

Corn Ethanol Is Of No Use - ch4s3
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/04/20/its-final-corn-ethanol-is-of-no-use/?fb_action_ids=277355565775300&fb_action_types=news.publishes

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beloch
First off, let's take a moment to appreciate what we've got. Gasoline is
fantastically dense in energy. Approximately 46 MJ/kg! Ethanol is about half
as energy dense, which is why it is usually mixed with petroleum gasoline.
Engines must be specifically designed to operate on pure ethanol. Going from
the numbers quoted on Tesla's site, their Roadster's lithium ion battery packs
have an energy density of 0.456 MJ/kg. If you want to have the same range,
electric vehicles have to devote over a hundred times more weight to batteries
than gas-guzzlers do to their tank contents. To make matters worse, spent
gasoline weighs nothing while spent batteries weigh the same as full
batteries. Electric motors are mechanically simpler/lighter and innovative
design can carve even more weight off of new vehicle designs, but there is a
very good reason why cheap, long-range pure electric vehicles are still a ways
off. Lithium ion batteries are also pretty nasty things to produce in terms of
environmental impact. It's debatable if a plug-in electric vehicle run off of
solar/wind/etc. power actually has less impact than a small gasoline car does
at present. If the power used comes from coal then an electric car is actually
a huge step in the wrong direction. Also note that the U.S. is not a major
producer of Lithium, so dependency on foreign nations is not broken by
switching to electric cars.

If corn derived ethanol is worse for the environment than petroleum derived
gasoline, the only reasons to use it are economic. If it's cheaper, people
will likely use it. (Nevermind that so-called "biofuels" often command a
premium because people think they're environmentally friendly!). However, if
biofuels are bad for the environment, electric cars are bad for the
environment, and other alternatives are not yet commercially viable, what does
that leave? Well, sadly, it means stop driving so much! Use public transit.
Bike. Walk. Carpool. Stop throwing irrational hissy fits about pipelines meant
for safely transporting petroleum if it's the least harmful option that's
currently available.

Hopefully better electrical storage technologies will become available before
too long. Nanomaterials do potentially offer ways to make capacitors powerful
enough to eclipse current chemical battery technologies. This is years or
decades off into the future unfortunately. I'm not saying all this to be a
drag, but most people really think battery technology has come a lot further
than it actually has. Gasoline is still pretty darned useful stuff.

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tim333
The whole corn ethanol thing amazes me. How they can throw $30bn a year into a
program than makes the environment worse is surprising. I realise the
recipients of the cash they pay a proportion back to the politicians to keep
the thing going. But really - a $300bn or so cost over the life plus producing
hunger in poor countries by burning the food? I'm surprised the political
system is actually quite that bad. On the plus side I'm optimistic about algae
produced ethanol that companies like Algenol are trying to produce.

~~~
randomdata
As someone who grows corn (in a country where the crop is not subsidized, I
might add), the way I see it is that we're going to grow the corn anyway, so
turning it into fuel is better than letting it rot away as was happening
before the ethanol program was put into effect.

The problem is that our crops need to be rotated. Corn seems to be the only
crop that fills the gaps that is also compatible with the equipment we use to
grow other grains. The market doesn't give us incentive to shell out millions
more for equipment to grow crops that are a radical departure from what we're
already growing (grains and oilseeds for human and animal consumption).

It's far from perfect and is really a stopgap measure, but I'm not sure what
the alternative to growing corn is. That is the problem that needs to be
solved. It's not simply a matter of no ethanol = no corn grown. The corn is
going onto the market regardless. At least ethanol can recapture some of that
energy.

~~~
zhte415
I'm curious about corn rotting.

I live in a country that produces quite a lot of corn. Some is sold as fresh
produce, but any surplus ends up on the rooves of farmers' houses, dried,
consumed during the winter as the major starch. The husks are used for fuel -
quick and hot burn stir fry. There is no need to let corn rot.

Why let it rot?

~~~
hga
We certainly didn't let it rot in the US before this debacle. The corn is
dried using propane or maybe natural gas if the farm is lucky enough to have a
hookup, the husks, or sometimes the whole plant, are used for silage and fed
to animals, as is most of the corn, although that's generally sold to
middlemen and bought by feedlots for cattle, and those who specialize in
feeding other animals.

~~~
randomdata
Perhaps I didn't fully characterize the situation. Certainly we had other uses
for corn, but around the year 2005-2006 there was so much corn being grown it
started to exceed the storage capacity and immediate need for the crop, so it
was being dumped outside because there was nowhere else to put it. Exposure to
the elements started the process of decay. The ethanol programs came in to use
up those excesses.

~~~
hga
I do remember that, but it was a temporary problem.

E.g. right now at least my part of the Midwest is suffering from 3 years of
drought, and we haven't had even 1 inch total of rain this spring since snow
stopped. Save during the fat years, consume during the lean years and all
that.

~~~
randomdata
Which technically should be sorted out through the market price. Ethanol is
only viable when corn is cheap, which is only reached when supply greatly
exceeds demand. However, then you run into people not liking their jobs tied
to the random fluctuations of the corn market. The whole situation is kind of
a big market failure full of small patches trying to stop the leaks.

~~~
hga
I don't think it's a "market failure" so much as people not being willing to
accept that "Sorry, today the value for the corn you painstakingly grew is
close to $0", and they've been told since at least the '30s that the Federal
government will take care of them (well, back then, it would if they were
Democrats).

The New Deal policies, BTW, both raised food prices while the same USDA (US
Department of Agriculture) estimated 25% of the population was malnourished,
which was confirmed by the WWII draft. Which lead to the Federal school lunch
program, which was eventually widely extended to breakfast, and now even
dinner I hear in some places.

~~~
randomdata
The government needing to take care of you seems like a pretty big market
failure to me. And those attempts to take care, instead of solving the root of
the problem, is what has ultimately lead to the need for ethanol.

~~~
hga
Well, the problem is, how does a society address the issue of steadily
decreasing commodity prices as science and engineering produce them?

The New Deal helped farmers, back then a much larger percentage of the
population, at the expense of everyone else. The real solution was to move
people from farming to industry, or as it turned out, the US military and
industrial production to support it for WWII (and per the WWI song, " _How 'Ya
Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They've Seen Paree)_" (Paris), between
that, the "GI Bill" subsidizing college education, learning all sorts of
useful skills, etc. I gather many if not most didn't return).

The New Deal, as I've pointed out above, didn't really solve the problem when
it's policies damaged so large a portion of the population. No Holodomor, but
just as deliberate. I've seen a newsreel of this:
[http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_17.ht...](http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_17.html)
; you can imagine what hungry people back then thought when they saw it.

------
cheepin
How did these laws pass (besides lobbying from people growing corn)? I wasn't
following too closely at the time.

~~~
randomdata
Leading up to that time we had corn coming out of our ears and elevators were
quite literally leaving it out to rot. The energy was already spent, ethanol
was just a plan to recapture it. It wasn't completely misguided.

~~~
ams6110
There was a good bit of uncritical, emotion driven thinking as well. Corn ==
bio == green != oil thus must be good.

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acjohnson55
_In 2000, over 90% of the U.S. corn crop went to feed people and livestock,
many in undeveloped countries, with less than 5% used to produce ethanol. In
2013, however, 40% went to produce ethanol, 45% was used to feed livestock,
and only 15% was used for food and beverage (AgMRC)._

Why the heck would they state the comparison this way? That just seems
unprofessional.

~~~
fludlight
Because a journalist quoted someone from the Agricultural Marketing Resource
Center. Journalists aren't good at math and marketing people pretend not to
be.

The raw date is here (see table 5):

[http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-bioenergy-
statistic...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-bioenergy-
statistics.aspx#.U1Sh--ZdW51)

------
tezza
I wouldn't say _no_ use.

Instead I'd say no _current_ use.

Some power uses cannot be electrified ( nuclear powered airplanes ? )

David Mackay estimated[1] that if there was no fossil fuel left / consumed
we'd need to use 12% of our arable land for biofuel as:

 _" There are a few essential vehicles that can’t be easily electrified"_

[1]
[http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_204.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_204.shtml)

~~~
waps
> "There are a few essential vehicles that can’t be easily electrified"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-119](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-119)

Specifically the Tupolev Tu-95LAL is a nuclear powered aircraft. Only one was
ever made. I love the Soviet tech programs.

------
mixmastamyk
There are reasons besides environmental ones to encourage use of biofuels
(hopefully made from more than corn). One is that ~10% less oil has to be
imported during production shortages.

It's not a complete solution, but a minor part of one.

~~~
gscott
My wife started using E85 fuel her gas mileage went from 22mpg to 17mpg. Even
though there was a subsidy on the fuel she ended up having to purchase more.
She has since switched back to regular fuel.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The math is a bit more complex than 10% and why I put the ~ there.

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afhdshufdufdo
Most new cars will be electric in 10 years. Then instead of oil, coal or
nuclear (power plants) will be the primary power source and ethanol for
automobile fuel will be a minor issue.

~~~
i80and
I agree with you, but battery technology has some pretty serious problems for
cars that can't be ignored.

How do you deal with the replacement cost and lemon risk (battery leasing and
warranties).

For me, cars are for road trips. How is that usage addressed (open question,
aside from putting superchargers _everywhere_ usable for all electric cars).

How do you deal with the power grid costs? Power mains aren't build to handle
the kind of scale that rapidly charging electric cars needs (???).

~~~
bruce511
Your other into aside, which certainly are important questions;

>> for me, cars are for road trips...

It's probable that many people have taken a road-trip holiday at some point in
their lives. Some percentage of people do it regularly.

However anecdotally I would suggest most people have not. Outside the US
conditions for the road-trip holiday are not as prevalent. In high-density
Europe for instance there are easier ways to travel (train for example). In
Asia "most" people don't own a car and driving for fun is almost unheard of.

The perfect conditions for a road-trip exist in large countries with lots of
open spaces, good roads, good places to stay interesting places to get to and
so on. USA, Australia, South Africa and so on.

A motoring holiday in the UK is brilliant, but the short distances would work
fine with simple recharge points. It's hard to drive for 4 days solid in the
UK without just going around in circles.

Of course the idea of the road trip is more fun than the road trip itself, and
we end up doing a trip maybe once every few years. I use my car every day to
commute.

It's the idea that I _could_ do a road trip that seems to be the logic against
electric, but in practice I don't actually do one all that often. (some people
do, but they're a tiny minority)

Heres my point. Do the math. Simply hire a petrol car when you want to do a
road-trip. For most people that will be never, for others it might be every
few years - for a tiny fraction it will be often. The tiny fraction can
continue to drive petrol. The price of oil isn't coming down, so that will be
more and more expensive.

On the up side every road-tripper should lobby for electric cars all day long.
Using petrol for commuting is a terrible waste, and when it runs out its the
road tripper who will be hurt.

Frankly electric cars today have more than enough range for daily use for 360+
days in the year. As the price of oil rises over the next 10 years the
economics for electric make a lot more sense.

~~~
hueving
>some people do, but they're a tiny minority

Do you have any citations for that? I do a trip once a year or so of about
1000 miles and it never really surprises anyone when I tell them that so it
must not be that uncommon.

