quite sure what to make of it. Sometimes we hear that ethanol is not as pointless as we thought, and then we learn that it may even be worse than its fossil-fuel brethren. But whatever our opinion, the undeniable fact is that the U.S. is producing a whole lot of it. In fact, the latest numbers tell the story:
6.48 billion gallons. That's how much ethanol - almost all of it from corn - was made in the U.S. last year, a total that comes to an average of 423,000 barrels per day. Compared to 2006, this is an increase of 34 percent. Still, more corn will be needed to reach the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007's new Renewable Fuel Standard for 2008: eight billion gallons. A problem? Not according to the Renewable Fuels Association, which says that current biorefinery capacity is 13.4 billion gallons per year. With 57 new refineries on the way, the eight billion gallons will be here before we know it.
Sounds like a lot. But to put that in perspective, in 2004 the U.S. was consuming around 20 million barrels of oil a day, meaning that last year ethanol production equaled roughly 2% of our consumption. Hmm. Wonder if someone is making a lot of money on this ethanol thing. . .
Via: ::AutoBlogGreen
See Also: ::Cuba: Can 'Red' Ethanol Be Green?, ::One Last Kick at the Ethanol Can, ::Virgin to do Aviation Ethanol?, ::Ethanol vs. Biodiesel: Life Cycle Impacts, ::Mexico Approves Corn and Sugar Cane Ethanol Law and ::Gas Too Expensive? Dump Environmental Rules
Makes me nauseous. Seems like pretty much anyone running anything is an idiot. Seriously, how hard is it to understand that using a staple world food crop for mass production of fuel is a bad idea!?
Don't you mean 2.4%? ~500k barrels ethanol/20 million barrels oil + ~500k b.e. = .024 or 2.4%
I think that should be 2%, not 0.02%
AArrrggg,
Please do the math correctly.
The answer is 2%
Not so bad now huh?
world food crop? who said we had to share the food with the world?
Cars optimized for the use of ethanol can be thirty percent more efficient than cars using gasoline. By using a turbocharger and high compression ratio to take advantage of the higher knock resistance of ethanol, the thermal efficiency can be increased. Thus the widespread use of ethanol is the key to improving the nation's fleet fuel efficiency. The problem is that ethanol optimized vehicles are not yet available, and that problem is really only due to stagnant CAFE standards.
There is a lot of irrational hate towards ethanol and it's all for bad reasons, mostly based on misunderstandings.
1. Ethanol does not increase the price of food. Most crops grown go towards animal feed, not human food. Thus carnivorism and overpopulation are responsible for increasing food prices, not ethanol.
2. Ethanol can have better thermal efficiency than gas in some cars, with the percentage blend also effecting the thermal efficiency. Thus simply multiplying to correct for energy content does not give you the actual mpg difference between ethanol and gas.
3. Just because common farming practices are not sustainable doesn't mean that sustainable farming is not possible. Complaining about natural gas use for fertilizer isn't relevant to the ethanol issue, that's a natural gas use issue. Corn can be grown without artificial fertilizer.
Kurt...dude. I hate to pick on you because you everything you say is technically true, albeit misguided.
1) A lot of corn goes to feed animals that humans eventually eat. Ipso facto all the corn grown is for human food.
2) The efficiency of an ethanol engine CAN be much higher than gas. Currently engines are still optimized to run on gas and likely will be for a while. Most important though, ICE's will never, ever, approach the efficiency of electric power.
3) Not to put down organic farming, but you'll never grow enough corn - or anything else - organically to produce the amounts of fuel we need. Not to mention you'll never convince the corn belt to give up their nitrogen.
And lastly, corn is one of the most intensively farmed crops we grow, and we grow a lot of it. By intensive, I mean it uses more pesticides, fertilizers and water than most crops. These factors have to do with the fact that corn is grown as one gigantic monoculture making it susceptible to pests, the breeding of corn that requires high nitrogen levels to thrive and the fact that it is grown in dry, hot places. Not to mention that the wide row spacing of corn allows for more runoff, causing soil loss and ground water pollution - and even more fertilizer cause it keeps washing off.
Corn is possibly the worst thing we could grow, and ethanol is surely the worst thing we could do with it.
What about cellulosic ethanol? It's a pipe-dream and mostly pointless, we can get methanol from cellulose much easier (that's why it's called wood-alcohol).
PS: I don't mean to harp on corn farmers, they're just trying to make a living the best they can. It's up to the gov't to cut corn subsidies and get them growing something else (hemp maybe).