The Many Myths of Ethanol

Ethanol is still mostly a crock.

And people think the government is going to "solve" the "global warming problem"? Ha ha ha.

Of course, Dave, the leftover is not wasted. It's called DDGS and in modern ethanol plants, each bushel of corn that?s fermented produces about 18 pounds of DDGS which is used for animal feed. Hogs love it.
Does your food price factor this into the calculation or does it count bushels of corn used for ethanol as a total dead loss against the food production calculations?

Dave,

I'm glad that K likes her Prius - but there's no way that I'd buy any present hybrid. First, I (and K) could get a car that gets great fuel economy in real world driving for much less money - and it's a Toyota if that matters. I refer to the Corolla (32/41 MPG with a manual tranny, 30/38 with an automatic). The Corolla, well equipped, is out the door at about $15-16K as opposed to the $22-23K of the Prius, which like all hybrids, loses most of its theoretical fuel economy advantage once it goes out on the open road, where (especially in the Toyota system) the electric motors aren't used.

Add to that the fact that any hybrid will need a total replacement of the battery pack at about 125,000 miles - at a cost of $5,000 - $7,500, which is equivalent to the Corolla needing a new engine (an unlikely event if properly maintained) - and I can only reach the conclusion that until battery technology is dramatically improved, hybrids remain one of the two great frauds being perpetrated on the American motorist, ethanol being the other.

As for ethanol, absent hefty Federal subsidies, E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) would be MUCH more expensive than 100% gas - even now. And we're subsidizing a fuel that gets 20 - 25% less MPG than does gas (I wonder: How much does Brazil subsidize ethanol?).

Patrick Bedard, an automotive engineer, member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and an editor for Car and Driver magazine, wrote a great article in that magazine's July 2006 issue debunking the ethanol frenzy. It's at http://www.caranddriver.com/features/11174/tech-stuff-ethanol-promises.html .

It amuses me greatly to see stridently anti-business Democrats and equally pro-business Republicans marching in lockstep in support of such a non answer to our real energy dilemma...

and that made up the difference, Paul. The battery replacement is a non-issue for us -- the Camry she traded in was 11 years old and was just coming up on its 65,000 maintenance. The blue book was only about 4k, and there was half that in maintenance required, much simply age-based (a new timing belt, for instance, which would have run about $750) We got 3k in trade, and with gas prices headed nowhere but up over the next decade, it does make sense. And it does our part for cutting emissions that lead to global warming, too! Incidentally, since the credit expired Toyota has had to offer their first-ever incentives (about 2k/Prius) because the credit temporarily dried up demand of socially conscious folks willing to pay a bit more to be green.

As for ethanol byproducts, yes they help as animal feed, but they do nothing for the cost of corn-flakes and mazola oil!

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

Say, Dave, if you stop using DDGS to feed your animals, wouldn't you have to replace that loss in amount of feed? If you replace it with raw corn, you still have "the cost of corn-flakes and mazola oil" situation. If you replace with soybean, you have an effect on soy products.
BTW, I have seen studies that show that hogs fed with DDGS gain weight faster than those fed with straight corn. Seems the fermentation breaks down the corn to more usable (by the body) substances. It's obvious why just making a mash from feed corn and tossing in yeast to break it down for this effect might cause problems. I avoid making any University of Arkansas football jokes here, but I'm thinking of one (grin).

1. Are you planning to keep the Prius past the time where the batteries have to be replaced (about $6,500 according to my research)? If so, you'd better start setting aside that tax credit money now.

2. The tax credit did NOT dry up the "demand of socially conscious folks willing to pay a bit more to be green." In keeping with well established economic principles, by reducing the credit in proportion to the number of Priuses sold - which is what the Federal law mandates - the Feds reduced the subsidy for going "green." Since you always get more of what you subsidize, this should be no surprise to you.

3. Lexus is introducing a hybrid LS class car that promises V-12 performance with V-8 power - and fuel savings. The gas powered LS gets 18 MPG in the EPA combined cycle, the hybrid gets 22. A gas powered LS costs about $95,000, the hybrid $115,000. Given the need for battery replacement, does it make ANY sense to drop $20,000 more for the hybrid?

4. As for ethanol: Since you obviously didn't read the article I cited, let me help you:

Burning ethanol has a mixed effect on vehicle emissions. According to the Department of Energy, E85 in place of gasoline reduces carbon monoxide by four percent and NOx by 59 percent, but it raises total hydrocarbon by 43 percent.

Ethanol is free of certain toxic chemicals ? benzine and xylene ? that are associated with gasoline, but exposures to those substances are so small that no one is worrying about them today. On the other hand, ethanol exhaust emissions do contain acetaldehydes not found in gasoline exhaust.

And further:

When fossil fuels are burned, they release carbon that was removed from the atmosphere billions of years ago by plants and stored in fossils ever since. This release, in the form of carbon dioxide, builds up greenhouse gases that are widely believed to be causing climate change. Ethanol releases carbon dioxide, too, but some of it was removed from the air recently by the plants grown as feedstock for ethanol production. So ethanol recycles a share of its carbon, and the size of that recycled share determines its greenhouse appeal.

Ideally, ethanol would be efficient enough as a fuel to power ethanol-production factories. But it?s nowhere close. With today?s technology, the carbon dioxide released by the fossil fuel used to produce ethanol towers over the amount recycled.

Switching from gasoline to ethanol would have an ?ambiguous effect? on greenhouse gases, according to the (University of California,) Berkeley study, with reported values ranging from a 32-percent decrease to a 20-percent increase. It concluded that a 13-percent reduction was likely per BTU.

The U.S. Department of Energy was less optimistic, concluding that E85 produces only a four-percent reduction in carbon dioxide. In the near term, ethanol has no chance of mitigating global warming.

If we're going to seek new tech for personal transportation, we need to get better batteries and a whole lot more electricity without the need for more fossil fuel consumption. We CAN do this; do you know that a solar farm of about 10,000 square miles - which could easily fit into the vast Federal lands in any Southwest state - would provide all our electricity for the next 20 years, using present solar cell technology? Do you know that using systems now coming online, that an equivalent area of wind turbines can do the same thing (This assumes that rich libs like Ted Kennedy and Babs Streisand don't get all NIMBY on us when the wind farms are to be located off their resort islands.)?

So, given the fraudulent nature of hybrids and ethanol, what to do? Since oil supplies are still abundant, and refinery capacity is seriously unable to meet the demand, the first thing we need to do, IMO, is fast track more refinery capacity. We also need to seriously consider more nuclear power plants.

Of course, from what I've read, we may get to the so far unattainable hydrogen economy faster than we think, assuming that better fuel cells can be built - although building the infrastructure to support that will be very costly.

Please think further ahead than your next Federal tax return, Dave, and stop jumping aboard every scam that's being proposed. The only difference between the hybrid/ethanol scam and the "100 MPG carburator" scam of not too long ago is that more people believe the former than did the latter.

What do you drive?

Bob

1. 1995 Saturn SL1 with 158,000 miles on it;

2. 1993 Taurus GL with 225,000 miles on it.

No trucks (HATE THEM), no hard core performance cars, just those.

Can't kill em. My dad got a new V8 Lacerne something. He's 70+ and buys a tank of gas a month or longer between tanks.

For him, the right choice. Battleship or tank with easy in and out plus good ride.

Bob

the redistribution of wealth factor?

...in my first reply to Dave. Sugar cane would be a reasonably efficient substitute for corn. We, alas, have very little land in areas where cane will grow well; I suppose we could depopulate Louisiana, southern Alabama, Georgia, Florida and parts of southeast Texas and Hawaii, but I suspect that the natives might object...

My sense of this is that we must in the short run build more refineries; there is still abundant oil, but we can't refine it. We have a man-made shortage. It's also time, now that the technology is available and works, to consider solar and wind as our primary source of electricity; presently, we use more fossil fuels in our electric power plants than in our cars, and that needs to stop posthaste.

Here in Indiana, we now have 3 working ethanol plants and 12 more under construction or in the advanced planning stages. We are in fact getting more of what we subsidize.

Given the realities of corn growing - that after two years, a cornfield must be planted with soybeans to replenish all the nutrients that corn sucks out of the land - and given the fact that the demand for corn will only increase, I expect that steadily rising food prices are here to stay, thereby further enriching those who are most actively pimping the ethanol boondoggle.

Bon appetit!

that just adds to the collapse. I would like to see the subsidies for corn growers diminish in proportion with the rise in corn prices.

once they get the hooks in, getting them out will prove near impossible.

another of the unlimited rat holes that we will toss money into forever.

by genetically engineering crop plants so they behave like legumes.

whether people in general get wise to the hoax that is ethanol. I doubt they will figure it out in a year's time.

Meanwhile, what's happening now is that corn is sky high as are all the products that rely on corn--meats and such. I hope people figure it out very quickly and dump this foolish obsession with ethanol.

And while they are dumping, jettison the eco-freaks who have once more lead us down the wrong path. Why anyone trusts the "green" bunch is beyond me.

the corn subsidies should come down with the rising corn prices.