Then factor in all the havoc caused by ethanol in gas ruining seals, not working well in small engines, etc. and it’s just totally non-sensical that this fraud has been allowed to happen.
Most of "green" movement is a fraud. The majority of "green" energy comes biomass - aka cutting trees down and burning it.
Would love to see the funding behind many of these green groups. I'll bet most of it comes from oil companies, governments, etc. The past 15 years, much of the anti-coal "green" movement was funded by oil companies who wanted to take out their coal competitors and replace it with "clean" natural gas. It was all about taking market share. Nothing to do with the environment.
This is anecdotal, but just wanted to give an example that I've personally experienced.
We used to race go karts with Rotax engines, and the local series organizers decided to mandate 91 octane pump gas ("cost saving measure") as opposed to the VP racing fuel that the engine was designed to use.
The end result was that all the racers ended up having excessive carbon buildup in the cylinder, and would go through several sets of the fuel pump internals every year. The fuel pump is a pulse driven flexible element that the pump gas (containing ethanol) would just destroy.
Never had those issues with the ethanol free VP fuel.
I mean, the need for engine compatibility was part of the push for ethanol, it isn't some big secret, and there are millions of vehicles that have no issues with ethanol gasoline. Blame the organizers, not the ethanol.
All I have are my experiences of every small engine I own that worked fine for a decade or more gradually going to crap in the past few years and I need to take four different ones to the small engine repair guy right now. :)
I’ve just been phasing out every gas engine I own for battery powered. I’m done with gasoline as much as possible. A lifetime of begging this horrible Frankenstein machine we call the internal combustion engine to work is enough for me.
In defence of ethanol, producing it from plants and then burning it as fuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions vs extracting, refining and burning dino juice.
This is disputed. The GAO issued a report that cited research which claimed its worse when taking land use effects into account.
In regards to your other question about why its a bad way to produce alcohol, from an EROI perspective, a frequently cited figure is its around 1.5:1 (invest one unit of energy, get 1.5 back). Making it from Brazilian sugar cane on the other hand is 8:1.
Whatever the exact numbers are, the benefits are pretty modest if there are any. Its an agricultural subsidy program.
We’re talking about “big oil” here, you’ll forgive me if my first reaction is to imagine a pre-completed study with all the right conclusions and a big fat cheque hidden under page 3, being shopped around academia looking for someone willing to sign their name to it :-)
From a layman’s point of view the claim just smells weird.
On one hand, we take carbon out of the atmosphere over millennia, compressing it tightly under the surface of the earth for even more years until it turns to a thick sludge. Then very quickly, in comparative seconds to the millennia of oil deposits formation, we release all that into the atmosphere again.
And it’s alleged that causes less greenhouse gas emission than the other idea: extract carbon floating around in the atmosphere today (i.e. grow a plant of some sort today), process it then instead of shipping it across the world from the oil wells to the consumers, instead just distribute it locally where it is grown and processed.
The same of course goes the other way, Big Ag definitely is able to put its hand on the Department of Ag. The report I referred to is from GAO, which is much more independent than USDA.
I couldn't find the GAO report I mentioned but I found a more recent one published this year by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the more prestigious journals in the world. In their abstract in addition to mentioning US ethanol raised corn prices by 30% and other crop prices by 20% they say it
> ... caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher.
My understanding so far is that the corn used for ethanol isn’t the kind you eat (sweetcorn) it’s a cheaper to produce and more hardy plant but consequently can only really be used for cattle feed and ethanol production.
Ages ago i read something that said in the US, corn was the optimal source but in other parts of the world, sugar cane could result in a more energy efficient process for ethanol.
Sure fair enough. It’s more nuanced than someone will be able to write in a succinct HN comment. Without debating the merits of carbon intensity, the ethanol mandate is far too small to make any appreciable impact on emissions. But it is large enough to have a very appreciable impact on food costs.
That makes sense. It’s not something that would solve itself then if that’s true - i don’t know that my demand for fuel is driving up the cost of my corn based foods and vice versa. I’m not deciding to drive less miles or take alternative transport because i want cheaper food - because i don’t know that connection exists.
