

Is It Finally Game Over for Ethanol? - DiabloD3
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/is-it-finally-game-over-for-ethanol

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freehunter
There are billboards up across Michigan advertising "Save $1/gal, look for the
yellow hose". Doesn't say a thing about the yellow hose being ethanol. My
grandparents decided to take this opportunity to save $1/gal and had to have
their fuel lines flushed because their car doesn't run on ethanol. It's like
saying "get better mileage, switch [your gasoline engine] to diesel!"

Ethanol can't go away fast enough. It's like 3D TVs. All the companies are
pushing it but it's not something the consumer ever wanted.

~~~
phkahler
Apparently Isobutanol is supposed to be a better biofuel:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobutanol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isobutanol)

This is independent of the issue of weather we should use biofuels in the
first place.

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jboggan
Ethanol cannot go away fast enough for my liking. Economic issues aside, it is
hell on motorcycles. Many modern bikes use lightweight polymer fuel tanks
which turn out to deform and leak after long term exposure to high ethanol
gas, especially when many station owners tend to cut gas with slightly more
ethanol than is allowed or labeled. Not to mention the engines don't run as
well; most bikes are made in Japan or Europe and aren't engineered around our
peculiar corn fetish.

I've had two gas tanks warp and need replacement and I am going to be sending
my new motorcycle's tank off to be treated and coated on the interior before I
take delivery and it sees a single drop of ethanol mixed fuel.

~~~
StillBored
Its even more hell on small lawn equipment that continue to use priming bulbs,
and flexible fuel hoses. Pretty much the only solution is to run the $10 no
ethanol gas for small engines, or drain them after every use.

~~~
abakker
Some of the gas I once bought in San Diego melted the fuel line in my chainsaw
immediately. It didn't even manage to start before the little hose collapsed
and melted.

FWIW, you can still buy ethanol free gas at certain pumps at marinas/boat
yards. Ethanol is hydroscopic, so adding it in high concentrations will
usually absorb too much water out of boat gas tanks, since boat gas tanks
virtually all have some water in them.

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bsbechtel
I'm not a big fan of the subsidies given out to promote ethanol production,
but to be fair, this article does nothing to mention the tens of billions of
dollars given out to promote oil and gas exploration. Oil and gas have had a
100 year head start in developing production technology thanks to federal
subsidies. To really get an understanding of how these two energy sources
compare, all subsidies for all energy sources need to be accounted for.

~~~
mikeash
At least oil and gas has a massively better return on the energy invested. A
gallon of ethanol barely contains more energy than it takes to produce it. Oil
is so much better that, for example, tar sands production is criticized
because it _only_ returns something like 4x the energy required for
production. Questions of finances and subsidies are secondary to this.

I'm no fan of oil either, but ethanol is clearly not the answer.

~~~
bsbechtel
Absolutely true, for corn ethanol in the Midwest, today. Sugar cane ethanol
coming out of Brazil has something to the effect of a 10x return on energy
spent to produce it (better than oil). I'm from the Midwest, have an ag
background, and have been very skeptical of the idea of corn ethanol as an
alternative fuel source ever since it became big in 2006/2007 (for the reason
you mention, ROE).

What I hadn't thought about before though, is the fact that 100 years of
compounding subsidies in oil and gas have allowed for massive technology
investment which has improved the ROE for petroleum based energy sources over
that timeframe. The question then becomes, if we could subsidize ethanol
production for the next 100 years to spur R&D in the area, what kind of ROE
would we be getting 100 years from now? Or, alternatively, what kind of ROE
did gas get when it was first discovered as a new energy source?

~~~
mikeash
You're right that it's not ethanol in general, just corn ethanol, and by
extension American-produced ethanol. Which is the topic here, but it's
certainly true that it's not a condemnation of ethanol in general.

Ultimately, as far as picking technologies goes, the history of oil doesn't
matter. It's interesting for sure, but they're a sunk cost that we get whether
we want them or not. If oil is better than ethanol _right now_ , either with
no subsidies or with equivalent subsidies, then we should stick with oil. The
fact that oil got subsidies in the past doesn't change that.

Of course, sticking with oil is a bad idea in the long run, but the same basic
idea applies to comparing ethanol with other sorts of renewable energy, and
electric cars and such. Would we be better off putting those subsidies into
nuclear, wind, solar, electric cars, etc., rather than ethanol? I think so.

------
canvia
With 80%+ of corn grown in the US being from Monsanto seeds, you can bet that
there is going to be a lot of push back against this. Why are taxpayers
subsidizing an already profitable industry? How many millions does Monsanto
spend on lobbying every year?

[http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/can-we-feed-our-world-without-
mon...](http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/can-we-feed-our-world-without-monsanto)

~~~
rhino369
This Monsanto is evil stuff is our generations "contrails" conspiracy
theories.

The audacity of designing a better corn seed knows no bounds!

~~~
TrevorJ
Designing better corn isn't the reason people have issues with Monsanto.

~~~
lkbm
In the tech world and scientific communities, no. We care about IP abuses, if
anything--many, many studies have shown that the products are safe to eat, but
Montanto's behavior is occasionally despicable.

The rest of the country, though? The hippie, New Age folks that make up a
frighteningly large segment of the population? GMOs are "unnatural
Frankenfoods" destroying our DNA and whatnot.

My friend group is definitely skewed toward the hippie spectrum, so I may me
over-estimating their numbers, but only 37% of Americans say GMOs are safe to
eat[1]. I don't know what percent of those know who Monsanto is, or what
percent say Monsanto's business practices are unethical, but I certainly lean
toward "designing better corn" being the most common qualm.

[1] [http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/chapter-3-attitudes-
an...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/chapter-3-attitudes-and-beliefs-
on-science-and-technology-topics/)

~~~
TrevorJ
The problem with GMO's is that most people aren't equipped to have a nuanced
discussion about them so the conversation devolves to massive generalities and
extremes that aren't useful because both polar extremes turn out to be
illogical positions to take, but they are the only two positions that are
discussed.

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transfire
Unfortunately corn is far from best crop for ethanol production. Hemp is twice
as good, and if it wasn't for this stupid war on drugs, ethanol may have done
us a lot of good. Of course, they promised us switchgrass ethanol with is
something like 10x more efficient, but never delivered -- probably b/c from
the get go it was all about getting subsidies and only pretending to actually
do something about our addiction to oil.

~~~
hga
Depends on which efficiencies are important. Aren't you taking about sun etc.
-> biomass? Whereas biomass -> ethanol appears to be a lot more important, and
starting from simpler sugars and starch is a _lot_ easier than cellulose,
wherever the latter comes from. That also has a lot to do with the upfront
capital costs you decry.

~~~
tormeh
manHours*land -> biomass is a good one. So it has to be grow densely, grow
everywhere, grow without supervision and be easy to harvest, preferably as
many times per year as possible.

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ChuckMcM
I expect it is (game over), but not because anyone in authority is going to
say it, rather because farmers are going to be able to make more money raising
food crops now that California is out of water. If you plant a corn field with
nut trees you will won't want to plow those under again until you get your
money back.

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gtirloni
Subsidies should go to electric cars and new nuclear power plants instead.

~~~
baldfat
Farming subsidies have a long pass. The concern is that we lose to many
farmers we lose the ability to feed ouraselves. Willie Nelson started "Farm
Aid" to address his own conern and it was apart of a national movement. So US
Farmers are supported by the governemnt and they get the subsidies. It isn't
the seed manufators that them.

Personally I hate ethnol and well there is hope that we will get off of fosil
fuels for electricity sooner rather thamn later AKA After I Die.

~~~
mml
Ah, but farmers don't take these subsidies and stuff them in their homespun
mattresses. They pretty much hand them over to seed, fertilizer and equipment
manufacturers.

George Archer was once asked why he didn't just employ farmers directly,
instead of buying contracts for their output. He allegedly replied along the
lines that he'd never be able to get away with treating employees so poorly.

~~~
baldfat
Canada does not give their farmers subsidies for grain farms. I had friends
that ran a fairly large farm. It was always fest or famine. On good years they
would make hundreds of thousands of dollars and on bad years they would lose
tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. The issue was if you had a string
of bad years for to long. My friend is still farming 20+ years now and he made
money in all but 5 of them.

He also says that the work load is basically the same for a profit or loss
year. It is based on the prices of the crops and that the yields stay the
same. He predicts this year will be a BIG loss year.

This is the forecast for farmers this year in US.
[http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-
inco...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-income-
finances/2015-farm-sector-income-forecast.aspx)

Farming was something I did for 2 weeks a year for fun. It was so different
than my desk jobs that I really enjoyed it and the economy of the business is
really hard to get your head around but was fascinating to me.

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minthd
Even if the bill/subsidies are returned , i don't see how corn-based sugars
could compete with proterro which claims to make(using biotech) sucrose at 1/3
of the cost of sugar made from sugar cane.

Maybe if celluse based ethanol was viable there was a way ,but it isn't as far
as i know.

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explorigin
My (very trusted) mechanic just told me to switch to 100% gas instead of the
10% ethanol that is so common. My car is a 2007 model but he said that it will
be better for the engine in the long run and I'll get more efficiency.

~~~
dublinben
Where would you even find 100% gasoline?

~~~
jcoby
It's around. They even sell testing kits to make sure.

If you can find it, run the 100% pure stuff in your lawn equipment unless it
specifically says it can run on E10. The E10 absolutely destroys the old
rubber lines and clogs up carburetors.

~~~
thearn4
For smaller 2 cycle engines (chain saws, string trimmers, etc.) you can also
buy small volumes of pre-blended gasoline and oil at various mixture ratios
that are ethanol free. You can find these near the mower section in most of
the big box hardware stores. It's not cheap compared to blending your own, but
it keeps my tools very happy.

Though I generally have tried to move away from 2 cycle tools to LiPo electric
ones where feasible. My electric push power works really well, and I maintain
a little under 2 acres of grass.

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jccalhoun
I recently moved ~60 miles and I don't remember any gas stations in my old
town advertising E85 fuel but here it seems like most of them have it. I'm
still in the same state and it seems weird that it would be so common in this
town. I don't think there are any car plants here so I'm not sure why this
town bought into E85 so much. (In the town I grew up in there is also a
compressed natural gas station but there is a car plant that manufactures them
there so that makes sense.)

~~~
nitid_name
E85 is usually cheaper because of the subsidies.

I've found the more rural gas stations stock 100% gasoline. I assume it's
because the older engines in farm and sporting equipment don't take kindly to
E85 (different valve timing needed, it's rough on old seals, etc).

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JoeAltmaier
Politics aside, its a worthwhile endeavor to hedge our bets on fuel. We're
addicted to it; when our supply is threatened it costs us many times the
entire cost of the ethanol subsidy program.

In fact, the annual corn subsidies in their entirety would operate Welfare for
36 hours per year. Its a drop in the investment-bucket.

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MrDosu
and i would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling rain
forests and 3rd world hungry people.

