Al Gore Says Supporting Corn Ethanol Was a Mistake

[Nathanael]

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has said he made a mistake promoting first generation corn ethanol during his presidential campaign in 2000.

Gore says he was more concerned with garnering votes from farmers in Tennessee and Iowa than with what was best for the environment. A clean energy enthusiast, Gore says corn ethanol is not a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. The process of converting corn into ethanol is highly energy intensive and also requires using a food crop for fuel.

Link: http://www.energyboom.com/biofuels/al-gore-says-supporting-corn-ethanol-was-mistake

[drm604]

1. K&R for honesty.

:kick:

[lfairban]

2. Better link

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40317079/ns/us_news-environment/

Lots of things don't turn out as well as we had hoped, like fuel cells and flywheels.

[MatthewStLouis]

3. Ethanol Plants are water hogs as well...

A few years ago a group of investors, slavering over the prospects of easy government money, decided to try and set up an ethanol plant not far from where my mom lives in southwest MO. Local citizens were concerned about pollution from the plant, but even closer to home; they were worried about the implications for local water supplies. The proposed plant would require millions of gallons of water per day for processing and it was predicted that the local water table would drop, leaving thousands of rural folk without water. Locals petitioned for an injunction to stop the plant, but the presiding judge sided with the investors....

Luckily, the funding for the project dried up, and the plant has not been built.

And think there are a couple morals to this story. One is, if you think conservative pro-business judges are looking out for your best interests: think again. The second is, not everything that looks green is green.

[JohnWxy]

8. 3 gals of water for 1 gallon of ethanol, 41.5 gallons of water for one gallon of oil

http://www.growthenergy.org/ethanol-issues-policy/myths-about-ethanol/water-use/




Water is an essential ingredient in ethanol production. It currently takes about 3 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol. That number is rapidly decreasing with environmental efforts and developments in technology. To put ethanol’s water use into perspective, it takes about 41.5 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of oil and 280 gallons of water to produce one Sunday newspaper

[Historic NY]

4. Yes its done nothing but raise food prices as farmers convert from food to fuel.

[upi402]

5. Cool, Now maybe a mia culpa for NAFTA and a job please

I don't even know what a good biomass is, aside from one that's nearby and cheap. Algal lipids will be developed for car fuel, I guess. Bush mentioned switchgrass so that MUST be a false flag.

[progressoid]

6. Kinda late now Al

We have a very large industry and economy dependent on it now. It gonna be really hard to get these horses back in the barn.

[JohnWxy]

7. Ethanol by replacing gasoline reduced oil imports in 2009 about 257 million barrels

using $73 per barrel of oil, that comes to about $18.8 Billion. PLus, the excise tax credit is passed through to the buyer of any fuel that has ethanol blended with it (all gasoline). So the price of the fuel is reduced by the proportion of ethanol in it. But the result is the excise tax reduces the price of gas to the buyer.

I appreciate Mr. Gore's interest in cellulosic ethanol, but there is something he seems to be overlooking. Cellulosic ethanol will hopefully become something we can use in the future. But, it isn't reducing GHGs at all right now. I think reducing GHGs is worth something, especially when we don't really know how long it will take to make cellulosic ethanol practical. Starch based ethanol is reducing GHGs now and each year until cellulosic comes along. Keep in mind, once cellulosic ethanol can be produced cost effectively, it will take several years (like 10 or more) to bring cellulosic ethanol production to where we are now with starch based ethanol.

As far as increasing the price of food even the World Bank has admitted it was wrong to attribute a large part of the price increase in foods to demand for corn to make ethanol. The WB recently said that biofuels were a factor but a very small one, in the rise in food prices.

http://domesticfuel.com/2010/07/30/world-bank-report-takes-new-look-at-food-and-fuel/

“We conclude that a stronger link between energy and non‐energy commodity prices is likely to have been the dominant influence on developments in commodity, and especially food, markets,” says the report. “Demand by developing countries is unlikely to have put additional pressure on the prices of food commodities, although it may have created such pressure indirectly through energy prices.”

Another point they make is that biofuels only represent 1.5 percent of worldwide grain and oilseed use. “This raises serious doubts about claims that biofuels account for a big shift in global demand. Even though widespread perceptions about such a shift played a big role during the recent commodity price boom, it is striking that maize prices hardly moved during the first period of increase in US ethanol production, and oilseed prices dropped when the EU increased impressively its use of biodiesel. On the other hand, prices spiked while ethanol use was slowing down in the US and biodiesel use was stabilizing in the EU.”

I think if we want to end subsidies for ethanol, let's not stop there. LEt's end subsidies (mostly in the form of preferential tax treatments) for oil. Then biofuels (biodiesel as well as ethanol) would be on an equal footing with gasoline.

[poopfuel]

9. and about those oil company tax subsidies

Robert Rapier makes a point of boosting oil companies because they bring in tax revenues.

The trouble is,to whom?

Ask the oil companies how much they pay in taxes and they won't tell you. Oh, but it is clear that tax monies are invested... OUTSIDE the USA. See link to back up both my statements

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/exxon-mobil-paid-zero-income-tax-offshore%20shelter-wal-mart-general-electric-forbes\

From that link:

Snip
ExxonMobil, the world's second-largest company, says it actually paid out 47 percent of its profits in taxes, but not to the good ol' capitalist US of A. Says Forbes in a report on all the taxes of the US's top 25 firms (with added emphasis):

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Snip

Jeffers, however, declined to discuss what ExxonMobil's actual US income tax liabilities might be—in 2009, or in any year—except to say that it wasn't zero. "We don't disclose our tax bill; we're not required to," he said. "Just like most corporations and individuals, we disclose what we're required to."

Which leaves the figures in ExxonMobil's 10-K largely unexplained: Even if the firm overpaid taxes and earned a refund, it still wouldn't show up as a zero or a positive revenue in cashflow—unless the paid tax liabilities are concealed elsewhere in the report. And it doesn't explain why ExxonMobil's figures are so out of wack with its peer corporations, like Wal-Mart, cited in the original story above, or Chevron, which listed $200 million in US income tax on the same line in its 10-K, Forbes reported.

In any case, the original story is wrong in this respect: According to the 10-K, a screenshot of which is provided below, ExxonMobil didn't have a zero-tax liability in 2009; it was actually owed $46 million by the IRS, against $15.1 billion in foreign taxes owed. As Jeffers says, that may not be the case; but it's what ExxonMobil told the SEC, its shareholders, and the world. And since the firm refuses to share its actual tax numbers with the public, it's all we have to go by.]

Money invested in ethanol stays at home. No one talks about that.

Then there's breaks such as this one.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0214-01.htm

There is just so much behind the scenes machination that it is impossible to know how much corporations such as these get away with. Yes, Rapier is correct, this happens across the board with all kinds of corporations. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't involve a NECESSARY product which to some people's thinking should have been nationalized and controlled decades ago.

Thanks for the post, John

[poopfuel]

10. and a pretty good blog on the oil subsidy topic

Thanks to the Oil Drum for this link.

http://krementz.blogspot.com/2009/12/oil-is-subsidized.html

[GliderGuider]

11. So Al, given the actual state of carbon emissions, what do you propose?

The problem with Al is that whether or not he's been elected recently, he's a politician down to his toenails. No matter how good their intentions are, politicians always seem to end up in the debit column of civilization's balance sheet.

Ethanol sucks as a decarbonization solution. In fact, fuels as a class are the problem. Even renewable fuels suck. At the very most they help us break even, but as the graph above shows, "breaking even" is not an option.

How's this for a motto: "Electrify or die trying."

[NNadir]

12. There are real legitmate questions about whether ethanol is in fact carbon neutral.

A starting point of reference in this discussion may be found here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5867/1238.abstract?searchid=1&HITS=10&hits=10&resourcetype=HWCIT&maxtoshow=&RESULTFORMAT=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fulltext=searchinger">Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change.

When posting a link to this article in Science, I have already been advised by people that know no science whatsoever that the article, which has been referenced in many hundreds of subsequent publications, is clearly bull, because it doesn't say what people who know no science want to hear.

But you're welcome to try them.

The obvious thing to state that if we were really, really, really concerned about climate change, we could phase out the entire car CULTure, but nobody wants to hear that either.

We'll drive until the last glacier is gone, whereupon it will impossible to irrigate our biofuel crops.